With more than half the world’s population now living in cities, urbanization has become the norm.
By 2030, that figure is expected to rise to 60 percent and, with greater urbanization, we are seeing a transformation in how humans work, live, learn and play. How will cities, and the urban real estate landscape, adapt to this revolution?
The evolving workforce
“The Fourth Industrial Revolution – with its convergence of emerging technology developments in areas such as robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, the Internet of Things and autonomous vehicles – will change the future of work for every organization in every industry during the 21st century,” says Peter Miscovich, Strategy & Innovation practice lead for JLL.
“Greater automation will result in many familiar jobs no longer requiring only human skill and we will see the expansion of machine to human collaborative ecosystems globally.”
The World Economic Forum estimates 40 percent to 60 percent of people now doing transactional work could be replaced and/or augmented by artificial intelligence, workforce automation and smart cognitive ‘thinking machines’ over the next 10 to 20 years.
Most job losses and technology job augmentation will be in the areas of office and administrative work, followed closely by manufacturing and production sectors. Other career possibilities will emerge or expand as the next-generation workplace shifts to more data-driven, human-to-machine platform collaboration.
The onus will be on next generation skilled professionals known as future “Digital Talent” to gain expertise in automation management, data and analytics, and newly-essential technology skills and capabilities.