Downtown American cities in two hundred years will look pretty much as they do now.

One thing that the information revolution is doing is making it less necessary for people to conglomerate. In just 50 years we will likely have the technology (at a commercial price) and connection speeds (in 50 years, I'd bet transfer speeds on the internet will average around 5mbps with high end transfers being above 100mbps) to completely utilize virtual workplaces. For any office occupation, which is what skyscrapers are largely used for, it will become cheaper to use virtual workplaces than to rent out the office space. This will also allow those companies a larger source of employees. What I'm saying is that while I agree that much taller buildings likely won't be but in 20-50 years populations of major cities will begin to diminish. Or at least spread out and reduce city densities.

So, I'd say your prediction is questionable in the 50 year range. As for 200 years, I'd say no way. It's essentially impossible to put any limits on technology that far in the future. Who's to say teleportation can't be invented, thus completely eliminating the need for cities. Or perhaps a form of virual reality, combined with the internet could make compete interaction (not just virtual workplaces, but virtual playgrounds, movie theaters, broadway shows, etc.) plausible.

In the past 200 years we've gone through several technological revolutions, as you mentioned. How can you limit your sight to the effects of the information revolution? Who's to say what technological revolution is next?

Besides, the information age will definitely "rearrange the matter in our lives" by allowing us to spread out and still be able to communicate and work together. It just hasn't hit that point quite yet.

I have to agree that 200 years is too far into the future to make an informed bet about something like this. The bet seems preoccupied with information technology, but there are many technologies that might, or might not, greatly change the appearance of cities in the next fifty years, never mind two hundred.

In any case, it seems like a very subjective test. Personally, I could comfortably argue that cities now do or don't look much the way they did 200 years ago. In some ways, they look similar to cities of 2000 BC. In other ways -- ways I could easily agree are very significant -- modern cities look very dissimilar to cities of just 100 years ago.

Here, the bet seems to focus on building size and distribution, the presence of ground vehicles, and people. Well:

Building size in cities has increased enormously over the last 200 years, both in terms of average volume and overall height. Taller buildings are being built all the time, although the boom is not as great as it was in the past. I think whether or not new, super-skyscrapers and arcologies and so forth will become the mode of the future depends on things like population levels, real estate values, and transportation. Too tough to call.

Ground vehicles will probably always be present so long as an appropriate infrastructure (as needed) is also present. If some new mode of transportation comes along (and becomes widespread) which doesn't need roads, then the pressure of governments to build and maintain roads will be reduced. If roads go away, then ground vehicles will almost certainly become rarer. But it's tough to predict.

As for people . . . if you don't have a lot of people in a relatively small area, you don't really have a city. It's almost a tautological issue.

If most cities dissolve in the next 200 years, but the few that remain are, say, in undeveloped countries that are 200 years behind the times, then I guess the bet would be satisfied.

The real question is whether our cities will still smell like urine in 200 years. Hmmmmmmmm.

I think that not only downtown areas but most of the rest of America will remain pretty much as they are - because the economy of America will shift toward the electronic and virtual - the areas where we still enjoy a definite advantage over the rest of the world.

mcgeorgebundy said: The real question is whether our cities will still smell like urine in 200 years.

Probably, by then, there will be pervasive dietary additives that will make urine smell better.

Hell, you have to expect some progress.

mcgeorgebundy said: "The real question is whether our cities will still smell like urine in 200 years."

Easy fix for that and West Nile (spread by mosquitoes) all at once - put high voltage bug zappers along all the sidewalks. I flat guarantee the urine smell problem will go away.

cities change the asphault in streets all the time. How we commute to work is bound to change when someone discovers a better substance to use for roads then what we have now.

and what's to say the instant houses be built today won't be knocked down like they were in the earl 90s to make for room for the yuppie of the future?

continuing to think about this one.
after all w/ rising water levels cities like
houston and miami will need to massively
restructure their cities to keep them from sinking.
obviously no one is gonna knock down historial
buildings in new york and new orleans, but what's
to keep a little world war from destroying them (especially
taken current political climates)? What else... hmmmm...
culture changes too. The problem w/ going against this
is that cities like London haven't changed their downtowns
much in several hundred years except for replacing ye
shop w/ ye Mc Donalds and a subway underneath.
I guess you'd have to predict a catastrophic event in
American culture to really see a change in cities.

Many cities, inside the U.S. and out, vary in appearance depending on how much pride and interest the cities' inhabitants have in maintaining the architecture of a certain time period. In Italy, for example, downtown Florence has changed very little in appearance since the 15th century while Milan has a number of modern buildings and shopping centers.

I find it entirely plausible that in two centuries downtown San Francisco may look much as it does now, but the Las Vegas strip could be unrecognizable.

Just think how urban life has changed over the course of the last 200 years. And the scientific development that has carried this change is growing at a faster rate than ever. I think downtown Copenhagen in 200 years will be close to unrecognizable to anyone who know the city today, just as the current city would be to people who warped in the the 18th century..

There may not be "cities" in 200 years.

"So, I'd say your prediction is questionable in the 50 year range. As for 200 years, I'd say no way. It's essentially impossible to put any limits on technology that far in the future." -Mike Verbalis

There you have it. Life has changed so much in just the last 20 years, so I don't think there's even a chance of this coming true.
Of course, even if someone bets against you, you'll likely be dead and gone by the time you have to cough up any money, and even if you had to, I think that in the world of 2209 any bet in today's money would be effectively a farmer's bet.

Kevin predicts the look of downtown American cities, not the outlying areas in general. Thus, he is restricting his prediction to a very core area that has always been considered the city center. Therefore, I think he is right. Buildings will probably be taller, simply for the sake of being taller. But the core look of the city will be the same, especially at the human level. What will drastically change are the suburbs and fringe of cities. Some will develop their own cores, but I feel most will probably disappear.

We have history to tell us this. We will not, in 200 or a thousand years, probably change the look of the core of our cities. But what lies around those cities, that's another story.

Kevin's prediction is pretty right, for 200 years hence or 1000.

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