FUTURE HUMAN

The 5 Best Places to Live in 2100

No floods, famine, or war. And the people are nice.

Justin Nobel
Published in
11 min readJul 30, 2018

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The Nuuk fjord in Greenland, 2017. Photo by Julia Wäschenbach/picture aliiance/Getty

IIt’s a Saturday night in August and another electric and endless Arctic sunset has cast the city of Iqaluit in gold. Downtown, on Niaqunngusiariaq Street, in an Inuit-themed bistro featuring tundra-fed musk ox and Arctic char, a host of young urban designers, dance choreographers, and writers, are discussing the plights of their parents, who immigrated to this northernmost province, Nunavut, in eastern Canada, in the 2070s. The smartly dressed friends, enjoying a flowery peach sauvignon blanc from China, are American and Spanish, Indian and African. Compared to their parents and grandparents, who fled deadly heat and droughts, endless forest fires and flash floods, the young artists, in the year 2100, can’t believe they have it so good. In this perennially growing city, spread out across a series of mountain valleys, with homes that overlook the dynamic color-sweep of Frobisher Bay, they are never short of things to do when they are not at work. Under the eternal summer sun, they hike, bird-watch, kayak (which the Inuit like to remind the newcomers they invented) — the outdoor opportunities are thrilling.

That, anyway, is how a travel magazine devoted to the best places to live in 2100 might read. In fact, with the effects of…

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Justin Nobel
OneZero

Magazine writer on issues of science and environment with Rolling Stone, Popular Mechanics, Nautilus, Tin House, Oxford American, Virginia Quarterly Review.