ShortList is supported by you, our amazing readers. When you click through the links on our site and make a purchase we may earn a commission. Learn more

Here's what cities will look like in the future

By Holly Pyne

26 May 2015

Forget tweaking the bus timetables and rerouting that one-way system: top engineers have somewhat more radical plans for our cities in future.

Get ready for 3D-printed homes, floating living pods, huge bridges linking urban centres (eat that, HS2), spaceports ferrying you to Mars, and expansions up - huge skyscrapers housing farms - and down, in the form of super-deep basements.

A list of the top ten 'most likely' future tech developments to be seen in the next hundred years has been released by a panel of award-winning architects and lecturers from the University of Westminster, including Dr Rhys Morgan, director of engineering and education at the Royal Academy of Engineering. Three stunning artistic impressions of the top three ideas have been commissioned to coincide with the launch of a new series of Impossible Engineering, to be broadcast on Yesterday TV.

The predictions were informed by the likely trajectory both environmental factors and technological advances, with a water-filled world - caused by global warming and rising sea levels - featuring prominently. Thus, floating sea cities, run on solar and tidal energy, are tipped to become a reality.

Dover might house a floating city next to the white cliffs

With much of the world becoming a harsher place to live, buildings with their own microclimates are also a prediction from the experts.

3D-printed 'off the shelf' homes, deep basements - already a reality in oligarch palaces in Chelsea - and rooftop farms, set to maximise in-city production, complete the top five predictions for the future, while the rest of the list has one eye on leaving this fair planet of ours for far-away space colonies.