July 10, 2015 • 53 mins
In Star Wars, the capital of the empire is Coruscant, a planet covered by an enormous city. Is such a thing possible? And how crowded would a planet with one trillion people be?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says hot town
Summer in the City. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren, and
(00:20):
I'm Joe McCormick. And this is part two of our
two part episode series on mega cities and the future
of urbanization. So if you haven't heard part one before
you listen to this episode, go back download part one
and listen to that where you'll get all of the
wonderful information that you need to understand Part two. But
(00:40):
here is part two. Hey Joe, Yeah, I like Star Wars.
I know you like Star Wars, Jonathan, And actually I
have a Star Wars trivia question for you, guys. Hit me,
what was the name of the planet that was the
seat of power of the Galactic Empire. It's corressant Chissan.
You don't pronounce it Corra scant No, because I pronounced
(01:02):
it correctly. You know, because you pronounced it correctly. You
know that if you say it wrong, Holly Fry Is
gonna come beat you. You know that. Yeah, our our
beloved Holly is is the official Star Wars super fan
of the Office, and I thought I thought I was
a super fan, but Holly puts me to Shane. Yeah,
Holly knows stuff I've never heard of. And as far
(01:24):
as I know, you have zero Grito tattoos. Jonathan, I
have no Grito tattoos. So Holly definitely beats me on
that one too. But Coussan Corrossan. So it's this. It's
a big what we call it, a big sort of
capital planet maybe of the Galactic Empire, of their governing structure.
So what does this planet look like? Well, I always
(01:44):
thought this was kind of interesting when I was a kid,
when I was reading about it in my little like
Star Wars Informer books. Oh God, it's like Joe, we're
going down the road. Yeah that it said that the
entire planet was a city. Yes, so it's not big
(02:05):
cities in continents full of lush greenery and and deserts
and stuff like that. It's one city that covers the
entire surface of the planet. It's a city planet, Yeah,
a continuous city that covers practically the entire surface. So
I thought it would be an interesting, sort of absurd
extension of the question of mega cities to say, is
(02:28):
something like the planet Corrossant actually possible in reality? Well,
in order to do this, I thought give a little
bit more detail on Corrossant. As you said, it was
the capital of the Glactic Empire, but it was also
the capital of the Old Republic and the capital of
the New Republic. Because if you already got a major
planet city, why not use it? Uh it's uh so
(02:51):
what are they going to do with all those like
stormtrooper helmet factories after the Empire is dismantled? Well, I
mean I haven't seen uh episode seven yet, so I
can't really convert them into bicycle helmet factories so that
everyone can ride their bikes around the beautiful city planet. Yeah.
I think the nice thing about the helmets though, is
(03:11):
that you can have a huge growth industry in ewalk percussion. Yeah,
you just you can just have the Daego ba or no,
I'm sorry, the Moon of Indoor. The Moon of Indoor.
Everyone can play ye no, unless you've only seen the
special edition of Return of the Jedi where they didn't
have they replaced yep, numb. Okay, We've got to stop. Okay, okay, No,
(03:34):
tell me about what kind of idea would the planet,
of course ont to be. So there's a term called
an ecu monopolis, which I hope I'm saying correctly. There's
some Greek names that I'm going to have to say,
so I apologize profusely because I it's all Greek to
me um and I'm not very good at pronouncing it.
So it essentially means world city ecu monopolis, and uh,
(03:59):
they're different interpretations of it, but the more most literal
is that it's what Corrossant would be, a world that
is itself a full city. So what you're saying is
that George Lucas didn't originate this idea. No, the concept
of ecu monopolis goes back further. But it's not an
ancient idea. This isn't something that you know. Uh. Socrates
(04:19):
was walking around one day and said, I envisioned a
city that will cover the entire world. Was not quite
that forward thinking. It wouldn't be that hard, as long
as we purge the world of poets. Well. The The
term was coined in the late sixties nineteen sixty seven
nineteen sixty eight by a man named Constantinos du Seatus,
(04:42):
and I apologized profusely for Butchering that last name, But
he was a city planner and he founded a journal
dedicated to city planning and called it Acoustics. And he thought,
with proper planning and implementation, cities of the future could
be productive, pleasant places for people to live in and
the designs would make it easy to get around to
(05:02):
do work. And he was a big proponent of making
communities pedestrian friendly and order orderly layouts for easy navigation.
If any of this is sounding familiar to to you,
it's a lot about, you know, similar to what we've
talked about in previous episodes, with things like UM planning
for bicycle lanes things like that that are separate from
from car lanes protected by lanes. Yeah. Yeah, he he
(05:26):
was a proponent of that kind of design and really
wanted to UM to advocate for careful planning of expansion
of urban environments in order for it to be not
just a place where you could go to seek opportunity,
but a place that would foster that. It wouldn't it
(05:48):
wouldn't become an impediment to getting opportunity, it would help you.
And so he had a lot of ideas on that
which are almost diametrically in opposition to the way Corressan
is shown. Um So, getting back to Corrasson, it was
definitely not a representation of that idea. Um So, according
(06:08):
to Star Wars Lawre and I have to mention, we're
using a lot of information that comes from various sources
that are considered the expanded universe, so therefore are not Cannon,
or at least not G Cannon. You know what G
Cannon stands for in Star Wars, are right? Actually don't
George Cannon. George Cannon. So yes, there is cannon canon.
(06:32):
I'm not even making I have no clue, but no
G cannon is anything that's directly from the movies, the
novelizations of the movies, or specifically out of George Lucas's mouth.
And then you have different tiers of cannon below that
and an okay, so speaking of tears though, yes, the
city of Corrassan this planet had five thousand, one, twenty
(06:56):
seven levels to it, so not that all of the
buildings were five thousand, one or twenty seven stories tall,
but that was sort of the that was the range.
It's the deepest basement to the tallest tower, and uh,
lots of tall towers and had a huge population of
one trillion people. That's the residents, not just the people
(07:17):
coming through Corrassant. Now, trillion people. That sounds like a lot,
and it is. It's a lot of people. Obviously, we're
talking about we're we're living in a time where we
have more than seven billion on this planet, and we've
talked about how by that might be closer to ten billion.
So a trillion is hard to imagine. Now, if we
assume that Corrassan is the same size as Earth, all right,
(07:41):
so it's it's the planet itself is about the same size.
And keeping in mind that Corrassan has essentially built up
its city over every square mile of the plant, with
the exception of an artificial sea, as an an artificial
ocean that is built in it's a small one. Um,
you would be looking at a population density of about
(08:03):
five thousand, seventy nine people per square mile. And I
got that figure by taking the trillion of people and
dividing it by the square miles of Earth, which is
a hundred nine six million thousand. So that's not as
dense as some parts of Tokyo. That's true. Oh yeah,
that's way less dense. Yeah, and and keep in mind
that's that's just taking the surface area into account, not
(08:24):
the levels. Yeah. Yeah, if you if you divide that
into the five thousand one hypothetical levels, the levels that
are empty, Yeah, yeah, they're they're they're like less than
one person per square mile. And you could have a
skyscraper to yourself, though I would say that you have.
You're gonna have to imagine if you accept the reality
(08:45):
of a of a planet like this, that huge portions
of its surface area are going to have to be
taken up with just pure machinery and industry. Yes, there
there are even if it's an even if it's not production,
if it's just designed to say like produce oxygen and
scrub CEO two from the atmosphere or something, there are
areas of Yeah, there areas of course on that were
(09:06):
specifically for ship building and like, so obviously that would
not there will not be a lot of residents there.
There'd be uh factories, that sort of thing. So there
were there were definitely manufacturing centers. So not some areas,
just like in Tokyo, some areas would have a more
dense population in some areas would be less. But even so, uh,
(09:27):
it's it's I think the reason why one trillion is
the number is because someone thought that's big, and so
I thought they thought they just thought this would be
a teeming metropolis that expans an entire planet. It's only
when you start to really crunch the numbers that you realize, oh, well,
if if Corrasson is in fact around the same size
as Earth, it's really not as big a number if
(09:49):
you're talking about a worldwide city. Um. So that's I
thought that was kind of funny. So also, I've got
a question, does it rain on Corressan. That's an excellent question.
I have no idea if it can, because according to
Star Wars lore non canon lore. Uh, they the planet
of Corrassant, the city pumped all the water from the
(10:12):
surface into underground chambers. Thus you would have removed it.
I would have thought from the water cycle. Like I said,
there's that one western sea that was kind of a
tourist destination. It was a place for people to go
for vacation. Um. Yeah, because even in Star Wars, you've
got to have someplace for them to go and snap
their family photos. You're not fighting the empire you're going
to the Emperor Emperor Invader showing Grand grandmaf Tark in
(10:36):
their slides from and he has where went into the
water and like that sort of stuff, and like now
but at any rate, um uh yeah, So how what happens?
Like if you if you remove the water that then
it can't evaporate, you can't. I would imagine you wouldn't
have rain in that case, although you would also obviously
need to have incredible recycling ability for your water, because
(11:02):
you know, you're going through that underground vault of water
steadily the entire time. Sure, but I guess if everyone's
indoors most of the time, you don't really need rain.
I mean, there's no agriculture on the planet that outdoors.
I'm imagining they must import everything as far as that's concerned.
You know, I wonder if there were actually a planet
(11:23):
sized city, if it would have cities within the city,
if there are like places in the city that have
more population density than other places in the city. That's
the case of Corosant. They have quadrants that are divided
into sectors, and some of the sectors are affluent, so
that's where all the you know, the senators would be living.
You know, their quarters would be in the affluent sector.
(11:45):
And then you have some that are more the moss
easily type villainy of you know rather Yeah, yeah, you
have those areas as well. So it all depends on
the areas, especially the ones that were the manufact shrink
centers that are are no longer active, those have fallen
to crime and poverty. Um does Coroissant have sewers. I'm
(12:09):
sure that they have sewers. The really interesting thing is
what about all the other waste that's generated. I mean,
it may be that even they're there, I guess human
is the wrong word humanoid general, by the ways, they
shoot their waste off into space. Uh, and you have
garbage space ships that collect that the canisters. Yeah, because
(12:33):
because immediately the first thing that we think of tattoo
a kind of except its moons, not necessarily tattoos. What's
the ewalks. I'm sure they don't go all the way
out the indoor to dump the stuff, but no, they
dump they dump their garbage on moons or sometimes if
it's hazardous material, they shoot it off into the sun
for incineration. That's something that we didn't actually talk about
(12:54):
during our nuclear waste episodes. Yeah, maybe we should have been.
