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