Expanding Cities

Humanity is becoming a predominantly urban species.  Cities occupy just 2 per cent of Earth's land surface, but they now house over half the world's population.  Perhaps most alarming of all, they use three-quaters of resources we take from Earth.

The growth of the world's largest cities in particular has been pretty staggering.  The first megacity - with a population of ten million people - was New York, which reached that figure around 1940.  

New York Skyline evolution 

Today there are twenty-two megacities, half of them in Asia, including three in India and two in China. The largest, Tokyo in Japan, has over thirty-five million inhabitants.  Most urban growth from migration.  China, which has ninety cities with populations of more than a million people, has a 'floating population' of more than 100 million people who have moved to cities in recent years.  Its cities expect to welcome another 400 million people from the countryside within the next thirty years.  Perth, WA is set to double its population by 2050.

Cities have become economic powerhouses, providing jobs in manufacturing, transport and wholesaling, as well as service including universities, hospitals, government services, banking, media and culture.  But, despite their attractions, cities can be centres of squalor too.  More than a quarter of all urban inhabitants live in unplanned, overcrowded and often illegal squatter settlements, with no running water.  Cities can also become victims of their size.  Congestion, worsening air pollution, and crime can cause megacities to stop growing, as people and businesses flee to the suburbs surrounding new cities.

The result of this out-migration has been a new geographical phenomenon as the 'polycentric megacity zone' - an urban landscape composed of a number of different centres.  These new zones include Yangtze delta region around Shanghai, southeast England around London, and the Japanese urban corridor between Tokyo and Osaka.

The good news on human population growth is that for the first time since the mid 1900s, the rate of increase in human population is actually decreasing in areas.  The Earth peaked in the late 1980s and has started to generally decrease since then, this is a milestone in human population growth and encouraging.  The role of education has been paramount to the population problem.  As people (particularly women), become more educated, the population growth rate tends to decrease.  As the rate of literacy increases, population growth is reduced.  

Given the variety of cultures, values, and norms in the world today, it appears that our greatest hope for population control is, in fact, education.

Of interest:

http://megacities.nl/?tag=hall

http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/?p=1590

Megacity on the map - source viewsoftheworld.net

What might a resilient world be like?

At the moment, we are very far away from the understanding needed to ensure a resilient world.  A resilience approach opposes the preoccupation with increased production/yeilds/returns.  A resilience approach is about weighing up options, keeping options open and creating new options when old ones close.  
This, in todays world, is more important than ever.

As the remorseless process of globalisation brings us together, joining our cultures, our markets, our biota, we are becoming increasingly connected and homogenized.  The difference that once separated and defined us are getting smaller, our diversity is indeed declining.  Technological advances and cutting out genuine waste can make an important contribution, but optimisation, is a large part of the problem.  There is no such thing as an optimal state in a dynamic system.  The systems in which we live are always shifting, always changing and in doing so they maintain their resilience (to the best they can) - their ability to withstand shocks.  When we aim to increase the efficiency of returns from some part of the system by trying to control it, we usually do so at the cost of the systems resilience.


A system with little resilience is vulnerable to being shifted over the threshold into a new regime of function and state.  This very rarely provides the goods and services we want.
A resilient framework is all about creating space.  Pathways that foster experimentation and innovation that maintain the kinds of diversity that build resilience and enhance the social networks operating in a region.  These pathways have the greatest chance for achieving long-term well-being.


So, what might a resilient world be like?  What would it value?

According to Dr Brian Walker for the CSIRO, 

"Diversity:
A resilient world would promote and sustain diversity in all forms

Social Capital:
A resilient world would promote trust, well developed social networks and leadership (adaptability)

Innovation:
A resilient world would place an emphasis on learning, experimentation, locally developed rules and embrace change

Ecological Variability:
A resilient world would embrace and work with ecological variability (rather than attempting to reduce it)

Modularity:
A resilient world would consist of modular components - everything is not necessarily connected to everything else.  Over-connected systems are susceptible to shock - a resilient system opposes such a trend and would maintain or create a degree of modularity.

Tight Feedbacks:
A resilient world would possess tight feedbacks (not too tight).  This allows us to detect thresholds before we cross them.

Overlap in Governance:
A resilient world would have institutions that include redundancy in their governance structures and a mix of common and private property with overlapping access rights.

Ecosystem Service:
A resilient world would include all the unpriced ecosystem services in development proposal and assessments."


Resilience thinking is a working progress.  To be successful it needs to emerge through people working with their local systems.  The list above is by far complete, you may like to add your own ideas to it.



In this lecture, part of the 2008 Deakin lecture series, Brian Walker considers and discusses how resilience theory applies to hot debates about tradition versus innovation. 

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/resilience-rules/3164690

Water-Droplet Phenomena

When light passes through small water droplets, such as those found in clouds and fog, optical wonders may emerge that, in the past, were ascribed spiritual significance.  Well, they do look like a creation from the hand of god... however I personally feel the scientific understanding and explanation is by far 'cooler'.