We think we did. I think we talked about Superman
for the Quest for Peace because we mentioned the fact
that because we always talk about Superman Quest for Peace,
there are two things that are are really preventing us
from doing that being expense, an enormous risk, so expense
obviously being that you know, it's really really not cost
(13:18):
effective for us here on Earth to shoot stuff into space.
It's incredibly expensive, and especially not into the sun. Right,
And then you go on, is you don't want nuclear
waste to explode four miles in the sky. Yeah, you
don't want that. You don't want to have an even
distribution of nuclear waste across an enormous uh radius. Okay, Well,
now that we have dwelt on the nerd topic for
(13:39):
a while exploring the cannon and non cannon descriptions of Courson,
I want to ask, for real, could you make a
planet like this? Could could a planet actually sustain itself
if it was almost completely covered in city type landscape,
develop the landscape where people are dwelling and doing their work.
(13:59):
One of the things that would occur to me is
like where's their food coming from? Like this is going
to be a resource problem currently. I mean we've talked
to want to tell you about soil and green. Consider
it an investment opportunity. I think you should really put
yourself into soil and green all the way and you're
gonna see the benefit almost immediately. Grain is monclamar It's
(14:24):
a trap, right, Admiral snack bar at any rate. No, Yeah,
you definitely have a resource problem. I mean, we've talked
about things like urban farming and vertical farming this podcast before,
but those even in the most in the friendliest of cases,
have a lot of difficulty. Well the most optimistic outlooks
(14:47):
on those, I don't think anyone would would be able
to say this sort of approach would meet all the
needs of all this is. Yeah. No, it's about like
offsetting part of the problem, right, it's it's it's about
creating a system that allows you to have a lower
dependence upon shipping stuff into the city, because that transportation
(15:09):
adds to an environmental impact and economic impact. So it
makes sense to help kind of decrease the footprint in
that sense. But if you are a planet wide you
know city, you don't have any arable land out there, right,
So it seems like on a place like Corrassant. If
that was real, you would have to I don't know,
(15:31):
import food from other planets. Imagining that's what must happen.
So it would be kind of like having a huge
city surrounded by farm lands. This would be a city
planet surrounded by farm planets. Yeah. Yeah, So so what
we need to do is first work out faster than
like travel, and then build our city planet or either
that or terraformed the Moon and turn it into a
(15:52):
giant farm. But if we follow the model we know
here on Earth, and the surface area of the farm
land you need to support people is much greater than
the occupied portion of the Moon, or whatever this farm
place would be would have to be bigger than the planet. Well,
I mean, assuming that our population would have reached this
trillion level. If we're talking about the current population of
(16:13):
the Earth, we'd all have like enormous city blocks to ourselves.
Should be kind of interesting. We can all re enact
that excellent episode of Twilight Zone where we just imagine
where the last person on Earth and then break our
glasses as we pick up the library book. I've got
another one here, how about heat? Okay, So cities do
(16:35):
generate heat obviously, and um. In fact, you know, you
probably have heard about the heat island effect of various cities.
Atlanta is notorious for this. Sometimes if you go outside
the building where we work around midday, it's like stepping
into an oven. It is pretty rough. People are warm,
machinery is warm, and the end all of a lot
(16:57):
of these surfaces like asphalt and of like that absorb
heat and then radiated back out. Yeah, so you just
have this constant bombardment of he even and it lasts
well into the hours after dusk as well, because you
just the concrete and asphalt will just continuously radiate that
heat until it's exhausted. So it's sometime around maybe three
in the morning where it starts to feel like like
(17:19):
it's habitable again. Uh at any rate, So let's say
that before we go to like a plant wide one,
if we're just looking at mega cities, UM, if we're
just looking at cities that are are occupying part of
a world and there are other parts of the world
that still have water on them, for example, because obviously
corsant is a different thing entirely. UM cities definitely generate heat,
(17:43):
and that definitely affects cities. In fact, it affects rainfall. Uh.
There's decades of research that show that more rainfalls in
urban areas than in rural areas, despite the fact that
you've got much larger area of rural land than you
do the relatively concentrated urban area. And part of the
(18:06):
reason is that cities are generating so much heat that
heat is rising up and stirring up moisture in the atmosphere,
helping thunder clouds to form, so we get not just rain,
but thunderstorms, big ones. And then you've got tall buildings.
So if you have a city that's got a lot
of skyscrapers, that acts as almost like a wall, so
(18:27):
when wind starts blowing against the buildings, that gets deflected upward.
That also stirs up more activity in the upper levels
of the the well, not the upper levels of the atmosphere,
but the immediate level of the atmosphere, exactly where the
weather and so also the pollution generated by cities creates uh,
(18:48):
the little nucleic sites that droplets can form around, so
that rain can fall. So you get a perfect storm
of heat and wind circulation and and things for water
to glom onto, and so you see larger thunderstorms developing
over certain cities, particularly in places like the American South,
(19:10):
specifically Atlanta as a big you know, we we see
it all the time. Um. What's interesting is that you
can't necessarily say the exact same thing is happening in
other cities because there are other variables that could be
at play that are not present in Atlanta. Atlanta is
not on it's not on the shore, right, it's not
near an ocean. So places like New York City and Washington,
(19:33):
d C. They get a lot of thunderstorms too, but
they have added variables, so it's harder to narrow down
what exactly is contributing to that. Another thing, though, I
would say, is an interesting complication is that Atlanta has
a nice, lovely amount of trees inside the city. If
you're imagining urban spaces that are largely devoid of vegetation,
(19:54):
as I don't know, it looks to me like Corrassant
is from the pictures I see of it. That seems
like that would have a major fact on on atmospheric processing,
but also on the heat. Right. Oh yeah, no, you would,
you would have. I've seen some people suggest that there
should be some means of heat dissipation in such a city,
Like going so far as to say, what if they
(20:14):
developed some sort of heat beam and they literally vent
the planet by shooting it off into space because you know,
some heat. Maybe that's what the death start, right, It
was always they just get canisters of heat from Corrassant.
That's starting to sound like a like monsters inc. Okay, yeah,
(20:35):
so so wait, so what we need to do is
figure out how to control weather. We need faster than
light travel, and we need um infrared radiation capture. Yeah something, Yeah,
that seems I mean, the heat that the city loses
is pretty much impossible to recapture, right, I mean that's entropy,
that's that energy is not usable anymore. Yeah. So, I
(20:56):
mean on Earth we have some of our heat radiate
out and space. Obviously, if you had means of doing
that with Corrossan, that would probably also keep temperatures at
a tolerable level. Otherwise, And also we have to assume
is Corrossan from the same is that the same distance
from its star as Earth is from the Sun. Like,
we don't know what other factors are at play, right,
(21:20):
It could be that the massive city on Corrossan is
what makes it bearable, because otherwise it could be a
frozen rock. I don't know, we don't have enough data.
Um So do you know what their main energy sources,
because I'm imagining it's lots and lots of stormtroopers on
stationary bikes underneath the ground. I like to think that
occasionally they just throw an emperor down a tall shaft
(21:42):
because there's a huge purst of energy. You just occasionally
just a seth has to dump an emperor down the
shaft and then the plants get to go for a
while longer. Um So, yeah, there's you know, it's always
the energy density of Star Wars emperors. But if you
(22:03):
have a good emperor, is that is that less emperor?
I would argue there's no such thing as a good emperor.
The power of the dark Side as vast. Okay, that's true, Cookies,
that's true. Uh. And you know we mentioned I think
it might have even been in the previous episode, Joe.
You you you brought up the idea of or it
may have just been earlier in this one about you know,
(22:24):
what do you do with the atmosphere itself? I mean
that that was this one. I mean so we rely
on things like algae and rainforests and all of the
various you know, plant life and stuff like that, or
the photosynthetic life on earth to sustain us. Because we're
oxygen breathing creatures. We need them to do our dirty work.
(22:48):
We that we need them to scrub the CEO two
we breathe and to produce clean oxygen for us in
the air. What are we going to do without him?
I imagine that you would have to have I don't know,
atmosphere processing of some kind, like massive factories to turn
all the c O two in the air back into oxygen.
Ok So add that to the list of stuff that
(23:08):
we need. Okay, so that's good, ye. And then what
are you going to do with all the carbon? Right?
Because they're pulling in c O two, they want to
put out O two and so then you've got this
leftover carbon nanotubes? Okay, sure, all the all the buildings
are going to be off carbon nanotubes. So it takes
a lot, uh I solve that problem? Okay? All right, Well,
you know this is just scratching the surface, right, We've
(23:30):
got so many other things to talk about when it
comes to the challenges in fact, uh, let's let's scale
it back again kind of look at mega cities in general,
and not not a planet wide city, but just the
actual problems we run into here on Earth in reality.
No longer in science fiction, wookies are not involved, ye
(23:50):
or minimally involved at any rate. Right, it's we've got
nominal wookie level. So so okay, Yeah, the question is
what are the things we're really going to need to
think about in the future as we we move towards
increasing urbanization and more and more mega cities on this planet.
Because this is happening, right, So so this becomes a
(24:11):
beyond hypothetical too. We need to start thinking in practical terms, right,
And a lot of what we were just talking about
that bleeds over into our reality conversation revolves around energy efficiency.
That's a huge one. And it's interesting because there's some
things that were a little counterintuitive to me when I
started looking into this, uh, and then when I thought
(24:31):
about it a little more, I realized I was just
I was just looking at it from the wrong way.
