This Friday will be two months since I last posted … Sorry about that, but I thought maybe my rapid-fire posts on ARTchitecture would give you food for thought for a while.
I’m back, and here to report that since the time that I last wrote, 8 more Seattles have been added to the world.
Huh? I recently heard a statistic from the UN that with the current pace of urbanization, the world is adding a city with the population of Seattle every seven days. Unfortunately, I can’t cite the UN Department or source of this, except to point you here:
Alex Steffen of WorldChanging.com on TED Talks
I have purposely inserted three links here because they are three excellent, awesome and amazing ways to spend your time on the internet. The first “Alex Steffen” is a fast-paced round-up of radical (but possible) answers to our planet’s greatest challenges – listen for the part about cities. The second, World Changing.com is a repository of all of the cool thinking, ideas, people and organizations Alex talked about in his speech. And the final link: TED Talks is a great repository of many more “Alexes.” Worth looking into.
But my question is this … Who is paying attention to the fact that we have a new Seattle every week? How will this world accommodate all that urban growth? Surely the American model will FAIL us as a planet with its spread out suburbs and car-based infrastructure. Who is creating the new model?
BTW – In case you’re curious, the City of Seattle proper had just over 582,000 people in 2006. The Seattle metropolitan area had over 3.3 million last year. I hope we only add one of the Cities each week, not one of the Metro Areas.
