I think technology is going bring a whole lot more change. People clamored to cities to be closer to the economic action, to get a bit of juice from the thing that was sucking the country dry, little by little (with country i mean any developed/ing nation, really). These especially new transformations of communications and logistics mean goods will be available in increasingly remote areas, and we'll feel close to people even when we're far away.

Poets have for centuries written on the crushing inhumanity of cities. Plenty of studies confirm different aspects of its detrimental effects on us as individuals and as a society. People will catch on to the fact that they can live in small towns again—but it'll have to be a cultural thing too.

It's almost like Faust could soon return back to his "little world", bringing with him all the knowledge in the world. And if that were to happen on a wide scale I think we'll be a little better off. We'll adapt, we'll make it work. I've been lead by my experiences to believe that the Baby Boomers will have to die before real progress like this can take place, and papers like "The Post 9/11 Split" certainly alludes to a more civic future.

Done right and it'll tailor down our challenges quite neatly—which, don't get me wrong, we'll still have enough of, but I think they'll be less terrifying.

That's the paradigm shift I think we'll see in this coming century.