So I read about an engineer at the University of
Toronto named Christopher Kennedy who decided to look into mega
city efficiency and waste. It was something that he's studying
at the University of Toronto, and he contacted experts in
nineteen countries, twenty eight different researchers to talk about mega cities,
(24:56):
the the resources they need, the waste they gener rate,
and to look at, you know, how do they fall
as far as efficiency is concerned. And the report was
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
And one of the interesting things cities tend to produce
more per capita contributions to economic and social activity than
(25:17):
rural regions. Not a huge surprise there, but the idea
being that you're seeing a lot more production both from
a money standpoint and a cultural standpoint in these centers,
right so now, and that doesn't actually contradict what we
were saying earlier as thinking of cities as resource consumers,
because whereas cities really are places where resources go to
(25:39):
get consumed, the cities or places where lots and lots
of economic value is produced. Yeah. In fact, when we
say lots and lots, remember that less than seven percent
of the world's population lives in a mega city. We
said six point seven percent, right, but they produce about
fifteen percent of the world's gross domestic products. Yeah, uh
(26:01):
so quick explanation. What gross domestic product is? I guess
that that represents. It's one of the factors we used
to measure the economic health of a particular region over
a particular stretch of time. And essentially, it's the monetary
value of all the goods and services produced within that
particular region. Can't be stuff that has been brought in,
(26:22):
you know, an important thing. Also, anything that was produced
that required multiple steps. You only count it once. You
don't count each step, because otherwise it would just get
it wouldn't be representative of what the actual GDP was. Um. Now,
the megacities can actually be really energy efficient, which I
thought was kind of It surprised me. Uh, But it
(26:44):
all depends on the way the megacity is formed, Like
what what form does it take? If you're talking about
just a sprawl, then you quickly see it. The energy
efficiency is no longer a factor. Dense urban populations are
more efficient than sprawl is. There's an article and Wired
that talks about this and mentioned you know, a very
(27:05):
simple example, it is more efficient to heat an apartment
building that houses a hundred people than it is to
heat one hundred separate homes. Uh. You also wind up
saving on transportation costs when you've got the more densely
populated areas, right, you have you have a shorter distance
to travel between where you live and where you work.
(27:26):
You may have other means of transportation open to you,
such as public transportation, subways, buses, that's walking, walking is
is my case. Uh So those sort of options mean
that you know, you you don't have to rely as
heavily on a personal vehicle that is going to be
using potentially fossil fuels or maybe it's electricity, but perhaps
(27:49):
the electricity you're getting is also from burning of fossil fuels,
so it can actually be really energy efficient. If you're
talking about a dense urban environment, if it is sprawl,
like we look at the Metro Atlanta area, um that
there's no other word to describe it other than sprawl.
And in fact, it is uh not unusual to hear
(28:10):
about people having really long commute times from where they
live to where they work because it's a it's an
urban area that does not have a really robust, reliable
public transportation system. Well, I mean we have Marta, which
is great if you're along one of the MARTA stops,
one of the rail lines. Yeah, if if you need
(28:31):
to make transfers between buses and stuff like that, it
can get Well, let me put a time. Let me
put to you this way. I I live about three
miles away from this office. If I walk here, it
takes me sixty minutes pretty much, so one hour walking time.
If I take Marta, which involves walking to a station,
taking a train, transferring to a different train, and then
(28:54):
taking a shutt yeah, shuttle bus to get here, it
takes me forty five minute, So I only say fifteen
minutes taking public transportation to go that same distance, which
in that case you would say, well, that's not that's
that's not indicative of at least in efficient use. In
this case, um, and there are some places in Atlanta
(29:15):
and in particularly the Metro Atlanta area that are not
serviced by Martha. Yeah, so that is one of those
examples where that energy efficiency would start to take a
nose dive because we or at least from the transportation side,
because we don't have that access. What about water conception,
how does that measure up against rural areas? Actually not
too bad, But then we don't have massive amounts of
(29:38):
agriculture in mega cities. Yeah, that's kind of not a
fair comparison. Yeah, because because I'm not watering soybeans exactly, Joe, Joe,
I've heard you enjoy a luxurious shower now, and again,
it is probably not the same amount of water that
a farmer is going to use to irrigate a field.
I also drink a lot of water. Yeah, yeah, probably
(30:00):
less than us or exactly. So, agriculture, whether it's raising
livestock or growing crops, requires lots and lots of water.
And so when you compare city environments versus rural environments, Um,
it's not exactly you know, it's not apple stapples, but
(30:21):
you would say that the cities have they use less
at least per person anyway. Um, and there are other
things we have to look at. Two besides that caveat
of water consumption. Yeah, how about garbage moons? Yeah, because
you know, we don't only produce ideas and a higher
(30:42):
GDP than other areas, we also produce a lot of
trash and cities in fact, lots and lots of trash.
So again, six point seven percent of the earth population
happens to live in a mega city. That that was
what we talked about in our first episode. So that
six is responsible for of the world's trash. That's significant. Um,
(31:04):
they also consume ten percent of the world's gasoline and
nine of global electricity. Now this is not you know,
it's largely due to the sprawl factor. So uh, particularly
the gasoline where you know, if you don't have access
to public transportation, or the public transportation is not sufficient
for you to get to where you're going in a
(31:25):
reasonable amount of time, one of your alternatives is for
you to buy a vehicle where you're using gasoline. That's
that's the big thing in Atlanta, same thing with Los Angeles.
I mean, these are there are other cities where the
public transportation is amazing, and there are people who have
never driven a car ever, and they would think it
would be unusual for them to go out and get
a car. Yeah. Yeah, I've got a little bit more
(31:45):
to say about that later. But so you know what,
what's really going on here? All right, So when we
talk about this massive amount of trash and the consumption, Uh,
what's really going on is that we're looking at this
rise in in gross domestic product, the GDP that tends
to come along with a increase in consumption. In other words,
(32:08):
when people get more affluent, they buy more stuff, and
that means they also throw more stuff away. So it's
not just that mega cities are trash machines. It's that
they are consumption machines. Like you know, you can think
of it as a center for consumption um as well
as production. So it's not all negative, but it does
mean that, you know, as as you see that GDP rise,
(32:31):
you see consumption rise, and as a result, you see
trash increase as well. So that's really what ultimately is
going on there. I mean trash. Sometimes it can be
a status thing because I when I go out and get,
you know, like a mocky roll six pieces of sushi,
I know I want an individual styrofoam clamshell for each one.
(32:55):
This reminds me of a time when I was going
to c E S and I received in a norm
this box and I opened up the box. This was
before I went to ce S. It was it was
an exhibitor that was having They wanted to show off
their goods, and so they sent me a sample, an
enormous box. I opened it up. Inside the enormous box,
(33:17):
a smaller box that was very long, shallow and and
not too terribly wide open that up two rechargeable double
A batteries, and it was all about how they were
saving the environment. I'm thinking, really, because I'm counting two
things wrong with this picture. Actually know somebody who used
(33:39):
to work in a job when where they would get
deliveries from like promoters for various products, and and one
of the promotional items I remember them getting was like
bottles of water that came in these huge boxes, like
they were like diamond bracelets or something. So as though
bottled water was not already kind of boo in terms
(34:00):
of waste. Sure, And to be fair, I mean we're
talking about these these general problems with mega cities. It
is not universal. It's not the issues of one mega
city are not necessarily going to be the same as another. So,
for example, New York City consumes more resources than Tokyo does.
But if you remember from our previous episode, Tokyo ranks
(34:22):
is number one on the most populous of mega cities
with thirty seven million people. New York was number eight. Yeah,
and in Tokyo's population density is a lot bigger than
New York cities. Yeah, and yet New York City is
consuming more resources than Tokyo. Well, well it makes sense.
It's what we've been talking about with sprawl. Yeah, and
(34:43):
uh from why I read they New York City. If
you were to, if you were to try and put
it into an understandable term, you would take a supertanker
full of oil. New York City goes through one and
a half of our every one a half days. New
York City goes through a supertanker worth of oil more
than Tokyo. Um. But there are some other things to
(35:04):
keep in mind. Tokyo is more dense than New York,
so that that density does mean that they are able
to make better use of transportation. You don't have to
travel as much New York City. While we talk about
the city, and you think about the subways, and they're amazing.
If you live someplace like in Westchester and you're commuting
into New York City, you're not taking the subway, you're
(35:25):
driving in. So there are they're very vastest differences there.
People drive into New York City. Oh yeah, they do, Yes,
it is uh So. The other interesting thing is that
UM Tokyo has taken some very uh, dramatic steps to
(35:46):
help reduce waste, including the waste of lost water. So
if you look at a typical city, just any large city, uh,
and you look at their water infrastructure, typically at ease
lose about of that water two leaks, Tokyo managed to
get down to. Yeah, so that's a massive investment in
(36:11):
infrastructure there. Oh yeah. I did a little bit of
peeking into that transportation issue that that we were talking about,
and and I think that is where the sprawl can
become so deadly to your numbers of of greenness. In
a study that was out of the University of Toronto
published in April, researchers had a chart showing each of
(36:31):
the twenty mega cities ground transportation energy use by population density,
and they had to actually expand the chart to even
fit New York City on it because it's it's urban
center is so much more spread out, and they use
so much more fuel per capita than the second runner
up worst being Los Angeles. That is shocking that Los
(36:53):
Angeles is less bad, like dramatically less bad. New York
City stands at nearly fifty gig jewels of fuel consumption
per capita, per year UH, and in l A hit
down around thirty giga jewels. That was along with Shanghai
and Mexico City, which are two of the geographically smallest
cities that were studied UH that have the largest fuel
(37:18):
consumption comparatively. Now, just a question for clarification that is
specifically transportation energy. That transportation energy. That's not even I'm
going to include the fact that New York might be
heating their homes more. That is just transportation. Yeah, because
l A Obviously, living in l A, the climate there
doesn't very nearly as much as it would in New
(37:40):
York City. But so once you factor that and you realize, wow,
we're really talking some mess of energy costs here. Now
there are other interesting factors as well, things that you
might not necessarily find in one city but you do
in another. For example, Moscow has the world's largest central
heating system, so the city provide heat to millions of
(38:01):
folks UH, Whereas cities like London have reduced per capita
electricity use through various campaigns. UH. Soul has a large
wastewater recycling system that helps cut back on waste. So
there are cities that have made um real efforts to
reduce that amount of waste or consumption to uh, try
(38:24):
and make the city itself more efficient. So it's not
something that you know, you can't say that a mega
city automatically comes with it a certain level of efficiency.
It's all on the implementation. It's all on how the
city itself is structured. Um. So, one other thing to
keep in mind, and this is a little bit darker,
(38:44):
is that some mega cities, it's not that the city
itself is incredibly efficient. It's rather that the standard of
living in that city is incredibly low, that the people
in that city are, um a large population are impoverished
and are not consuming at the same rate as other
cities because they can't afford to. Right. So the issue is,
(39:06):
unfortunately not that people have disciplined their energy consumption habits,
but that services that consume energy might just not be
available to people. That's exactly right. Yeah, it's a huge problem,
and a much larger problem than I think we are
aware of here in the United States because things aren't
(39:26):
that bad and in a lot of our big city areas.
