Jane Nees BOP Regional Councillor www.janenees.co.nz

Last week, I was fortunate to be able to participate in a forum discussion to celebrate the centenary of the Institute of Professional Engineers of New Zealand.

The speaker brief was to discuss what we might expect to see in Tauranga in 100 years from now. My contribution, as chair of the meeting, was to set the scene for other very interesting speakers, who challenged the audience with their thoughtful predictions.

I reflected on how far Tauranga had come in the last 100 years. In 1914, it was a sleepy hollow with a municipal population of nearly 1500 people. A town hall and the first public hospital had just been built. The hospital had four staff and a cow for milk supply. New gas street lamps had just been celebrated in downtown Tauranga and in 1915 the Omanawa Falls electricity generation plant was developed and the first all-electric house was built. While residents of Tauranga in the early days had high hopes for their future, I think they would be most surprised to see us today.

There would be some things they could have reasonably expected – their population would grow, their port would prosper, a growing economy would bring jobs and better education. There would be changes they could have potentially foreseen – like the development of global air travel from the fledgling flights in the early 1900s. But there are some changes which have been truly transformational that they couldn't have predicted – like email and the internet for example.

Looking forward based on the trends we see now – like exponentially rapid technological advances, globalisation, the drift to cities, our aging population, man's impact on our climate, the need for sustainability, the rise of the Maori economy, migration leading to an increasingly multicultural population – we can expect the world our grandchildren's grandchildren live in to be very different than the one we live in today.

Some changes will be transformational and some will be incremental, but during time small changes become large changes – sure to transform the world we live and work in. Oh, to have a crystal ball.

If you have any views on this, or any other issue, please contact me on neesj@xtra.co.nz or ring me on 07 579 5150. Or you can check out my website at www.janenees.co.nz