What cities will look like in five years

But if smart car technologies increase and costs are reduced, we are going to have a lot of cars all over the country and that's not necessarily a good thing, he noted. Referring to the Jevons Paradox, Wright pointed out that increases in efficiency do not necessarily lower consumption. "In many cases, increasing efficiency actually increases consumption," he said.

Wright does anticipate more water-saving technologies to come, such as rainwater harvesting from roofs and green roofs used for irrigation. But one of the problems with water systems in Canada is that we are not re-investing enough in our cities to actually replace the amount of infrastructure we need, he said.

Response times for emergency systems like 911 are pretty good, but "the fact that the technology is always going to resolve this problem is one of the great illusions," said Wright. "A lot of the time, the technologies actually create the problems."

Looking ahead five years, Wright predicts increased public participation in Canadian cities.

Technology will allow cities to provide more information (such as by-laws) online and citizens to react to city proposals faster, he explained. "You are going to see a lot more people trying to be involved in the process, so they are really going to confront the bureaucracy of existing cities," he said.