But um it might only be able to be solved
by a series of really painful transition periods wherein basically
gentrification drives infrastructure, you know, as as more middle class
people move into areas without that kind of infrastructure, their
(39:47):
demands lead to it being built, and so on and
so forth down the line. But but of course gentrification
has its own terrible problems, wherein that middle class is
pushing out the lower classes, and it can it can
really snowball in very negative ways. That transportation energy chart
that that I mentioned before, uh Shanghai and Mexico City
(40:09):
where the two smallest cities on that chart, with two
of the largest fuel consumption levels. That they were right
up there with Los Angeles and around uh thirty giga
jewels of energies per capita per year, but they have
a much huger population density, and you know, I suspect
that that's a function of this, you know, of their
(40:30):
populations having a per capita wealth that's expanding faster than
the infrastructure can. Interesting. Yeah, we we've you know, obviously,
there's the issue of gentrification in general is a really
sticky one because on one hand, you want to see
improvements to infrastructure, but on the other hand, often the
(40:51):
people who could most benefit from those improvements to infrastructure
are forced out of there because they no longer can
afford to live in the place where they live before. So,
in other words, they might be living and conditions that
most people would consider subpar. Those conditions get improved, but
now the people who live there can't live there anymore.
They have to go live somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah, and
(41:11):
when you when you start dealing with that issue, you're
you're also dealing with the property and the job markets
around those areas wherein you know, and that that's something
that we've definitely seen anecdotally all over the United States.
And it's an even sharper divide in developing areas, you know,
where the the pay for certain jobs stays the same
or might even decrease, while the costs of living get
(41:33):
much higher in a very short period of time. Yeah.
And and a lot of these megacies we've talked about,
the really really fast growing ones, uh, sometimes we're talking
about large populations of impoverished people who have very little
hope of ever getting out of that poverty. We talked
about that briefly in the previous episode, where uh, you know,
there's a promise of opportunity, but there's such a flood
(41:55):
of people coming into a city that you know, the
opportunities are limited over any given time span. I mean,
obviously more opportunities can open up as as things change,
but if everyone rushes at the same time, I mean,
if you've got one job slot to fill and five
hundred people come in for that one job, it's not
like you can give all five hundred a job. And
(42:17):
then we're talking about that, but on a a significantly
larger scale, I mean, we're talking about like entire cities
worth of populations of people who are in really tough situations,
and a lot of them end up living in slums.
And those slums are more problematic because they often don't
get recorded in any sort of official capacity, particularly in
(42:37):
developing nations. Uh. They are generally areas where people aren't
paying taxes, they aren't receiving any city services, and uh,
they're kind of non entities, at least on paper. So
in fact, some of the numbers, the estimates we have
for the most populous mega cities could be way off
because there could be entire population of people who just
(43:01):
don't show up on those those various reports. Yeah, I
read a really interesting article that was published in two
thousand six in the New York Times called the Mega
City Deconstructing the Chaos of Lagos, And in that article
they estimated that about a billion people, or at the time,
about half of the developing world's urban populations lived in
(43:21):
slums as of that period. And and that's horrifying, it
is and it and there's no easy, you know, solution
to that. Obviously, that's one of the again one of
those things where, uh, over time, a lot of that
might end up being addressed, but that's not that's very
small comfort for people who are living in those conditions
(43:43):
right now exactly. You know, along with that that issue
of slums comes and in the fact, the lack of opportunity,
I mean, these all things, these are things that go
hand in hand. You would not be surprised to find
out that a lot of these mega cities that are
really undergoing an amazing fast growth period also happened to
be rife with crime and corruption and don't always have
(44:06):
what we might consider the most compassionate ways of dealing
with crime and corruption. And and you know, it's it's
hard to it's hard to be uh judgmental if you're
if you're feeling a lot of compassion towards these people
because obviously they're in a situation where, you know, they
have taken potentially, you know, a life altering decision to
(44:28):
move from one area into one of these cities, assuming
they were not born there, or they're just you know,
they're they're growing up in a place, or they're just
living in a place where there literally are no avenues
where they can pursue a legal means of making a living.
Sure sure that the only job might be with a
gang or with the local mob or whatever it is, right,
(44:50):
and so you get some some pretty ugly stories coming
out of that sort of stuff. Now, all that being said,
I am an to miss. I think that, you know,
there are definitely going to be these transition times where
things are going to be really hard for a lot
of people. But I'm an optimist who says that if
(45:10):
we take the time to really examine these issues, we
can take steps that can improve and sometimes drastically improve
people's lives, especially if if we acknowledge the fact that
this growth is going to continue to happen. So if
it's going to continue to happen, let's make some plans. Sure,
(45:31):
I mean, I think it makes a lot of sense
to think about designing rapidly growing cities for the maximum
quality of human life as an engineering problem. I say,
we've got a lot of resources trading hands, We've got
a lot of stuff we need to fit in the
same space. There are ways to make this work out
(45:51):
better for people than than the other ways, and we
need to do research and figure out what those ways are.
It's funny because you said engineer. Going back to Konstantinos,
the guy who gave us this this term about a
a worldwide city, he had come up with what he
thought was kind of an elegant approach to city design,
(46:13):
and I love as someone who walks, I love this
idea so much. Um So. His idea was that he
thought cities could be like a bee hive that is
organized into various cells, and each cell would measure two
kilometers per side, because two kilometers is a walk. It's
it's a distance that people can walk comfortably. It's not
(46:35):
it's not incredibly far. Um And so he was thinking
the cell of two kilometers would represent uh places where
people would live as well as places they would go
to get all of the basic necessities they would need.
So like the grocery store, or anything along those lines
could all be located within this area, and that yes,
(46:56):
you would have other cells and you could go and
visit other ones like you could. You weren't limited to
the fact that you know, it wasn't they weren't all
going to be identical. It wasn't like a thing where
every single place, like every house was going to look
the same and you're gonna have that one Starbucks on
the corner. And yeah, it wasn't gonna be like that,
you know what I mean, Yeah, it wasn't gonna be
(47:16):
like that. It was going but it was this brilliant
idea of organizing things in a way that makes sense.
So you have a nice, neat layout of buildings as
close as you can, depending upon whatever the geography allows
you to do. Obviously, you know there's gonna be some
places that are going to be different just because of
the geographical features. But you could do this in such
(47:37):
a way where it's easy to navigate, you know where
you're going, it's easy to walk. In fact, he had
said that the ideal version of a city would have
completely separate pedestrian and auto ways, where you might even
consider having the autoways be underneath the city. I agree
with that totally. I'm not one of those people who
says I think we should banish cars from cities or
(47:58):
something like that. Right mind, stand there important to get
where you need to go. But uh, I think we
have seen ample evidence that what really encourages like the
health of a local community storefront line street area is
people walking around. And people feel much more comfortable and
happy walking around if they're not right next to zooming traffic. Yes,
(48:20):
I definitely feel much happier and comfortable when I'm not
next to zooming traffic. I can say that from from
you know, it's anecdotal, but it's absolutely true. Uh. And
also he had other ideas. He thought that it would
be wonderful if you could limit all buildings to three
stories or if you were that's a lovely dream. He
said that obviously you could have uh, you could you
(48:42):
could petition to have taller buildings if if it was necessary.
But he was looking at the you know, things like
conserving that not building up so high, and he thought
that a worldwide city could be done in this sort
of village model. He thought that the ledge approach to
communities worked really well and it would just be that
(49:04):
a city would just be tons of these little villages
all connected to each other, so it wouldn't be this
urban landscape that we're familiar with today. It would be
a bunch of villages that are themselves individual communities that
are part of a bigger community. I love that thought.
(49:25):
It's probably part of the anglophile in me too, because
I like the idea of the old little English village
um and uh hamlets. Yeah yeah, village green preservation society
sort of thing going on. But this, to me is
one of those things that I would love to to
see implemented, not necessarily the specific implementation, but the idea
(49:46):
of we know this is going to happen. Why instead
of being reactive where we're having to deal with increasing
problems of crime and poverty, why not take the actions
nest serry to become more proactive even though I hate
that word, and lay out the infrastructure to set us
(50:08):
up as best we can for success, knowing that that
doesn't guarantee success, but at least it doesn't guarantee failure.
So I think it is a really neat idea. It's
it's one that's more than half a century old at
this point, but Um, you know, if Corussant instead of
being this massive city with five thousand levels to it,
(50:29):
where it was just a series of villages, I think
I think the galaxy would have been a happier place.
But that's just maybe that's just my opinion. I think
the Emperor would have been a little bit less evil
if he had just taken some walks. Yeah, he looks
like a guy who doesn't who doesn't go for strolls.
He doesn't catch a lot of sun, I'm guessing. Yeah. Well,
(50:50):
to be fair, I mean after episode three he aged prematurely.
I mean he was he was had the accelerated aging
process due to some mace window action. But anyway, that's
this is just gonna precipitate us onto another path of
me seeking out about Star Wars uh and then slowly
going crazy because I'm talking about the prequels. All right,
So let's wrap this up. This has been really interesting
(51:12):
to take these two episodes and look at mega cities.
I mean, this is one of those things that obviously
is going to continue to evolve, and I'm curious to
see which cities joined the mega city club next, and
will Chicago beat London? We'll Atlanta ever joined those ranks,
or is it just going to be one of those
things where eventually we don't even refer to them as
(51:34):
cities anymore, it's just urban space. Um. I don't know, uh,
And you know, it may be one of those things
where we we no longer designate stuff by names like that,
which would be odd, but we'll see. I have a
question for all of you guys out there, you listeners,
dear dear listeners, if you have any suggestions something you
(51:56):
would like us to talk about it in a future episode.
I would lie to you for you to write that
idea down and then crumple it up and throw it
in the garbage, or or tie it, tie it delicately
around a dove's leg and I'm just kidding to the wild.
Or if you want us to actually address it, type
(52:16):
it into an email format and in that little two
field right f W thinking at how supports dot com,
Then it will come to us and we will read
your message. We love getting your messages, by the way
we do. And actually I go through most of your garbage,
so so if you do throw it away, then I'll
get it that way too. Yeah. So either way, and
if email is not your thing, or you're creeped out
(52:39):
by Lauren going through your trash. You can send us
a message on social media. We are on Facebook, Twitter,
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We appreciate you guys. Let us know what you want
to hear next and we will talk to a n
(53:00):
really sin. For more on this topic in the future
of technology, visit Forward Thinking dot Com h brought to
you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says hot town
Summer in the City. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren, and
(00:20):
I'm Joe McCormick. And this is part two of our
two part episode series on mega cities and the future
of urbanization. So if you haven't heard part one before
you listen to this episode, go back download part one
and listen to that where you'll get all of the
wonderful information that you need to understand Part two. But
(00:40):
here is part two. Hey Joe, Yeah, I like Star Wars.
