Wednesday, July 29, 2009
City of a Billion: Introduction
Imagine with me, for a moment, that Earth's population reaches a trillion people.
If you're having a hard time imagining, try this instead: New York City has about 27,000 people per square mile. Earth has somewhere in the range of 40 million square miles of land, if you take out the ice, mountain peaks, and volcanoes. Sprawl New York City over all that land, et voila! You've got a trillion people.
There are about 27 million square feet in a square mile and a little over 300 square miles in New York City, which means every person has about a thousand square feet. Or would, if it were evenly distributed. As it stands, every person has an efficiency apartment, they all share Central Park, and nobody lives on Staten Island, because it isn't cool enough.
So it would be on an Earth with a trillion people: each person would be allotted one thousand square feet of sunshine. Keep in mind, we haven't started going up or down yet, we're just talking surface area. I'm not convinced surface area matters nearly so much as cubic, but (call me a traditionalist) I do think occasional access to sunlight may continue to be important to humans.
The goal of this post, and the subsequent posts on this topic, is to imagine this Earth with a trillion people, to imagine living in a city of a billion. If humans can find a way to thrive in a city of a billion, in a world where there are a thousand other cities of a billion, I imagine we would have found something worthwhile. I imagine we would have learned how to get along. I imagine we would have solved problems about consumption, waste, disease, wealth, energy, water, and politics. I imagine we would have created reasonably self-contained ecologies with few enough inputs and outputs that they would translate naturally off of Earth.
I imagine, in a word, we would have become better.
I fear, in a word, we would have become smaller.
This series imagines a city of a billion, in all its glory and all its limitations. It's fun to think about, and I also hope to glean from that far-flung future some helpful tips about how I might live better today.
If you're having a hard time imagining, try this instead: New York City has about 27,000 people per square mile. Earth has somewhere in the range of 40 million square miles of land, if you take out the ice, mountain peaks, and volcanoes. Sprawl New York City over all that land, et voila! You've got a trillion people.
There are about 27 million square feet in a square mile and a little over 300 square miles in New York City, which means every person has about a thousand square feet. Or would, if it were evenly distributed. As it stands, every person has an efficiency apartment, they all share Central Park, and nobody lives on Staten Island, because it isn't cool enough.
So it would be on an Earth with a trillion people: each person would be allotted one thousand square feet of sunshine. Keep in mind, we haven't started going up or down yet, we're just talking surface area. I'm not convinced surface area matters nearly so much as cubic, but (call me a traditionalist) I do think occasional access to sunlight may continue to be important to humans.
The goal of this post, and the subsequent posts on this topic, is to imagine this Earth with a trillion people, to imagine living in a city of a billion. If humans can find a way to thrive in a city of a billion, in a world where there are a thousand other cities of a billion, I imagine we would have found something worthwhile. I imagine we would have learned how to get along. I imagine we would have solved problems about consumption, waste, disease, wealth, energy, water, and politics. I imagine we would have created reasonably self-contained ecologies with few enough inputs and outputs that they would translate naturally off of Earth.
I imagine, in a word, we would have become better.
I fear, in a word, we would have become smaller.
This series imagines a city of a billion, in all its glory and all its limitations. It's fun to think about, and I also hope to glean from that far-flung future some helpful tips about how I might live better today.
// posted by David @ 12:19 AM 
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