Urbanization of Rural America

Where will people live and work in 21st Century America? Everyone has to live somewhere, but very few people will live in the old urban centres of the 19th and 20th century. The old urban centres burdened with so much obsolescence and enormous replacement cost for their basic utilities just don''t have the ability to hold so many people even if the people wanted to live or work there. Increasing, at just 3% per year, the US population will be 556 million in the year 2022 and by 2047 over 1.166 billion! Just as technology created the old urban centres, new technology is now spawning the new urban centres in rural America and beyond. The sands of time have covered many large urban centres all over the world. They came to life, flourished and then expired when conditions changed. The many ghost towns in America along with the decay of many urban centres are also mute testimony to the transitory nature of man''s accomplishments and to the powerful influence of climate change, wars, natural disasters and most significantly in the last century, new technology. Our new urban centres will not only be in rural America, but even in the now remote parts of Alaska, Canada, Australia, the Orient and most significantly, the Moon and Mars. With some understanding of how technology drives these changes, we can be better prepared to plan for the future and accept the changes.