I know you like Star Wars, Jonathan, And actually I
have a Star Wars trivia question for you, guys. Hit me,
what was the name of the planet that was the
seat of power of the Galactic Empire. It's corressant Chissan.
You don't pronounce it Corra scant No, because I pronounced
(01:02):
it correctly. You know, because you pronounced it correctly. You
know that if you say it wrong, Holly Fry Is
gonna come beat you. You know that. Yeah, our our
beloved Holly is is the official Star Wars super fan
of the Office, and I thought I thought I was
a super fan, but Holly puts me to Shane. Yeah,
Holly knows stuff I've never heard of. And as far
(01:24):
as I know, you have zero Grito tattoos. Jonathan, I
have no Grito tattoos. So Holly definitely beats me on
that one too. But Coussan Corrossan. So it's this. It's
a big what we call it, a big sort of
capital planet maybe of the Galactic Empire, of their governing structure.
So what does this planet look like? Well, I always
(01:44):
thought this was kind of interesting when I was a kid,
when I was reading about it in my little like
Star Wars Informer books. Oh God, it's like Joe, we're
going down the road. Yeah that it said that the
entire planet was a city. Yes, so it's not big
(02:05):
cities in continents full of lush greenery and and deserts
and stuff like that. It's one city that covers the
entire surface of the planet. It's a city planet, Yeah,
a continuous city that covers practically the entire surface. So
I thought it would be an interesting, sort of absurd
extension of the question of mega cities to say, is
(02:28):
something like the planet Corrossant actually possible in reality? Well,
in order to do this, I thought give a little
bit more detail on Corrossant. As you said, it was
the capital of the Glactic Empire, but it was also
the capital of the Old Republic and the capital of
the New Republic. Because if you already got a major
planet city, why not use it? Uh it's uh so
(02:51):
what are they going to do with all those like
stormtrooper helmet factories after the Empire is dismantled? Well, I
mean I haven't seen uh episode seven yet, so I
can't really convert them into bicycle helmet factories so that
everyone can ride their bikes around the beautiful city planet. Yeah.
I think the nice thing about the helmets though, is
(03:11):
that you can have a huge growth industry in ewalk percussion. Yeah,
you just you can just have the Daego ba or no,
I'm sorry, the Moon of Indoor. The Moon of Indoor.
Everyone can play ye no, unless you've only seen the
special edition of Return of the Jedi where they didn't
have they replaced yep, numb. Okay, We've got to stop. Okay, okay, No,
(03:34):
tell me about what kind of idea would the planet,
of course ont to be. So there's a term called
an ecu monopolis, which I hope I'm saying correctly. There's
some Greek names that I'm going to have to say,
so I apologize profusely because I it's all Greek to
me um and I'm not very good at pronouncing it.
So it essentially means world city ecu monopolis, and uh,
(03:59):
they're different interpretations of it, but the more most literal
is that it's what Corrossant would be, a world that
is itself a full city. So what you're saying is
that George Lucas didn't originate this idea. No, the concept
of ecu monopolis goes back further. But it's not an
ancient idea. This isn't something that you know. Uh. Socrates
(04:19):
was walking around one day and said, I envisioned a
city that will cover the entire world. Was not quite
that forward thinking. It wouldn't be that hard, as long
as we purge the world of poets. Well. The The
term was coined in the late sixties nineteen sixty seven
nineteen sixty eight by a man named Constantinos du Seatus,
(04:42):
and I apologized profusely for Butchering that last name, But
he was a city planner and he founded a journal
dedicated to city planning and called it Acoustics. And he thought,
with proper planning and implementation, cities of the future could
be productive, pleasant places for people to live in and
the designs would make it easy to get around to
(05:02):
do work. And he was a big proponent of making
communities pedestrian friendly and order orderly layouts for easy navigation.
If any of this is sounding familiar to to you,
it's a lot about, you know, similar to what we've
talked about in previous episodes, with things like UM planning
for bicycle lanes things like that that are separate from
from car lanes protected by lanes. Yeah. Yeah, he he
(05:26):
was a proponent of that kind of design and really
wanted to UM to advocate for careful planning of expansion
of urban environments in order for it to be not
just a place where you could go to seek opportunity,
but a place that would foster that. It wouldn't it
(05:48):
wouldn't become an impediment to getting opportunity, it would help you.
And so he had a lot of ideas on that
which are almost diametrically in opposition to the way Corressan
is shown. Um So, getting back to Corrasson, it was
definitely not a representation of that idea. Um So, according
(06:08):
to Star Wars Lawre and I have to mention, we're
using a lot of information that comes from various sources
that are considered the expanded universe, so therefore are not Cannon,
or at least not G Cannon. You know what G
Cannon stands for in Star Wars, are right? Actually don't
George Cannon. George Cannon. So yes, there is cannon canon.
(06:32):
I'm not even making I have no clue, but no
G cannon is anything that's directly from the movies, the
novelizations of the movies, or specifically out of George Lucas's mouth.
And then you have different tiers of cannon below that
and an okay, so speaking of tears though, yes, the
city of Corrassan this planet had five thousand, one, twenty
(06:56):
seven levels to it, so not that all of the
buildings were five thousand, one or twenty seven stories tall,
but that was sort of the that was the range.
It's the deepest basement to the tallest tower, and uh,
lots of tall towers and had a huge population of
one trillion people. That's the residents, not just the people
(07:17):
coming through Corrassant. Now, trillion people. That sounds like a lot,
and it is. It's a lot of people. Obviously, we're
talking about we're we're living in a time where we
have more than seven billion on this planet, and we've
talked about how by that might be closer to ten billion.
So a trillion is hard to imagine. Now, if we
assume that Corrassan is the same size as Earth, all right,
(07:41):
so it's it's the planet itself is about the same size.
And keeping in mind that Corrassan has essentially built up
its city over every square mile of the plant, with
the exception of an artificial sea, as an an artificial
ocean that is built in it's a small one. Um,
you would be looking at a population density of about
(08:03):
five thousand, seventy nine people per square mile. And I
got that figure by taking the trillion of people and
dividing it by the square miles of Earth, which is
a hundred nine six million thousand. So that's not as
dense as some parts of Tokyo. That's true. Oh yeah,
that's way less dense. Yeah, and and keep in mind
that's that's just taking the surface area into account, not
(08:24):
the levels. Yeah. Yeah, if you if you divide that
into the five thousand one hypothetical levels, the levels that
are empty, Yeah, yeah, they're they're they're like less than
one person per square mile. And you could have a
skyscraper to yourself, though I would say that you have.
You're gonna have to imagine if you accept the reality
(08:45):
of a of a planet like this, that huge portions
of its surface area are going to have to be
taken up with just pure machinery and industry. Yes, there
there are even if it's an even if it's not production,
if it's just designed to say like produce oxygen and
scrub CEO two from the atmosphere or something, there are
areas of Yeah, there areas of course on that were
(09:06):
specifically for ship building and like, so obviously that would
not there will not be a lot of residents there.
There'd be uh factories, that sort of thing. So there
were there were definitely manufacturing centers. So not some areas,
just like in Tokyo, some areas would have a more
dense population in some areas would be less. But even so, uh,
(09:27):
it's it's I think the reason why one trillion is
the number is because someone thought that's big, and so
I thought they thought they just thought this would be
a teeming metropolis that expans an entire planet. It's only
when you start to really crunch the numbers that you realize, oh, well,
if if Corrasson is in fact around the same size
as Earth, it's really not as big a number if
(09:49):
you're talking about a worldwide city. Um. So that's I
thought that was kind of funny. So also, I've got
a question, does it rain on Corressan. That's an excellent question.
I have no idea if it can, because according to
Star Wars lore non canon lore. Uh, they the planet
of Corrassant, the city pumped all the water from the
(10:12):
surface into underground chambers. Thus you would have removed it.
I would have thought from the water cycle. Like I said,
there's that one western sea that was kind of a
tourist destination. It was a place for people to go
for vacation. Um. Yeah, because even in Star Wars, you've
got to have someplace for them to go and snap
their family photos. You're not fighting the empire you're going
to the Emperor Emperor Invader showing Grand grandmaf Tark in
(10:36):
their slides from and he has where went into the
water and like that sort of stuff, and like now
but at any rate, um uh yeah, So how what happens?
Like if you if you remove the water that then
it can't evaporate, you can't. I would imagine you wouldn't
have rain in that case, although you would also obviously
need to have incredible recycling ability for your water, because
(11:02):
you know, you're going through that underground vault of water
steadily the entire time. Sure, but I guess if everyone's
indoors most of the time, you don't really need rain.
I mean, there's no agriculture on the planet that outdoors.
I'm imagining they must import everything as far as that's concerned.
You know, I wonder if there were actually a planet
(11:23):
sized city, if it would have cities within the city,
if there are like places in the city that have
more population density than other places in the city. That's
the case of Corosant. They have quadrants that are divided
into sectors, and some of the sectors are affluent, so
that's where all the you know, the senators would be living.
You know, their quarters would be in the affluent sector.
(11:45):
And then you have some that are more the moss
easily type villainy of you know rather Yeah, yeah, you
have those areas as well. So it all depends on
the areas, especially the ones that were the manufact shrink
centers that are are no longer active, those have fallen
to crime and poverty. Um does Coroissant have sewers. I'm
(12:09):
sure that they have sewers. The really interesting thing is
what about all the other waste that's generated. I mean,
it may be that even they're there, I guess human
is the wrong word humanoid general, by the ways, they
shoot their waste off into space. Uh, and you have
garbage space ships that collect that the canisters. Yeah, because
(12:33):
because immediately the first thing that we think of tattoo
a kind of except its moons, not necessarily tattoos. What's
the ewalks. I'm sure they don't go all the way
out the indoor to dump the stuff, but no, they
dump they dump their garbage on moons or sometimes if
it's hazardous material, they shoot it off into the sun
for incineration. That's something that we didn't actually talk about
(12:54):
during our nuclear waste episodes. Yeah, maybe we should have been.
