What Does a City Need?

One of the wicked problems I am interested in is the sustainable urban landscape. Or more precisely, how can we continue to have larger cities that are sustainably fed and powered? However there are other issues associated with urbanization. Public health, transportation and distaster resiliency to name a few. Solving the city problem is important because we can take the city as a microcosm of the globe. Whatever problem a city has, the world has it larger. Adopting a piecemeal approach and solving each city's sustainability challenges we can make a huge step towards solving those of the entire planet.

What does the city of the future need?

• Affordable sustainable energy generation
• A smart grid that conserves and distributes energy equitably
• Inspired urban planning and regeneration
• Resilient urban structures and smart infrastructure that respond to disasters and ambient conditions
• Greenscapes that allow community-based or community-supported agriculture, urban farming
• Novel public transportation means that are more efficient and efficacious making personal transportation obsolete.
• Economic and political systems that support the community, increase participation and distribute equitably

These are the challenges that we need to solve and it can't be done in incremental steps. We simply don't have the time. We need to make bold steps that implement invention and innovation rapidly and thoroughly. The best way would be for every city to solve its most dire problem. Once this has been achieved the knowhow and expertise developed on each problem can be exchanged for that of other cities.

Creating the solution for these problems and in the process the city of the future, we will need to engage and challenge minds in every field. This must be our goal as citizens and humans. 

An Interesting Article

While I'm working on my next post in the food series, you can have a look at this wonderful exposé on food engineering in the fast food industry by the New York Times:

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

Feeding 15 Billion People: What is Food?

Food is essential to human survival. As a species, we use a lot of resources to ensure an adequate supply of food for ourselves. However having enough food is not the whole story. As we have developed new technologies, so have our food production and consumption patterns changed. Just as dramatically, what we think of as food has changed too.

Feeding 15 Billion People: Intro

One of the greatest challenges we face as a species is food security. This is a wicked problem I have spent a lot of time thinking about and I believe I've made some headway into tackling it. My next posts will be an in-depth overview of the issues in the field of food security and some of my ideas in tackling those challenges. Stay tuned.

Post One

Ever found yourself unsatisfied with an aspect of your world? It happens to me daily. Things are just not good enough and there is absolutely no reason for that to be the case. The only reason things are not good enough is because we haven't tried to make them better. The status quo persists due to our lack of dedication and conformity to frustration. We accept that things are the way they are. That's simply defeatist and unhelpful. There is no place for compromise when what is at stake is our world and place within it.

The world we live in was built by people not smarter or more capable than us. Each of us can change it. I want to do just that. For myself, because a better designed and working world is just satisfying, but also for those that come after me. I don't pretend I have all the answers or that my solutions are the best. These are wicked problems, and wicked problems have no best solutions. However, I will challenge myself and each of you to explore, discover, address and design a better way for everything. I expect this blog to closely follow my own interests, but to also surprise me. Welcome. Let's solve the future.