TED Talk: How Food Shaped Our Cities, And How City Planning Can Reshape Our Food

TED:  Ideas work spreading

Image via TED

In this fascinating TED talk, Carolyn Steel shows us how our food supplies shaped cities. From ancient times when certain markets were located based on how easy it was to get food to those areas to how cities expanded with the advent of trains, Steel shows us how our urban planning revolves really around how we eat. But more importantly, how we eat could be made more healthy and sustainable by a revisioning of cityscapes. Check out her talk after the jump, and see what an ideal city might look like if we were to adopt more sustainable eating practices.

Cities need to be revamped for sustainable, independent food supplies, for decreased our reliance on fossil-fueled transportation and increased walk- and bike-friendliness, and for energy efficiency. It’s not a matter of creating new eco-cities – it’s a matter of improving the urban areas we already have to make them healthy places to live.

More on Urban Eating
What’s the Footprint of Your Food?
Carrot City: Urban Agriculture Exhibition in Toronto
Urban Agriculture Grows in the City

(Video Link) – http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/10/ted-talk-how-food-shaped-our-cities-and-how-city-planning-can-reshape-our-food.php

Sprawl! Is Earth Becoming a Planet of SuperCities?

Imagine a planet dominated by cities like Mega-City One, a megalopolis of over 400 million people across the east coast of the United States, featured in the Judge Dredd comic or “San Angeles,”  formed from the joining of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and the surrounding metropolitan regions following a massive earthquake featured in the 1993 movie “Demolition Man.”

Don’t hold your breath: the 21st century will soon have 19 cities with populations of 20 million or more.

 

The history of the human species is a history of migration. In 1000 A.D. Cordova, Spain was the largest city. By 1500, Bejing began its rise to power, and 300 years later it was the first city to be over a million people. By 1900 London emerged the world’s supercity with over 6 million people. In 1950 New York was proclaimed the first “megacity” with a population of over 10 million people in the greater metropolitan area.

How is increasing mass urbanization affecting the quality of life? 1.4 million people are moving into cities each week. How will this vast migration change the way we live and die; how we treat the elderly, the poor, the way work, trade, learn, the way we eat, consume, recycle, power, engineer, innovate?

“While some say the world is flat, supercities are rising – vast, intensely urban hubs will radically redefine the world’s future macroeconomic and cultural landscape. Most of the world’s population right now lives and works in cities. Many more will. It’s critical to gain a truer understanding of what’s happening: the rise of supercities is the defining megatrend of the 21st century,” says futurist Richard Saul Wurman, founder of the TED Conference and 19 20 21.org -devoted to the effect of mass urbanization on the planet.

In 1800 only 3% of the world’s population lived in cities; 47% by the end of the twentieth century. In 1950, there were 83 cities with populations exceeding one million; by 2007, this had risen to 468 urban areas of more than one million.

If the current trend continues, the world’s urban population will double every 38 years. The UN forecasts that today’s urban population of 3.2 billion will rise to nearly 5 billion by 2030, when three out of five people will live in cities. By 2050 two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities, up from about 50% right now.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/08/sprawl-is-earth-becoming-a-planet-of-supercities-a-galaxy-insight.html

Sprawl! Is Earth Becoming a Planet of SuperCities?

Imagine a planet dominated by cities like Mega-City One, a megalopolis of over 400 million people across the east coast of the United States, featured in the Judge Dredd comic or “San Angeles,”  formed from the joining of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and the surrounding metropolitan regions following a massive earthquake featured in the 1993 movie “Demolition Man.”

Don’t hold your breath: the 21st century will soon have 19 cities with populations of 20 million or more.

 

The history of the human species is a history of migration. In 1000 A.D. Cordova, Spain was the largest city. By 1500, Bejing began its rise to power, and 300 years later it was the first city to be over a million people. By 1900 London emerged the world’s supercity with over 6 million people. In 1950 New York was proclaimed the first “megacity” with a population of over 10 million people in the greater metropolitan area.

How is increasing mass urbanization affecting the quality of life? 1.4 million people are moving into cities each week. How will this vast migration change the way we live and die; how we treat the elderly, the poor, the way work, trade, learn, the way we eat, consume, recycle, power, engineer, innovate?

“While some say the world is flat, supercities are rising – vast, intensely urban hubs will radically redefine the world’s future macroeconomic and cultural landscape. Most of the world’s population right now lives and works in cities. Many more will. It’s critical to gain a truer understanding of what’s happening: the rise of supercities is the defining megatrend of the 21st century,” says futurist Richard Saul Wurman, founder of the TED Conference and 19 20 21.org -devoted to the effect of mass urbanization on the planet.

In 1800 only 3% of the world’s population lived in cities; 47% by the end of the twentieth century. In 1950, there were 83 cities with populations exceeding one million; by 2007, this had risen to 468 urban areas of more than one million.

If the current trend continues, the world’s urban population will double every 38 years. The UN forecasts that today’s urban population of 3.2 billion will rise to nearly 5 billion by 2030, when three out of five people will live in cities. By 2050 two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities, up from about 50% right now.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/06/is-earth-becoing-a-planet-of-supercities-leading-expert-says-yes.html

New York City’s First On-Street, Two-Way, Physically Separated Bike Lane

The transportation committee of Brooklyn Community Board 6 voted unanimously in favor of a plan to redesign Prospect Park West to make it more cyclist-friendly.

As StreetsBlog says: “The plan features the implementation of New York City’s first on-street, two-way, physically separated bike lane, which will run alongside Prospect Park on the east side of Prospect Park West, and will be protected by a four-foot striped buffer and a parking lane. In order to accommodate the new bike lane, Prospect Park West will be reduced from three south-bound travel lanes to two, and the remaining lanes will be narrowed to ten feet each.”

This change has two aims: Provide north-bound bicycle access on Prospect Park West, for which there has been “strong demand”, according to DOT Bicycle Program Coordinator Josh Benson, and reduce speeding by cars, which has been a problem there.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/04/new-york-city-first-two-way-separated-bike-path-brooklyn.php