We think we did. I think we talked about Superman
for the Quest for Peace because we mentioned the fact
that because we always talk about Superman Quest for Peace,
there are two things that are are really preventing us
from doing that being expense, an enormous risk, so expense
obviously being that you know, it's really really not cost
(13:18):
effective for us here on Earth to shoot stuff into space.
It's incredibly expensive, and especially not into the sun. Right,
And then you go on, is you don't want nuclear
waste to explode four miles in the sky. Yeah, you
don't want that. You don't want to have an even
distribution of nuclear waste across an enormous uh radius. Okay, Well,
now that we have dwelt on the nerd topic for
(13:39):
a while exploring the cannon and non cannon descriptions of Courson,
I want to ask, for real, could you make a
planet like this? Could could a planet actually sustain itself
if it was almost completely covered in city type landscape,
develop the landscape where people are dwelling and doing their work.
(13:59):
One of the things that would occur to me is
like where's their food coming from? Like this is going
to be a resource problem currently. I mean we've talked
to want to tell you about soil and green. Consider
it an investment opportunity. I think you should really put
yourself into soil and green all the way and you're
gonna see the benefit almost immediately. Grain is monclamar It's
(14:24):
a trap, right, Admiral snack bar at any rate. No, Yeah,
you definitely have a resource problem. I mean, we've talked
about things like urban farming and vertical farming this podcast before,
but those even in the most in the friendliest of cases,
have a lot of difficulty. Well the most optimistic outlooks
(14:47):
on those, I don't think anyone would would be able
to say this sort of approach would meet all the
needs of all this is. Yeah. No, it's about like
offsetting part of the problem, right, it's it's it's about
creating a system that allows you to have a lower
dependence upon shipping stuff into the city, because that transportation
(15:09):
adds to an environmental impact and economic impact. So it
makes sense to help kind of decrease the footprint in
that sense. But if you are a planet wide you
know city, you don't have any arable land out there, right,
So it seems like on a place like Corrassant. If
that was real, you would have to I don't know,
(15:31):
import food from other planets. Imagining that's what must happen.
So it would be kind of like having a huge
city surrounded by farm lands. This would be a city
planet surrounded by farm planets. Yeah. Yeah, So so what
we need to do is first work out faster than
like travel, and then build our city planet or either
that or terraformed the Moon and turn it into a
(15:52):
giant farm. But if we follow the model we know
here on Earth, and the surface area of the farm
land you need to support people is much greater than
the occupied portion of the Moon, or whatever this farm
place would be would have to be bigger than the planet. Well,
I mean, assuming that our population would have reached this
trillion level. If we're talking about the current population of
(16:13):
the Earth, we'd all have like enormous city blocks to ourselves.
Should be kind of interesting. We can all re enact
that excellent episode of Twilight Zone where we just imagine
where the last person on Earth and then break our
glasses as we pick up the library book. I've got
another one here, how about heat? Okay, So cities do
(16:35):
generate heat obviously, and um. In fact, you know, you
probably have heard about the heat island effect of various cities.
Atlanta is notorious for this. Sometimes if you go outside
the building where we work around midday, it's like stepping
into an oven. It is pretty rough. People are warm,
machinery is warm, and the end all of a lot
(16:57):
of these surfaces like asphalt and of like that absorb
heat and then radiated back out. Yeah, so you just
have this constant bombardment of he even and it lasts
well into the hours after dusk as well, because you
just the concrete and asphalt will just continuously radiate that
heat until it's exhausted. So it's sometime around maybe three
in the morning where it starts to feel like like
(17:19):
it's habitable again. Uh at any rate, So let's say
that before we go to like a plant wide one,
if we're just looking at mega cities, UM, if we're
just looking at cities that are are occupying part of
a world and there are other parts of the world
that still have water on them, for example, because obviously
corsant is a different thing entirely. UM cities definitely generate heat,
(17:43):
and that definitely affects cities. In fact, it affects rainfall. Uh.
There's decades of research that show that more rainfalls in
urban areas than in rural areas, despite the fact that
you've got much larger area of rural land than you
do the relatively concentrated urban area. And part of the
(18:06):
reason is that cities are generating so much heat that
heat is rising up and stirring up moisture in the atmosphere,
helping thunder clouds to form, so we get not just rain,
but thunderstorms, big ones. And then you've got tall buildings.
So if you have a city that's got a lot
of skyscrapers, that acts as almost like a wall, so
(18:27):
when wind starts blowing against the buildings, that gets deflected upward.
That also stirs up more activity in the upper levels
of the the well, not the upper levels of the atmosphere,
but the immediate level of the atmosphere, exactly where the
weather and so also the pollution generated by cities creates uh,
(18:48):
the little nucleic sites that droplets can form around, so
that rain can fall. So you get a perfect storm
of heat and wind circulation and and things for water
to glom onto, and so you see larger thunderstorms developing
over certain cities, particularly in places like the American South,
(19:10):
specifically Atlanta as a big you know, we we see
it all the time. Um. What's interesting is that you
can't necessarily say the exact same thing is happening in
other cities because there are other variables that could be
at play that are not present in Atlanta. Atlanta is
not on it's not on the shore, right, it's not
near an ocean. So places like New York City and Washington,
(19:33):
d C. They get a lot of thunderstorms too, but
they have added variables, so it's harder to narrow down
what exactly is contributing to that. Another thing, though, I
would say, is an interesting complication is that Atlanta has
a nice, lovely amount of trees inside the city. If
you're imagining urban spaces that are largely devoid of vegetation,
(19:54):
as I don't know, it looks to me like Corrassant
is from the pictures I see of it. That seems
like that would have a major fact on on atmospheric processing,
but also on the heat. Right. Oh yeah, no, you would,
you would have. I've seen some people suggest that there
should be some means of heat dissipation in such a city,
Like going so far as to say, what if they
(20:14):
developed some sort of heat beam and they literally vent
the planet by shooting it off into space because you know,
some heat. Maybe that's what the death start, right, It
was always they just get canisters of heat from Corrassant.
That's starting to sound like a like monsters inc. Okay, yeah,
(20:35):
so so wait, so what we need to do is
figure out how to control weather. We need faster than
light travel, and we need um infrared radiation capture. Yeah something, Yeah,
that seems I mean, the heat that the city loses
is pretty much impossible to recapture, right, I mean that's entropy,
that's that energy is not usable anymore. Yeah. So, I
(20:56):
mean on Earth we have some of our heat radiate
out and space. Obviously, if you had means of doing
that with Corrossan, that would probably also keep temperatures at
a tolerable level. Otherwise, And also we have to assume
is Corrossan from the same is that the same distance
from its star as Earth is from the Sun. Like,
we don't know what other factors are at play, right,
(21:20):
It could be that the massive city on Corrossan is
what makes it bearable, because otherwise it could be a
frozen rock. I don't know, we don't have enough data.
Um So do you know what their main energy sources,
because I'm imagining it's lots and lots of stormtroopers on
stationary bikes underneath the ground. I like to think that
occasionally they just throw an emperor down a tall shaft
(21:42):
because there's a huge purst of energy. You just occasionally
just a seth has to dump an emperor down the
shaft and then the plants get to go for a
while longer. Um So, yeah, there's you know, it's always
the energy density of Star Wars emperors. But if you
(22:03):
have a good emperor, is that is that less emperor?
I would argue there's no such thing as a good emperor.
The power of the dark Side as vast. Okay, that's true, Cookies,
that's true. Uh. And you know we mentioned I think
it might have even been in the previous episode, Joe.
You you you brought up the idea of or it
may have just been earlier in this one about you know,
(22:24):
what do you do with the atmosphere itself? I mean
that that was this one. I mean so we rely
on things like algae and rainforests and all of the
various you know, plant life and stuff like that, or
the photosynthetic life on earth to sustain us. Because we're
oxygen breathing creatures. We need them to do our dirty work.
(22:48):
We that we need them to scrub the CEO two
we breathe and to produce clean oxygen for us in
the air. What are we going to do without him?
I imagine that you would have to have I don't know,
atmosphere processing of some kind, like massive factories to turn
all the c O two in the air back into oxygen.
Ok So add that to the list of stuff that
(23:08):
we need. Okay, so that's good, ye. And then what
are you going to do with all the carbon? Right?
Because they're pulling in c O two, they want to
put out O two and so then you've got this
leftover carbon nanotubes? Okay, sure, all the all the buildings
are going to be off carbon nanotubes. So it takes
a lot, uh I solve that problem? Okay? All right, Well,
you know this is just scratching the surface, right, We've
(23:30):
got so many other things to talk about when it
comes to the challenges in fact, uh, let's let's scale
it back again kind of look at mega cities in general,
and not not a planet wide city, but just the
actual problems we run into here on Earth in reality.
No longer in science fiction, wookies are not involved, ye
(23:50):
or minimally involved at any rate. Right, it's we've got
nominal wookie level. So so okay, Yeah, the question is
what are the things we're really going to need to
think about in the future as we we move towards
increasing urbanization and more and more mega cities on this planet.
Because this is happening, right, So so this becomes a
(24:11):
beyond hypothetical too. We need to start thinking in practical terms, right,
And a lot of what we were just talking about
that bleeds over into our reality conversation revolves around energy efficiency.
That's a huge one. And it's interesting because there's some
things that were a little counterintuitive to me when I
started looking into this, uh, and then when I thought
(24:31):
about it a little more, I realized I was just
I was just looking at it from the wrong way.