The leading cause of an unclear sky, a bit like today, is the collection of billions of small water droplets that produce clouds.  We all know this right? So, lets hear some facts that you may not know:
Cloud droplets generally have diameters in the range of between 0.01 and 0.02 millimetres, with the largest reaching 0.15 millimetres (not to be exact).  Typically, it takes a million cloud droplets to form the smallest rain-drop - a drizzle droplet - with a diameter of 1.2 millimetres. 

Such small droplets have a size comparable to, or maybe slightly larger than, the wavelengths of visible light and they can therefore interact with the light waves through a process known as 'diffraction'.
Diffraction occurs when a light wave's path bends around an object or objects of a similar size to its wavelength.  

As a wave, light can interact with other light waves, forming combination patterns.  The most important interactions are constructive and  destructive interference.  In constructive interference, the two waves add to produce an enhanced condition characterised by increased brightness of bands of spots.  In contrast, destructive interference degrades the overall light quality, resulting in dark bands of spots.

The interaction of light with small water droplets through diffraction produces two distinct types of natural wonders, which characterise coronas and glories.  Other optical wonders include our well known rainbows, crystal orbs, haloes, sundogs, arcs, tangents, circles, light pillars and others.

Each of these are a truly amazing visual experiences with far greater complexity and detail that I cannot even go in to explaining without having days and lots of reference texts, however I wanted to make a point of sharing with you how a single water droplet and light can make some of the most breathtaking visual experiences we will ever witness...

Truly awesome stuff ;)

http://www.elightspot.com/lights-and-matter-a-guide-to-optics.aspx

International Women's Day 2013

International Women's Day 2013

Shhhh! She is travelling between worlds right now. You can see her holding the tension of not knowing ~ she is simply breathing into her unanswered questions. Sometimes she drinks her coffee with quaking hands, not knowing where her relationship or her bank account is going.
But this time, she is holding on to the tension of not knowing, and is not willing to hit the panic button. She is unlearning thousands of years of conditioning. She is not being split between the opposing forces of fight and flight. She is neither naïve nor ignorant. She is a frontier woman, paving new roads & making new choices. She is willing to making a new transcendent possibility emerge.

You may see her now ~ standing at thresholds, or at crossroads ~ breathing into her body ~ intently listening for inner signals. She's learning new navigation skills as she arrives at a most magical moment of her life.

Sukhvinder Sircar

Issues in Environmental Politics

With the coming election just 4 days away, it is time to seriously think about who you want to stand to make true progress.  I have recently joined the Green's and I am extremely privileged in doing so.More than 1.6 million Australians voted for the Greens in 2010 and more support is growing! 
The Greens provide a real alternative to the tired, cynical politics of Labor and the Liberal party. Unlike the two old parties, the Greens have a proud history of standing up for what is right, not just what is easy or what polls well.  

Over the course of the last four decades, the Greens have become the third force in Australian politics. While promoting meaningful and smart solutions to ensure future generations of Australians have clean air, clean water and clean soil – the Greens are also working in many other areas to champion integrity, decency and fairness.  More than 1.6 million Australians voted for the Greens in 2010 and more support is growing! The Greens provide a real alternative to the tired, cynical politics of Labor and the Liberal party. Unlike the two old parties, the Greens have a proud history of standing up for what is right, not just what is easy or what polls well.  Over the course of the last four decades, the Greens have become the third force in Australian politics. While promoting meaningful and smart solutions to ensure future generations of Australians have clean air, clean water and clean soil – the Greens are also working in many other areas to champion integrity, decency and fairness.

In the 1970's and early 1980's the damming of Lake Pedder and the Gordon below Franklin were at the centre of Environmental politics in Australia.  The management of Australia's native forests, and particular woodchipping, has been a site of struggle for over 35 years.  In the late 1990's, Uranium mining in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory was a focus on environmental focus, and now we see this today with franking in the Kimberly's.  

The issues of environmental politics encompass land use dilemmas, coastal management and development, land degradation (including salinity), degradation of river systems (including eutrophication and salinity), biodiversity, atmospheric issues (including green house gas emissions and ozone depletion).  Involved in each of these issues is a number of interested groups, or constituencies.  

The obvious global warming / climate change, two inter related issues has been at the forefront of recent politics as we will have seen and heard many times on the news and in media.  Suggested 'solutions' to climate change have included the resurges of proposals for nuclear power as a principle source of energy for human societies; a prioritisation of renewable energy; and 'clean' coal (more accurately described as carbon capture and geo-sequenstration or CCG).  These are all technical 'solutions' and see global warming/climate change as a problem to be 'solved'.

However, reality is more complex - there are issues of equality, issues of ethics, issues of national interest verses common good, issues around governments, markets, societies, and individuals in combating issues such as climate change and many others.  Do environmental priorities trump social or ethical priorities - does national interest trump the common good of the planet and it's human and non-human citizens; can market mechanisms affect change at the rate necessary to prevent 'runaway' global warming or is a more regulatory approach necessary?  

The challenge for politics at both international and national level is to negotiate policies/outcomes which balance these objectives, which do consider the differing priorities to be 'incommensurable'.

