Carolyn Steel How food shapes our cities

Our cities risk becoming literally uninhabitable.

At this particular moment, we actually could end up seeing a nuclear detonation in one of our cities.

The purpose of the day is to reflect on the state of our cities and towns and the basic human right to adequate shelter.

The other chapter that I wanted to look at was how we use it our cities, our cars, our motorcultures, where people gather around the vehicle as a celebration.

Our cities are exploding in size, depleting water resources and creating horrific traffic congestion.

It's happening all over the Developed World, probably for loss of habitat, but also because our cities are a little bit more livable than they have been.

Like the harnessing of electricity in our cities or the fall of the Berlin Wall, English represents hope for a better future a future where the world has a common language to solve its common problems.

It took our ancestors hundreds, if not thousands of years to build our cities in the sands and our palaces in the mountains.

But when we look back at our own country, we're looking back at our cities, the cities where most of you come from certainly the city I come from there's legions of kids out there like these.

But, by infusing us with their unique spirit and identity, our cities may, in fact, help to empower humanity to face the most difficult challenges of the twenty first century.

Do they even take the very waste matter that we have from food and fiber and so forth, and turn it back into soil and sequester carbon take carbon out of the air in the process of using our cities?

You know, commonality, the first line in Charles' narration was, The same stars that shine down on Russia shine down on the United States. From the sky, our cities look much the same.

Bricks, concrete, and asphalt the building blocks from which cities are made absorb much more heat from the sun than vegetation does in the countryside.

And what we're saying is that, shouldn't our cities do at least as well, in terms of ecosystem services, as the native systems that they replace?

And, unlike Al Gore, who has travelled the world warning that our cities might soon be under the oceans, it refrains from scaremongering.

Any arrogant person today cannot ignore the spread of these malicious diseases and fatal cancers in the northern cities as result to the spread of toxins that move through natural elements (wind, air, sediment, and even reach down to the groundwater table).

But a future in which carbon free transport is possible is assured. And our cities will be cleaner, quieter, and more pleasant places to live as a result.

Let now our princes be appointed for all the assembly, and let all those who are in our cities who have married foreign women come at appointed times, and with them the elders of every city, and its judges, until the fierce wrath of our God be turned from us, until this matter is resolved.

Let now our rulers of all the congregation stand, and let all them which have taken strange wives in our cities come at appointed times, and with them the elders of every city, and the judges thereof, until the fierce wrath of our God for this matter be turned from us.

And so basically even if you think it's 10 percent, 90 percent of the time, something that costs us a lot of money personally, and also we organize our cities around it and all sorts of things 90 percent of the time it's sitting around.

If you looked at the buildings together with the associated transport, in other words, the transport of people, which is 26 percent, then 70 percent of the energy consumption is influenced by the way that our cites and infrastructure work together.

There will be no more weapons on the street or in our cities and camps We will use force against anyone who tries to trigger internal fighting Some have mistaken our keenness to preserve national unity as a sign of weakness.

Right. Can we do this again from the top, except use some people with a vague hint of talent, instead of just six utter boobs like we brought in last time, real estate hacks of the kind who usually plan our cities.

Our peoples want change change that will provide them with improved living standards, change that will bring them hope, change that will enable them to lead responsible lives in our communities and societies, and change that creates a freer, fairer and safer place to live.

What if it would make it a little bit more palatable to have access via this, as that last link to mass transit, to get out to your cars so we can all live in the suburbs and use our cars the way we want, and then have our cities energized again?