2 . The idea of having car, a plane, drone(无人驾驶飞机) parked outside your home may not be as unlikely as it seems.

We are going to have personal air vehicles that are both cars and planes. At least that's Missy Cumming's vision of the future. It's basically the intersection of a drone with a robotic car, so your plane is also your car, but the quick development of technology is that you are actually driving neither.

Drones have a negative image in the media, says Cummings, because they are basically seen as spy cameras. But most people don't realize that when they are on a plane they are effectively travelling on a drone. The fly-by-wire technology that exists on all Airbuses and many crafts of Boeing is the exactly same technology that exists on drones.

The reason why drones are the answer to the future is that we are terrible drivers. Humans have a half-second lag(时滞) in almost any quick response that they need to have. Even a half- second delay can mean the difference between life and death, and computers and automated(自动化的) systems don't have that.

So, our transportation network of the future, both on the ground and in the air，will actually be safer when we turn it over to computers.

There really aren't any technological difficulties to this idea. The biggest difficulties we have in terms of giving up the car are psychological and cultural, but no new technology needs to be developed to have your own personal flying car. What we have to do is to improve production and reduce manufacturing costs.

People should be excited about this: it promises much in terms of safer travel, and people in parts of the world where the road and air networks are poor will be able to get the goods and services.

3 . For centuries, people have moved to and lived in cities. These urban centres are places to find work, friends and fun. It's no surprise that they continue to grow as more and more people flood in hoping to make the most of the chances they offer but adding to the congestion and pollution that already exist.

According to a report by the United Nations, 54 percent of the world's population lives in urban areas and it predicts that by 2050,this figure will have increased to around 70 percent. But as more and more people move from the countryside to the city to get better chances, they can end up with nowhere to live.

This is true in places such as Rio de Janeiro, where the people from the countryside can't rent or buy a home,and they end up building their own communities and houses on unoccupied land. These are called shanty towns— poor communities where the houses are built out of cheap materials—and often don't have any electricity or water supply.

These are, of course, not the future cities we want to see. Some serious urban planning is needed to make our cities of the future good, safe and modern places to live in. This involves improving the housing conditions, the chances for education and employment and so on.

Something urban planners are looking at now is the creation of“smart cities”. According to John Rossant, founder and chairman of the non-profit organisation New Cities Foundation, technology is the way forward. He thinks that it's generally accepted that “cloud computing, ubiquitous Internet, robust 5G networks etc, will change our cities”. He says technology is really “a game changer” in urbanization (城市化). It would collect large amounts of data about how a city is working and may improve how a city functions.