From using the sky as an advertising billboard, to flying taxis, to re-purposing redundant department stores, the future’s already here. Flying Taxis Paris is opening a flying taxi hub ahead of the Olympic Games to carry passengers from the airports to a floating heliport on the Seine. The heart does sink at…

Last month’s signals of the future look at how we will design and live in the homes of the future. Living Alone More people are living alone. I was doing a piece of consultancy on solo-living — quantity, prospects, and what products and services this might require — and this confirmed that…

Here is a bumper crop of my latest signals of the future from last month’s Friday Futures Insight. Visualise The Future Most of us will have experienced the amazing virtual worlds created for gamers. …

A selection of futures signals from the past few weeks. THE NEXT GENERATION What do young people want from their cities in the future? A project by Innovate UK and Britain Thinks engaged 200 young people on the question of net zero in cities. Although the respondents think climate change is important, they…

Cheap Fares Help People and Planet At the beginning of June the German Government started giving its citizens unlimited travel on regional trains, buses, and the underground for just €9 Euros a month. That’s around 25p a day! The initiative — which will last for the summer months — is in response to rising fuel costs…

This set of future insights looks at tackling harmful urban noise, 3-D printing buildings, working from anywhere, and re-using waste wood in construction. Wood Stronger Than Steel I saw this intriguing piece in New Scientist, about a treatment process that can turn waste wood into a new material stronger than steel. We produce a lot of waste wood, which is generally dumped or burned. This chemical process — from the University of British Colombia — can use…

The latest dose of Futures Insights looks at medics using jetpacks, calorie labelling on food, mobility innovation and changing retail. — FLAGSHIP STORE AS GOOD NEIGHBOUR? I saw intriguing pictures this week of the new IKEA store in Vienna, with the design reminiscent of a ginormous set of the retailer’s shelves. There is no car parking at this city-centre store, a far cry from the IKEAs of the past. …

Every week I share a futures insight based on something I’ve seen in the past few days. Every month I post the set of Friday Future Insights on Medium for reference. Here’s the insights from March. WILL WE LIVE IN FLOATING CITIES? Are you buoyed-up by the idea of living in a floating city? Given the global housing crisis, the multiple pressures on land-use, and the expected impacts of climate change, this may become a more attractive proposition. Reclaiming land from the sea for urban development has, of course, been happening for…

I write a little piece every Friday morning with insights on the future: something that has struck me that week as a potential signal of what might be to come. Because Linkedin is a little bit ‘blink and you’ll miss it’, I’m assembling the four insights here every month. Stranded Assets of the Future Walking…