What will Philly look like in 250 years? Help imagine the city’s future

This story is a part of Technical.ly’s 250 Years in the Future Month. See the full 2024 editorial calendar.

As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States — a movement that was created, debated and consecrated in Philadelphia — let’s look ahead another quarter millennium.

What will Philadelphia be like in the year 2276?

We want your help in imagining our city’s future. Sure, we can’t know everything that will happen, or even most of it. But if we can articulate a vision for what life might look like 250 years from now, we can inspire pathways to get there. 

The smartwatch, cell phone, submarine, helicopter, delivery robots, self-driving cars — all of these things were first suggested by science fiction authors in some shape or form. That helped inspire scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and inventors, who worked to bring them into reality.

Using our collective imagination, we can go beyond devices and tools and envision how our future society might work, given the starting state of the world today and some macro trends: for example, climate change, a declining population, increasingly refined machine learning and artificial intelligence. This is difficult on a global scale, but we might be able to get closer if we narrow the focus to a single region or city.

That’s the project Technical.ly is embarking on, with the support of the Philadelphia Funder Collaborative for the Semiquincentennial, and we need your help to craft a vision statement.

Technical.ly started this project last year. While working on Thriving, our project about people’s varied journeys to financial security and freedom, we convened stakeholders to help create a first draft. Now we’re taking that draft and asking you to contribute. 

The goal: describe a best-case future scenario, then use it as a guideline to get there.

Want to contribute? We’re starting by taking our draft statement to events around the city and asking for in-person input (see below for a list or where we’ll be). After that, look for a website where you can suggest edits online. Once we have feedback from thousands of Philadelphians all over the city, we’ll finalize the statement and make it permanent — think brass plaque — and install it somewhere memorable.

By setting out a vision and putting it in writing, we’re not only providing inspiration, but also holding ourselves, our leaders, our communities and our future generations accountable. 

We know Philly can be hard on itself. But the first step toward making something happen is envisioning it, so we’re going for optimism here. 

Sign up below for regular updates on the project and to let us know your interest.