So I read about an engineer at the University of
Toronto named Christopher Kennedy who decided to look into mega
city efficiency and waste. It was something that he's studying
at the University of Toronto, and he contacted experts in
nineteen countries, twenty eight different researchers to talk about mega cities,
(24:56):
the the resources they need, the waste they gener rate,
and to look at, you know, how do they fall
as far as efficiency is concerned. And the report was
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
And one of the interesting things cities tend to produce
more per capita contributions to economic and social activity than
(25:17):
rural regions. Not a huge surprise there, but the idea
being that you're seeing a lot more production both from
a money standpoint and a cultural standpoint in these centers,
right so now, and that doesn't actually contradict what we
were saying earlier as thinking of cities as resource consumers,
because whereas cities really are places where resources go to
(25:39):
get consumed, the cities or places where lots and lots
of economic value is produced. Yeah. In fact, when we
say lots and lots, remember that less than seven percent
of the world's population lives in a mega city. We
said six point seven percent, right, but they produce about
fifteen percent of the world's gross domestic products. Yeah, uh
(26:01):
so quick explanation. What gross domestic product is? I guess
that that represents. It's one of the factors we used
to measure the economic health of a particular region over
a particular stretch of time. And essentially, it's the monetary
value of all the goods and services produced within that
particular region. Can't be stuff that has been brought in,
(26:22):
you know, an important thing. Also, anything that was produced
that required multiple steps. You only count it once. You
don't count each step, because otherwise it would just get
it wouldn't be representative of what the actual GDP was. Um. Now,
the megacities can actually be really energy efficient, which I
thought was kind of It surprised me. Uh, But it
(26:44):
all depends on the way the megacity is formed, Like
what what form does it take? If you're talking about
just a sprawl, then you quickly see it. The energy
efficiency is no longer a factor. Dense urban populations are
more efficient than sprawl is. There's an article and Wired
that talks about this and mentioned you know, a very
(27:05):
simple example, it is more efficient to heat an apartment
building that houses a hundred people than it is to
heat one hundred separate homes. Uh. You also wind up
saving on transportation costs when you've got the more densely
populated areas, right, you have you have a shorter distance
to travel between where you live and where you work.
(27:26):
You may have other means of transportation open to you,
such as public transportation, subways, buses, that's walking, walking is
is my case. Uh So those sort of options mean
that you know, you you don't have to rely as
heavily on a personal vehicle that is going to be
using potentially fossil fuels or maybe it's electricity, but perhaps
(27:49):
the electricity you're getting is also from burning of fossil fuels,
so it can actually be really energy efficient. If you're
talking about a dense urban environment, if it is sprawl,
like we look at the Metro Atlanta area, um that
there's no other word to describe it other than sprawl.
And in fact, it is uh not unusual to hear
(28:10):
about people having really long commute times from where they
live to where they work because it's a it's an
urban area that does not have a really robust, reliable
public transportation system. Well, I mean we have Marta, which
is great if you're along one of the MARTA stops,
one of the rail lines. Yeah, if if you need
(28:31):
to make transfers between buses and stuff like that, it
can get Well, let me put a time. Let me
put to you this way. I I live about three
miles away from this office. If I walk here, it
takes me sixty minutes pretty much, so one hour walking time.
If I take Marta, which involves walking to a station,
taking a train, transferring to a different train, and then
(28:54):
taking a shutt yeah, shuttle bus to get here, it
takes me forty five minute, So I only say fifteen
minutes taking public transportation to go that same distance, which
in that case you would say, well, that's not that's
that's not indicative of at least in efficient use. In
this case, um, and there are some places in Atlanta
(29:15):
and in particularly the Metro Atlanta area that are not
serviced by Martha. Yeah, so that is one of those
examples where that energy efficiency would start to take a
nose dive because we or at least from the transportation side,
because we don't have that access. What about water conception,
how does that measure up against rural areas? Actually not
too bad, But then we don't have massive amounts of
(29:38):
agriculture in mega cities. Yeah, that's kind of not a
fair comparison. Yeah, because because I'm not watering soybeans exactly, Joe, Joe,
I've heard you enjoy a luxurious shower now, and again,
it is probably not the same amount of water that
a farmer is going to use to irrigate a field.
I also drink a lot of water. Yeah, yeah, probably
(30:00):
less than us or exactly. So, agriculture, whether it's raising
livestock or growing crops, requires lots and lots of water.
And so when you compare city environments versus rural environments, Um,
it's not exactly you know, it's not apple stapples, but
(30:21):
you would say that the cities have they use less
at least per person anyway. Um, and there are other
things we have to look at. Two besides that caveat
of water consumption. Yeah, how about garbage moons? Yeah, because
you know, we don't only produce ideas and a higher
(30:42):
GDP than other areas, we also produce a lot of
trash and cities in fact, lots and lots of trash.
So again, six point seven percent of the earth population
happens to live in a mega city. That that was
what we talked about in our first episode. So that
six is responsible for of the world's trash. That's significant. Um,
(31:04):
they also consume ten percent of the world's gasoline and
nine of global electricity. Now this is not you know,
it's largely due to the sprawl factor. So uh, particularly
the gasoline where you know, if you don't have access
to public transportation, or the public transportation is not sufficient
for you to get to where you're going in a
(31:25):
reasonable amount of time, one of your alternatives is for
you to buy a vehicle where you're using gasoline. That's
that's the big thing in Atlanta, same thing with Los Angeles.
I mean, these are there are other cities where the
public transportation is amazing, and there are people who have
never driven a car ever, and they would think it
would be unusual for them to go out and get
a car. Yeah. Yeah, I've got a little bit more
(31:45):
to say about that later. But so you know what,
what's really going on here? All right, So when we
talk about this massive amount of trash and the consumption, Uh,
what's really going on is that we're looking at this
rise in in gross domestic product, the GDP that tends
to come along with a increase in consumption. In other words,
(32:08):
when people get more affluent, they buy more stuff, and
that means they also throw more stuff away. So it's
not just that mega cities are trash machines. It's that
they are consumption machines. Like you know, you can think
of it as a center for consumption um as well
as production. So it's not all negative, but it does
mean that, you know, as as you see that GDP rise,
(32:31):
you see consumption rise, and as a result, you see
trash increase as well. So that's really what ultimately is
going on there. I mean trash. Sometimes it can be
a status thing because I when I go out and get,
you know, like a mocky roll six pieces of sushi,
I know I want an individual styrofoam clamshell for each one.
(32:55):
This reminds me of a time when I was going
to c E S and I received in a norm
this box and I opened up the box. This was
before I went to ce S. It was it was
an exhibitor that was having They wanted to show off
their goods, and so they sent me a sample, an
enormous box. I opened it up. Inside the enormous box,
(33:17):
a smaller box that was very long, shallow and and
not too terribly wide open that up two rechargeable double
A batteries, and it was all about how they were
saving the environment. I'm thinking, really, because I'm counting two
things wrong with this picture. Actually know somebody who used
(33:39):
to work in a job when where they would get
deliveries from like promoters for various products, and and one
of the promotional items I remember them getting was like
bottles of water that came in these huge boxes, like
they were like diamond bracelets or something. So as though
bottled water was not already kind of boo in terms
(34:00):
of waste. Sure, And to be fair, I mean we're
talking about these these general problems with mega cities. It
is not universal. It's not the issues of one mega
city are not necessarily going to be the same as another. So,
for example, New York City consumes more resources than Tokyo does.
But if you remember from our previous episode, Tokyo ranks
(34:22):
is number one on the most populous of mega cities
with thirty seven million people. New York was number eight. Yeah,
and in Tokyo's population density is a lot bigger than
New York cities. Yeah, and yet New York City is
consuming more resources than Tokyo. Well, well it makes sense.
It's what we've been talking about with sprawl. Yeah, and
(34:43):
uh from why I read they New York City. If
you were to, if you were to try and put
it into an understandable term, you would take a supertanker
full of oil. New York City goes through one and
a half of our every one a half days. New
York City goes through a supertanker worth of oil more
than Tokyo. Um. But there are some other things to
(35:04):
keep in mind. Tokyo is more dense than New York,
so that that density does mean that they are able
to make better use of transportation. You don't have to
travel as much New York City. While we talk about
the city, and you think about the subways, and they're amazing.
If you live someplace like in Westchester and you're commuting
into New York City, you're not taking the subway, you're
(35:25):
driving in. So there are they're very vastest differences there.
People drive into New York City. Oh yeah, they do, Yes,
it is uh So. The other interesting thing is that
UM Tokyo has taken some very uh, dramatic steps to
(35:46):
help reduce waste, including the waste of lost water. So
if you look at a typical city, just any large city, uh,
and you look at their water infrastructure, typically at ease
lose about of that water two leaks, Tokyo managed to
get down to. Yeah, so that's a massive investment in
(36:11):
infrastructure there. Oh yeah. I did a little bit of
peeking into that transportation issue that that we were talking about,
and and I think that is where the sprawl can
become so deadly to your numbers of of greenness. In
a study that was out of the University of Toronto
published in April, researchers had a chart showing each of
(36:31):
the twenty mega cities ground transportation energy use by population density,
and they had to actually expand the chart to even
fit New York City on it because it's it's urban
center is so much more spread out, and they use
so much more fuel per capita than the second runner
up worst being Los Angeles. That is shocking that Los
(36:53):
Angeles is less bad, like dramatically less bad. New York
City stands at nearly fifty gig jewels of fuel consumption
per capita, per year UH, and in l A hit
down around thirty giga jewels. That was along with Shanghai
and Mexico City, which are two of the geographically smallest
cities that were studied UH that have the largest fuel
(37:18):
consumption comparatively. Now, just a question for clarification that is
specifically transportation energy. That transportation energy. That's not even I'm
going to include the fact that New York might be
heating their homes more. That is just transportation. Yeah, because
l A Obviously, living in l A, the climate there
doesn't very nearly as much as it would in New
(37:40):
York City. But so once you factor that and you realize, wow,
we're really talking some mess of energy costs here. Now
there are other interesting factors as well, things that you
might not necessarily find in one city but you do
in another. For example, Moscow has the world's largest central
heating system, so the city provide heat to millions of
(38:01):
folks UH, Whereas cities like London have reduced per capita
electricity use through various campaigns. UH. Soul has a large
wastewater recycling system that helps cut back on waste. So
there are cities that have made um real efforts to
reduce that amount of waste or consumption to uh, try
(38:24):
and make the city itself more efficient. So it's not
something that you know, you can't say that a mega
city automatically comes with it a certain level of efficiency.
It's all on the implementation. It's all on how the
city itself is structured. Um. So, one other thing to
keep in mind, and this is a little bit darker,
(38:44):
is that some mega cities, it's not that the city
itself is incredibly efficient. It's rather that the standard of
living in that city is incredibly low, that the people
in that city are, um a large population are impoverished
and are not consuming at the same rate as other
cities because they can't afford to. Right. So the issue is,
(39:06):
unfortunately not that people have disciplined their energy consumption habits,
but that services that consume energy might just not be
available to people. That's exactly right. Yeah, it's a huge problem,
and a much larger problem than I think we are
aware of here in the United States because things aren't
(39:26):
that bad and in a lot of our big city areas.
