A million more people live in the five boroughs than did just 25 years earlier. The Second Avenue Subway has actually been built, which is helpful, since only the very rich can afford a car. Brooklyn is still one of the boroughs, but also enjoys an international reputation as a world-class city that rivals Manhattan. No single race or ethnic group even approaches a majority in the city. Wrinkle creams really work, and it's not unusual for twenty-somethings to have romantic relationships with people twice or even three times their age.

Transportation:

Owning a car in New York is an expensive proposition today, but by 2030 it will be a luxury reserved for the elite.

'Very tough restrictions on private car use will be the only way to avert complete gridlock,' says Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives. 'New technology will charge drivers a fee for every mile they travel on city roads, with the highest fees charged for driving on the most congested streets at the most congested times.'

White calls curbside parking in Manhattan, 'some of the most valuable real estate in the world,' and predicts the city will boost parking meter fees to match the costs of private garages around town.

The cost of parking will lead many more New Yorkers to befriend the bicycle, while others will use the kinds of Bus Rapid Transit systems that have already transformed cities in South America. Some advocates envision a car-free 42nd Street, with a light-rail system rushing passengers across town.

The subway system will be expanded and upgraded in the next quarter-century, but not by a lot. Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign believes the Second Avenue Subway will be built, but says the MTA won't be able to afford much more than that. He points to the $17 billion the state is predicted to spend in the next five years alone on maintaining existing subway lines 'Most of us will be thankful if the subway system is still up and running 25 years from now,' Russianoff observes.

The Economy:

For a city to grow by a million people, it must provide new jobs for a million people, and that, say economists, is the biggest obstacle to any impending growth spurt.

'This is the $100 million question,' says Jonathan Bowles, director of the downtown think tank Center for an Urban Future. 'New York hasn't been so successful in creating jobs in the last few years, and people aren't going to come to a place where there are no jobs available or you have to go on public assistance.'

The financial services industry and other traditional linchpins of the local economy have been transferring the bulk of their workforce to less expensive cities. In 1987, New York City had 36% of all the financial service jobs in the country. Today that percentage is just 21%, and continues to decline. Major players will keep their headquarters in New York, Bowles said, but only the top tiers of management will actually work here.

The key to keeping the 9 million New Yorkers of 2030 employed doesn't rest with major corporations as it did in the last century. Instead, the key is businesses with fewer than 100 employees, the kind that already employ 98% of the city's workforce.

'The best answer for New York is small-business entrepreneurs,' Bowles said. 'I don't know if they will be starting retail stores or biotech firms or dot-coms, but the future of this city depends on them.'

Housing the next million New Yorkers is also a challenge for the city, and entry level workers making $60,000 a year (in 2030 dollars) could well have a hard time, according to Bowles, 'affording anything closer than Coney Island.'

Culture and Living:

For millions of New Yorkers in 2030, life will hold many of the same uncertainties it does today, but there will be more years to figure them out. Advances in medicine will transform fatal illnesses like cancer and Alzheimer's disease into manageable conditions.

Pharmaceuticals will be tailored to match a patient's genetics, with computerized monitors suggesting daily dosage adjustments.

Longer life spans will lead in 2030 to what futurist Andrew Zolli calls an 'hourglass society,' made up of lots of elderly baby boomers on one end and lots of 'millennials' on the other. Generation X will comprise the smallest slice of the population pie.

Nicotine addiction could become a thing of the past with the advent of pills that violently sicken a smoker at the first taste of a cigarette, says Dr. Mehmet Oz, director of the Cardiovascular Institute at Columbia University.

Oz sees a 2030 in which most New Yorkers have biomedical chips implanted in their arms. These chips make diagnosing illness a snap, and may also notify health care providers that it is time to raise premiums if a patient begins smoking or taking illegal drugs.

Along with the biomedical revolution, advances in cosmetic surgery and what Zolli calls, 'wrinkle creams that really make your wrinkles go away,' will legitimize a new era of inter-generational dating.'Nowadays, you occasionally see May-December romances,' he says, 'but by 2030 they will be far more common and more extreme. We're talking very early May to very late December romances.'