According to a recent study by Dassault Systèmes, Americans believe that the cities of 2030 are going to be significantly more technologically involved than the cities of 2019.
From November 19 to 29, Dassault polled 1,000 American adults on what they thought the modern city would look like in 2030. The company asked respondents questions about things like age, race and socioeconomic status to help ensure it had a representative sample of the U.S. population. Participants were also asked about their current tech use to compare the projected statistics.
Despite recent security concerns, Americans believe that cities will use smart home technology: Internet of Things (IoT)-connected devices that let homeowners automate systems in their homes, monitor them remotely, or control them via vocal cues. Of those polled, 72 percent think it's likely that they'll be using remotely monitored or voice-activated appliances. A similar number (70 percent) expect to be using fully connected home systems—a big jump from the 5 percent of consumers who currently report using them.
And apparently, recent privacy concerns about Siri and Alexa haven't killed the public's enthusiasm for virtual home assistants: about half of the respondents expect to use either a virtual assistant or a robot at home in 2030. Unsurprisingly, younger and wealthier respondents were more likely to say that they would be using these technologies, as were those who identified themselves as early tech adopters.
While the numbers are high, they aren’t an unrealistic jump from the number of respondents currently using smart home technology. According to the study’s section on consumer patterns, about a quarter of respondents are using smart thermostats, and approximately a fifth are using smart speakers, security systems, home assistants or appliances.
And it's not just their homes that respondents expect to be technologically enhanced. Over 80 percent of respondents think that municipal infrastructure will include navigation path optimization for cars, and 75 percent believe there will be municipally controlled traffic regulation and "smart" parking that will let people know when a lot is filled. A majority of participants also believe they will be using autonomous and driverless vehicles (63 percent and 57 percent, respectively).
The progression to smart infrastructure might be a little harder than the progression to smart homes; while there’s been a lot of hype about the move to self-driving cars, automatic driving tech is still interacting in unforeseen ways with the humans it shares the road with, and the laws around driving automatic cars on city streets have lagged behind the technology.
One of the biggest benefits that respondents hope to see from the move to smarter homes and cities is security, but they're also very particular about how that security should be achieved. Two-thirds of respondents said that security was one of the top three benefits of smart home tech, and the same number said that they’d be somewhat or very likely to be accepting of security monitoring. But while people seem to be accepting of monitoring if it’s used for the purpose of safety, they aren’t willing to let people access their information just for the sake of convenience. Almost half of participants said that they were “very” or “somewhat” unlikely to give personal data to companies or the government in exchange for better services.
The study also asked respondents what they thought medicine, personal accessories and shopping would look like in 2030.