But um it might only be able to be solved
by a series of really painful transition periods wherein basically
gentrification drives infrastructure, you know, as as more middle class
people move into areas without that kind of infrastructure, their
(39:47):
demands lead to it being built, and so on and
so forth down the line. But but of course gentrification
has its own terrible problems, wherein that middle class is
pushing out the lower classes, and it can it can
really snowball in very negative ways. That transportation energy chart
that that I mentioned before, uh Shanghai and Mexico City
(40:09):
where the two smallest cities on that chart, with two
of the largest fuel consumption levels. That they were right
up there with Los Angeles and around uh thirty giga
jewels of energies per capita per year, but they have
a much huger population density, and you know, I suspect
that that's a function of this, you know, of their
(40:30):
populations having a per capita wealth that's expanding faster than
the infrastructure can. Interesting. Yeah, we we've you know, obviously,
there's the issue of gentrification in general is a really
sticky one because on one hand, you want to see
improvements to infrastructure, but on the other hand, often the
(40:51):
people who could most benefit from those improvements to infrastructure
are forced out of there because they no longer can
afford to live in the place where they live before. So,
in other words, they might be living and conditions that
most people would consider subpar. Those conditions get improved, but
now the people who live there can't live there anymore.
They have to go live somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah, and
(41:11):
when you when you start dealing with that issue, you're
you're also dealing with the property and the job markets
around those areas wherein you know, and that that's something
that we've definitely seen anecdotally all over the United States.
And it's an even sharper divide in developing areas, you know,
where the the pay for certain jobs stays the same
or might even decrease, while the costs of living get
(41:33):
much higher in a very short period of time. Yeah.
And and a lot of these megacies we've talked about,
the really really fast growing ones, uh, sometimes we're talking
about large populations of impoverished people who have very little
hope of ever getting out of that poverty. We talked
about that briefly in the previous episode, where uh, you know,
there's a promise of opportunity, but there's such a flood
(41:55):
of people coming into a city that you know, the
opportunities are limited over any given time span. I mean,
obviously more opportunities can open up as as things change,
but if everyone rushes at the same time, I mean,
if you've got one job slot to fill and five
hundred people come in for that one job, it's not
like you can give all five hundred a job. And
(42:17):
then we're talking about that, but on a a significantly
larger scale, I mean, we're talking about like entire cities
worth of populations of people who are in really tough situations,
and a lot of them end up living in slums.
And those slums are more problematic because they often don't
get recorded in any sort of official capacity, particularly in
(42:37):
developing nations. Uh. They are generally areas where people aren't
paying taxes, they aren't receiving any city services, and uh,
they're kind of non entities, at least on paper. So
in fact, some of the numbers, the estimates we have
for the most populous mega cities could be way off
because there could be entire population of people who just
(43:01):
don't show up on those those various reports. Yeah, I
read a really interesting article that was published in two
thousand six in the New York Times called the Mega
City Deconstructing the Chaos of Lagos, And in that article
they estimated that about a billion people, or at the time,
about half of the developing world's urban populations lived in
(43:21):
slums as of that period. And and that's horrifying, it
is and it and there's no easy, you know, solution
to that. Obviously, that's one of the again one of
those things where, uh, over time, a lot of that
might end up being addressed, but that's not that's very
small comfort for people who are living in those conditions
(43:43):
right now exactly. You know, along with that that issue
of slums comes and in the fact, the lack of opportunity,
I mean, these all things, these are things that go
hand in hand. You would not be surprised to find
out that a lot of these mega cities that are
really undergoing an amazing fast growth period also happened to
be rife with crime and corruption and don't always have
(44:06):
what we might consider the most compassionate ways of dealing
with crime and corruption. And and you know, it's it's
hard to it's hard to be uh judgmental if you're
if you're feeling a lot of compassion towards these people
because obviously they're in a situation where, you know, they
have taken potentially, you know, a life altering decision to
(44:28):
move from one area into one of these cities, assuming
they were not born there, or they're just you know,
they're they're growing up in a place, or they're just
living in a place where there literally are no avenues
where they can pursue a legal means of making a living.
Sure sure that the only job might be with a
gang or with the local mob or whatever it is, right,
(44:50):
and so you get some some pretty ugly stories coming
out of that sort of stuff. Now, all that being said,
I am an to miss. I think that, you know,
there are definitely going to be these transition times where
things are going to be really hard for a lot
of people. But I'm an optimist who says that if
(45:10):
we take the time to really examine these issues, we
can take steps that can improve and sometimes drastically improve
people's lives, especially if if we acknowledge the fact that
this growth is going to continue to happen. So if
it's going to continue to happen, let's make some plans. Sure,
(45:31):
I mean, I think it makes a lot of sense
to think about designing rapidly growing cities for the maximum
quality of human life as an engineering problem. I say,
we've got a lot of resources trading hands, We've got
a lot of stuff we need to fit in the
same space. There are ways to make this work out
(45:51):
better for people than than the other ways, and we
need to do research and figure out what those ways are.
It's funny because you said engineer. Going back to Konstantinos,
the guy who gave us this this term about a
a worldwide city, he had come up with what he
thought was kind of an elegant approach to city design,
(46:13):
and I love as someone who walks, I love this
idea so much. Um So. His idea was that he
thought cities could be like a bee hive that is
organized into various cells, and each cell would measure two
kilometers per side, because two kilometers is a walk. It's
it's a distance that people can walk comfortably. It's not
(46:35):
it's not incredibly far. Um And so he was thinking
the cell of two kilometers would represent uh places where
people would live as well as places they would go
to get all of the basic necessities they would need.
So like the grocery store, or anything along those lines
could all be located within this area, and that yes,
(46:56):
you would have other cells and you could go and
visit other ones like you could. You weren't limited to
the fact that you know, it wasn't they weren't all
going to be identical. It wasn't like a thing where
every single place, like every house was going to look
the same and you're gonna have that one Starbucks on
the corner. And yeah, it wasn't gonna be like that,
you know what I mean, Yeah, it wasn't gonna be
(47:16):
like that. It was going but it was this brilliant
idea of organizing things in a way that makes sense.
So you have a nice, neat layout of buildings as
close as you can, depending upon whatever the geography allows
you to do. Obviously, you know there's gonna be some
places that are going to be different just because of
the geographical features. But you could do this in such
(47:37):
a way where it's easy to navigate, you know where
you're going, it's easy to walk. In fact, he had
said that the ideal version of a city would have
completely separate pedestrian and auto ways, where you might even
consider having the autoways be underneath the city. I agree
with that totally. I'm not one of those people who
says I think we should banish cars from cities or
(47:58):
something like that. Right mind, stand there important to get
where you need to go. But uh, I think we
have seen ample evidence that what really encourages like the
health of a local community storefront line street area is
people walking around. And people feel much more comfortable and
happy walking around if they're not right next to zooming traffic. Yes,
(48:20):
I definitely feel much happier and comfortable when I'm not
next to zooming traffic. I can say that from from
you know, it's anecdotal, but it's absolutely true. Uh. And
also he had other ideas. He thought that it would
be wonderful if you could limit all buildings to three
stories or if you were that's a lovely dream. He
said that obviously you could have uh, you could you
(48:42):
could petition to have taller buildings if if it was necessary.
But he was looking at the you know, things like
conserving that not building up so high, and he thought
that a worldwide city could be done in this sort
of village model. He thought that the ledge approach to
communities worked really well and it would just be that
(49:04):
a city would just be tons of these little villages
all connected to each other, so it wouldn't be this
urban landscape that we're familiar with today. It would be
a bunch of villages that are themselves individual communities that
are part of a bigger community. I love that thought.
(49:25):
It's probably part of the anglophile in me too, because
I like the idea of the old little English village
um and uh hamlets. Yeah yeah, village green preservation society
sort of thing going on. But this, to me is
one of those things that I would love to to
see implemented, not necessarily the specific implementation, but the idea
(49:46):
of we know this is going to happen. Why instead
of being reactive where we're having to deal with increasing
problems of crime and poverty, why not take the actions
nest serry to become more proactive even though I hate
that word, and lay out the infrastructure to set us
(50:08):
up as best we can for success, knowing that that
doesn't guarantee success, but at least it doesn't guarantee failure.
So I think it is a really neat idea. It's
it's one that's more than half a century old at
this point, but Um, you know, if Corussant instead of
being this massive city with five thousand levels to it,
(50:29):
where it was just a series of villages, I think
I think the galaxy would have been a happier place.
But that's just maybe that's just my opinion. I think
the Emperor would have been a little bit less evil
if he had just taken some walks. Yeah, he looks
like a guy who doesn't who doesn't go for strolls.
He doesn't catch a lot of sun, I'm guessing. Yeah. Well,
(50:50):
to be fair, I mean after episode three he aged prematurely.
I mean he was he was had the accelerated aging
process due to some mace window action. But anyway, that's
this is just gonna precipitate us onto another path of
me seeking out about Star Wars uh and then slowly
going crazy because I'm talking about the prequels. All right,
So let's wrap this up. This has been really interesting
(51:12):
to take these two episodes and look at mega cities.
I mean, this is one of those things that obviously
is going to continue to evolve, and I'm curious to
see which cities joined the mega city club next, and
will Chicago beat London? We'll Atlanta ever joined those ranks,
or is it just going to be one of those
things where eventually we don't even refer to them as
(51:34):
cities anymore, it's just urban space. Um. I don't know, uh,
And you know, it may be one of those things
where we we no longer designate stuff by names like that,
which would be odd, but we'll see. I have a
question for all of you guys out there, you listeners,
dear dear listeners, if you have any suggestions something you
(51:56):
would like us to talk about it in a future episode.
I would lie to you for you to write that
idea down and then crumple it up and throw it
in the garbage, or or tie it, tie it delicately
around a dove's leg and I'm just kidding to the wild.
Or if you want us to actually address it, type
(52:16):
it into an email format and in that little two
field right f W thinking at how supports dot com,
Then it will come to us and we will read
your message. We love getting your messages, by the way
we do. And actually I go through most of your garbage,
so so if you do throw it away, then I'll
get it that way too. Yeah. So either way, and
if email is not your thing, or you're creeped out
(52:39):
by Lauren going through your trash. You can send us
a message on social media. We are on Facebook, Twitter,
and Google Plus. At Twitter and Google Plus, we have
to handle f W thinking over on Facebook. You just
search fw thinking in the search bar will pop right up.
You can leave us a message. We do read them all.
We appreciate you guys. Let us know what you want
to hear next and we will talk to a n
(53:00):
really sin. For more on this topic in the future
of technology, visit Forward Thinking dot Com h brought to
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