A panel discussion by Long Now Boston celebrating the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, and looking forward to the next 250 years and what they may bring to the Boston Area.
On October 14, 02025, Long Now Boston gathered a wide-ranging panel of thinkers to imagine what the city—and the civilization it anchors—might look like two and a half centuries from now. The evening, hosted by Long Now Boston's Gary Oberbrunner, was part of the organization’s mission: to foster long-term awareness and responsibility on a timescale measured not in years or election cycles but in centuries. The question we always ask ourselves is “How can we become better ancestors?”
Christopher Osgood
Chris Osgood serves as the Director of the Office of Climate Resilience and Mayor Michelle Wu’s Senior Advisor for Infrastructure.
Hyun-A Park
Hyun-A Park is a nationally recognized leader in transportation research, with more than 17 publications. She is President of Spy Pond Partners, LLC, a strategic consulting firm specializing in transportation performance, planning, and asset management. She also serves on the MIT visiting committees for Departments of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
Speakers
Event Summary
On October 14, 02025, Long Now Boston gathered a wide-ranging panel of thinkers to imagine what the city—and the civilization it anchors—might look like two and a half centuries from now. The evening, hosted by Long Now Boston's Gary Oberbrunner, was part of the organization’s mission: to foster long-term awareness and responsibility on a timescale measured not in years or election cycles but in centuries. The question we always ask ourselves is “How can we become better ancestors?”
History, he reminded us, is full of failed predictions and unforeseen consequences: 19th-century London was supposed to be buried under horse manure, heavier-than-air flight deemed impossible, and the “population bomb” inevitable. At the same time, choices that seem small — like the width of Roman roads — can echo for millennia. Oberbrunner suggested that the best response to this unpredictability is humility, and to build toolkits for future generations to be able to build the societies they need. Our task, he said, is not to foresee every detail but to leave the future as many options as possible.
Rethinking Home
The first speaker, James Gray, a principal at the design firm Stantec, traced how housing has evolved—from scattered farmhouses to dense urban apartments to suburban sprawl— nd how it must now adapt again. Drawing on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, he argued that homes must safeguard health and safety, nurture belonging and privacy, and offer beauty and meaning. These fundamentals, he said, will remain constant even as unpredictable forces like artificial intelligence, demographic shifts, and climate change reshape how and where we live.
Gray offered speculative visions generated with AI: biophilic neighborhoods that merge nature with technology, towering arcologies powered by fusion energy, and vibrant “cosmopolitan social clubs” designed for flexibility and inclusion. The point was not to predict but to provoke: how can we build dwellings that remain resilient and meaningful amid deep uncertainty?
Preserving Our Digital Selves
Nadia Dixson, archivist for the City of Somerville, shifted the conversation from buildings to memory. Future generations, she noted, will know us largely through digital traces—emails, photos, social posts, even file names—yet much of that record is fragile, ephemeral, and stripped of context. Traditional archives once curated the papers of “great men;” today, we generate mountains of data, but we rarely think about how anyone will interpret it.
Dixson urged us to become more deliberate custodians of our own histories: export social media archives, label files clearly, capture context, and even include README-style notes explaining our choices and experiences. Future historians, she said, will care less about our grand statements than about how we grappled with everyday realities—from housing debates to climate anxiety.
Technology, Power, and Equity
Author John Sundman brought a more urgent tone. He spoke of the “bio-digital convergence”—technologies like CRISPR that let us rewrite DNA, or AI systems that amplify individual power to previously unimaginable degrees. These tools could cure disease or enable catastrophic harm. The central challenge, Sundman argued, is ensuring that their benefits are widely shared. Oligarchy—rule by a techno-enhanced elite—is the greatest threat to democracy and science alike.
He illustrated this with the race to sequence the human genome: a public, collaborative effort narrowly beat a private company seeking to patent humanity’s genetic blueprint. Public science, Sundman said, must remain strong, and societies must avoid over-concentration in single sectors, whether oil wealth in the Netherlands or today’s trillion-dollar bet on AI. Boston’s diverse economy, anchored by universities, biotech, tourism, and civic institutions, is a model of resilience. And, he added, we must listen to younger generations—those who will live most of the future we are imagining.
Mobility as a Public Good
Transportation expert Hyun-A Park asked the audience to shift focus from futuristic gadgets to a more basic goal: “mobility for all.” Many past predictions—flying cars, atomic-powered travel—never materialized, not because technology failed but because policy, funding, and social priorities shaped different outcomes. Today, new possibilities abound—autonomous vehicles, hypersonic travel, electrified networks—but whether they serve everyone depends on the choices we make now.
Park called attention to the stark decline in MBTA rider satisfaction and the chronic underfunding of public transit. A more equitable future could see fleets of shared self-driving vehicles eliminating the need for most parking—freeing 30% of urban land for parks, housing, or public space—but the key question will be how we distribute those benefits and reinvest that value back into the system.
Building a Resilient City
The evening’s final speaker, Chris Osgood, leads Boston’s Office of Climate Resilience. He outlined three escalating climate threats: extreme heat, stormwater flooding, and sea-level rise. By mid-century, Boston’s summers will feel like Washington, D.C.’s; by 2100, more like Atlanta’s. One-sixth of the city, built on filled land, is at risk from rising seas.
Osgood described how the city is responding—from green-roofed bus shelters and targeted tree planting to $150 million in coastal infrastructure and partnerships with the Army Corps of Engineers. Projects like Langone Park serve as both welcoming public spaces and flood barriers. The city is rethinking streets and sidewalks to absorb water and incentivizing private property owners to do the same.
But resilience, he stressed, is about more than engineering. It requires new governance models, policies that anticipate future conditions (such as building codes based on 2070 flood levels and beyond), workforce training, adaptable designs, and a clear research agenda. Most of all, it requires sustained public engagement and a shared sense of purpose.
A Shared Future
The panel concluded with a conversation that brought all these threads together. Across domains—housing, memory, technology, transportation, and climate—the speakers agreed that the future will be shaped not by our inventions but by our values: by what we choose to build, preserve, and prioritize. Audience questions focused on action: how can individuals make a difference? Panelists urged simple steps—meet new people, discuss hard topics, volunteer on local boards—alongside broader calls for civic participation, policy advocacy, and listening to young voices.
In the end, Boston’s Next 250 Years was less about predictions than about stewardship. The city that sparked a revolution 250 years ago must now lead another — one defined by equity, resilience, humility, and hope. The choices we make today will ripple far into the future. The task, as Oberbrunner reminded the audience, is to become good ancestors.