In the Zukunftsinstitut’s new yearbook, trend researchers explore future social and economic changes shaped by the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

2021 will be “The year of decisions”: In the Zukunftsinstitut’s new yearbook, the Zukunftsreport 2021, trend researchers and authors explore future social and economic changes shaped by the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

One of the big questions in times of coronavirus like these is: what will the world look like afterwards? Occasionally, we hear about a hoped-for purification, about how the slowing down of everyday life, which the coronavirus is forcing us to do, would lead to more resilience. 2020 was a comatose year of standstill; 2021 will be a tentative approach to a state based on pre-viral everyday life – but can we ever achieve this again?

Futurologist Matthias Horx does not believe we will return to the old normal. This old normality has already become abnormal, the virus is a turning point in society that makes it clear that things cannot go on like this. Horx writes this in the current yearbook of the Zukunftsinstitut, which has been shaping trend and future research since it was founded in 1998. Today, it is regarded as a leading international contact for questions on the development of the economy and society. The institute publishes a report every year. In the current edition, the pandemic in particular determines the forecasts for future trends.

Now, one should be careful about seeing a virus as a trendsetter or as an opportunity to change the world. However, the global crisis management has indeed exposed grievances that were present long before the crisis and against which measures could have been decided long ago: from underpaid nursing professions to insufficiently digitalized schools to miserable hygiene conditions in mass production facilities such as slaughterhouses.

Generation Corona

The authors of the report take the newly raised questions and information and look to the future. Trend researcher Tristan Horx, for example, devotes a short digression to “Gen C”. The generation that was born or will be born during or after the coronavirus crisis. And who will therefore grow up in a world in which, according to the author, quite a lot will differ from what all previous generations have known.

From now on, it will be about quality instead of quantity, more quality of life and sustainability, less growth mania and environmental blindness. Gen C will go to schools where online teaching will not be synonymous with overburdened teachers, students and parents. Gen C will work in a professional world where working from home is a matter of course.

Everyday revolts

Journalist Niels Boeing puts forward a different thesis: The basis of successful revolts is everyday life. Lockdown and mass demonstrations don’t mix, so the only options for activism are the internet and social networks. But how meaningful are gestures such as posting a black square in the hope of making a statement against racism?

The effect – a listening, a perception – remains fleeting, it ultimately dries up on the screen, is scrolled away or even overlooked, a tired swipe across the cell phone display. The revolt of the future must address different milieus and network them with each other, in analog form. Protesters need to form networks of trust, which enable a more immediate reliability of information and create loyalties that are difficult to attack through fake news.

The current pandemic, writes Boeing, could give this dynamic a decisive boost, as many people organized themselves at the beginning of the shutdown to help the elderly and other at-risk groups cope with the state of emergency.

In the Future Report, author Till Briegleb identifies a credibility problem for the planning profession, which designs hopeful models of happy urban life in the future. Plans for super metropolises and promising smart cities are often utopias and unaffordable, oversized “green fairytale dreams” that ignore the real challenges of the coming decades.

Even urban flight, which has been boosted by the corona pandemic, is deceptive and will not bring the hoped-for life in the green in the long term – because the green will soon no longer exist if the demand for real estate grows quickly and steadily. Briegleb advocates making urban living more liveable: “greening” the urban area and thinking along with flexible floor plans. A commitment to “less” is the new optimism, while “more, always more” is outdated, if not disastrous. (On the subject: Garten + Landschaft editor-in-chief Theresa Ramisch raises the question in the editorial of G+L 1/21: “Where is the planning in all these crises?”)

Boundless province

In his article, sociologist Dr. Jakob Kibala promotes the concept and understanding of the “glocal” lifestyle: people with a global mindset, but who are anchored locally; people with a metropolitan and cosmopolitan outlook who oppose the idea of village life as an antagonist of the city. “Urban chroniclers” like the author Charlotte Roche, for example, or Berlin hipsters who relocate to a Brandenburg farm and grow tomatoes and organize provincial festivals.

In so-called co-villages, people experiment with co-living and individual privacy, earthship settlements bring together neo-nomads around self-sufficient energy temples made from 100% recycled materials, and ecovillages perfect a collective way of life. According to Kibala, the opposition of “rural narrow-mindedness and backwardness versus urban cosmopolitanism and future orientation” is becoming increasingly obsolete. Instead of deepening contrasts, a progressive province would rather reveal the synergy potential between city and countryside.

You can read the full article “Borderless province” by Dr. Jakob Kibala in G+L 05/21 on the topic of “Planning between city and region”.

Are you interested in the Future Report 2021? You can purchase the report here.