Citification of the World
Interesting new initiative to make sense of the world’s cities. The project - 19.20.21 attempts to make sense of the world’s largest cities and their impacts on the rest of the world and the people who inhabit them. The project:
“The mission of 19.20.21 is a multi-year, multimedia initiative to collect, organize and package information on population’s effect regarding urban and business planning and its impact on consumers around the world. This 5+ year initiative will deliver results via 5 channels: online, television, print, exhibits and seminars. This project will include 10 worldwide partners and appropriate affiliates.”
The coolest part of the site is the look at the largest cities over time starting in 1000 AD. What I am most interested in besides the data is what the data tells us about the communities that inhabit these cities and how sustainable they are. Are we really becoming a world of interconnected cities as the initiators contend?
Tags: cities, data, information, MIT, TED
March 25th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Went to the site and the graphics/visual depiction of the size and dispersion of cities over time is definitely very cool. But I wanted more substance about what their ‘point of view’ is. Its often argued that urban dwellers have a less harmful ecological footprint than do we rural folks up in Vermont. Public transportation, more efficient use of space, exploiting economies of scale better, etc. So could this trend towards mega cities be a good thing for sustainability?