I urge you to take a look at the Greens Policies and which cover what was outlined above before you make your final decision on the 9th.  Be the change you want and vote for the people who truly want the same.

http://greens.org.au/policies

The 'Sociological Imagination'

I have really been thinking a lot about this topic today, well for the past few weeks, as I have seen numerous blogs by others in which I have responded in much the same way as I am writing this.  A lot of my time lately has been thinking about social networks and a sense of place in the community, and how a community interacts.

When C. Wright Mills coined the phrase the 'sociological imagination', what was he suggesting?
He was suggesting a way of thinking about and researching people's lives to show how they are connected to a larger pattern of history and social processes.  Social networks produce their effects and are different from individual problems.

We are often unable to make a distinction because we often rely too much on common sense, that we can only understand what is happening and why it is happening by revealing the effects on us of history and society.  There is a larger history shaping our lives which is largely invisible - yet very real and powerful social factors shape what we think, feel and do.  We are free to choose and to act, but that we do not choose in a situation we ourselves have made.  In this way, our capacity to choose and to act freely is constrained by our history and by our larger social context.

A simple example of sociological imagination can be made by talking about a morning cup of coffee (or tea).  Having our coffee, or tea, is in sense a very ordinary everyday activity:  we reach for the cup, get the jar out of the cupboard, boil the kettle, poor the water in the cup, put milk in, sugar, however you like it.... simple right?  Applying the sociological imagination to this everyday event means asking questions and seeking answers to better understand it.  It requires partial disengagement from the small part of the world in which we live and from the common sense knowledge on which we rely.  If we can make this break, we may be able to think about all of the social connections and historical processes that shape our world and the way we live in and understand it.  Drinking a cup of coffee, or tea, then takes on a surprising complexity when we ask questions such as:

Where did the coffee come from?
Who made it?
Why do I make it this way?
Why do I drink it?
What role does advertising play in my decision to drink it?
Why do other people in other times or places start the morning with water, milk, rum, tea, juice?

Developing a sociological imagination means asking what, why and how questions... yet finding these things out is not that easy.  We might want to hold on to the commonsense idea that the world consists of facts, that we can discover by using our senses.  However, that will not get us far with abstract concepts of poverty, inequality, unemployment or crime.

There is simply no such place as a safe, predictable, linear world, but only in the eyes of the people who view it.  People see what they want to see, and this is why so many leading issues are not being addressed properly.  We live in a world of complex systems. organisms, ecosystems, our cities, our communities, our families, countries, and the earth itself are all complex systems, so it is really useful to develop a systems view of the world to be able to see it, whats the word, more accurately and form a better understanding.

We all have a mental model of the world and how it should be, made up of all our beliefs, attitudes and values. What is safe, predictable and linear, is very much how an individual perceives something to be, there is simply no such place as a safe, predictable, linear world, but only in the eyes of the people who view it.

In short, we live in a complex and sometimes confusing world of many different ideas, theories, political or ethical values, research methods, controversy and debate - we must accept that everyone will always share apposing views to our own but in order to succeed in good social networks, we all need a clear vision in order to make some sense of the world around us.

Australia's transport needs for light rail, and quick!

Light rail is a form of urban rail public transport, like a modern tram system, using electric railcars large enough to accommodate up to 60 people as well as wheelchairs and bicycles. Light rail infrastructure has a low impact on the urban environment.

As we move into an era where climate change, petrol prices and traffic congestion are inevitable, it demands that we rethink the way our city works.  Perth can prosper in a carbon-light future if we make decisions now to 'shock-proof' ourselves against the challenges of the 21st century, and a rapid, electrified mass transit system must be a part of this vision.

The Greens have this vision and want people in the outer suburbs to have equal access to fast, efficient and safe mass transit as those living in wealthy inner suburbs.  I think we all would love that!

China has more than 3500 kilometres of rail line capable of speeds of more than 300km/h. Russia is planning a trans-Siberian high-speed rail line, the Mexicans are planning fast rail along the Yucatan peninsula and Turkey has begun construction of a planned 1500 kilometres of fast rail. However Australia is spending billions of dollars subsidising rail lines to get coal from inland mines to port.

The fact is, when we want to build something we do. We find the money, we find the land. But when public investment in fast trains threatens the profits of private owners then it's a different story.  If we wanted to build trains and light rail we could. If we wanted to build more public transport and fewer roads we could. And if we wanted to build more renewable energy and less fossil fuel-fired energy we could. But, at the moment at least, neither the big end of town nor the big end of politics want to. They want to build submarines, airports and coal rail lines instead.  

The easiest way to fund the big infrastructure projects we need is to stop funding the big infrastructure projects we don't need. On average Australians are now among the wealthiest people the world has ever known. Of course the average conceals the extremes of both entrenched poverty in some communities and the fact that Rinehart is now the wealthiest woman the world has ever known.

Australia is a rich country that can afford to both build the infrastructure our nation needs and to be generous to the mining barons, but we need to rethink how, and we need to get on with it quick sharp!


http://greens.org.au/lightrail