Three Revolutions Are Coming for Land Valuations

(Bloomberg) -- Over the next decade, the consequences of climate change, manufactured proteins and self-driving cars will see land valuations undergo the largest shift in centuries.

• Of the three, the impact from climate change is the most well- documented. Roughly 30% of the earth’s surface is land, and about 70% of that is habitable. This means that about 21% of the planet is habitable land. With climate change raising temperatures in certain areas and causing sea levels to climb, that percentage will drop
• Overall, this should make habitable land even more valuable, but the geographical spread of the impact will be just as important. The scientific consensus is that northern countries, such as Russia, Canada, Greenland and the Scandinavian nations, will see a greater percentage of their land become habitable while low-lying coastal cities get decimated and more of central Africa becomes barren and uninhabitable
• The far greater land impact may come from the revolution in manufactured proteins and so-called “fake” meat. This will see the biggest transformation in human food production since the Neolithic Revolution roughly 10,000 years ago, when humans transitioned from being hunter-gatherers to farmers
• Of the planet’s habitable land, approximately half is agricultural land. Roughly three-quarters of that is for grazing livestock, and a third of the remainder is used to grow feed for those animals. Those numbers will be overhauled in the next decade
• Humans don’t have an enviable history of doing the right thing until economics allow or pressure them to do so. Manufactured meat is much better for the environment than industrial-scale livestock breeding and obviates the mistreatment of animals. If it suddenly becomes much cheaper as well, those factors will matter to many more humans. Especially as there’s no reason why taste/texture can’t be better as well, as scientists improve their ability to perfect the blend of umami and fats
• That price tipping point will happen over the next decade, and the livestock-related demand for land will plummet in the years that follow
• Of the three revolutions, the land impact from self-driving vehicles will take the longest to play out and is the least certain. It’s unlikely to have transpired by 2030, but the looming shift may be glaringly obvious by then. It may well be a catalyst for de-urbanization, reversing the great demographic trend of recent centuries
• At some point in the next few years, the technical, legal and insurance complexities around self-driving cars will be resolved, at which point those vehicles will hit our streets in a big way. Soon after, major developed cities will be quickly compelled to ban human drivers as they are just too dangerous on a relative basis
• Once human drivers are banned from cities and every journey’s destination is entered into a system, traffic lights will become largely redundant. Traffic jams will disappear as algorithms dynamically route vehicles on a live-optimization basis, knowing where every other vehicle is going
• Not only will commuting times plummet, but your transportation vehicle may double as an office or a living room or a bedroom. The human passenger will not be allowed to interfere with the control of the vehicle (except to update destination) and therefore the interior will evolve to make it a more functional space
• If your commute is quick, cheap and hassle free, allowing you to sleep or work, fewer humans will choose to live in the confines of a tiny apartment in the center of a city when much of the planet’s shrinking supply of habitable land in the suburbs will have recently been vacated by the livestock industry. Technological development will make hologram- communication instantaneous, facilitating the ability to work remotely (for those who somehow retain an office job in an AI- dominated world!)
• All these three revolutions have multiple tangents and externalities and this is just a simple big-picture overview to convey how massive the inputs will change over the next decade or so. The history of technological revolutions shows that they always appear a distant dream until just before they happen. By 2030, we may well marvel at our 2020 perspective on land