One of the great things about TED is the people that you get to meet in breaks and over meals. I have met entrepreneurs who are using their money to plough back into philanthropic services, a theoretical physisist who is a world expert on quantum computing, many inventors and people with amazing ideas who carry their prototypes in their pocket or on the laptop. What they all have is an innate curiosity and a passion to find out more - to expand their minds and see the world through other peoples eyes - oh and not to forget the film stars and TV personalities! I don't know where else you could meet these sort of people - this is a unique forum and a great simulative environment.
The first session of the day is entitled Cities Past and Future.
Eric Sansderson - "Armed with an 18th-century map, a GPS and reams of data, Eric Sanderson is re-plotting the Manhattan of 1609, just in time for New York's quadricentennial."
He grew up out west and studies landscape ecology - the study of how does the land make space for plants and animals. On his trips back he returns to New York - how does the city of New York make space for plants and animals - people like us. New York was the first Mega city. He came across a map of New York made by the British at the end of the American Revolution. There are features on the map that no longer exist. He decided to geo-reference this map and find these hidden and lost features.
He wanted to look underneath the streets and buildings and see how the city functions as an ecological landscape. He mapped the 55 different ecological landscape types - Manhattan had more ecological areas than any of the more famous National Parks such as Yosemite. He has rebuilt a map of the landscape of Manhattan 400 years ago - look at the ecosystem the animals and plants that you would find there. he showed some amazing images of how the landscape would have looked.
He is using these maps to understand how we can look to the past to build a model for future sustainability for the city of New York.
Constanza Ceruti is a high altitude archaeologist - when we think about ancient cities in South America we 
think about Machu Pichu. the heart of the Inca civilisation was Cusco and the Inca Priests would start their processions from here into the mountains to perform their rituals and sacrifices. Her role is to study these high altitude archaeological sites - in very remote areas - sometimes having to walk 100 of kilometres to get to the sites.
In Argentina they excavated an Inca platform at 22,000 - the worlds highest archeology site where they discovered 3 frozen bodies of Inca children which are considered the best preserved Inca mummies in existence. They performed a variety of non-invasive analysis - with just one hair they can find out what the children were eating in the last weeks of their lives.
Climate changes are affecting all these high altitude sites and the people who live in the areas and use them as part of their religious ceremonies are no longer to be performed.
I don't climb to be higher - I climb to be closer.
Carolyn Steel "Food is a shared necessity but also a shared way of thinking, argues Carolyn Steel, and it offers an unusual and illuminating way to explore how cities evolved"
Why are cities designed the way they are? How do you feed a city? We take it for granted that if we go into a shop there will be food available. Its remarkable that cities get fed at all as the infrastructures required to provide and dispose of the food resources is incredible. It takes 10 times as much grain to produce the meat
we eat than it does to feed a human.
- 19 million of hectares of rain forest lost each year
- Half the food produced in the US is thrown away
- It takes 10 calories to produce each calorie that we consume
As we move into cities we are adopting a Western diet. What can we do about it?
In History it was the Temples that distributed the grain and the harvest that sustained the Cities. How did Rome feed the citizens - it had ancient food miles - Rome waged war on neighbouring countries to get hold of their grain stores. Rime used to import Oysters from London. Typically carried over the sea and rivers as the roads were longer and more prone to attack and damage.
the way Cities were design were around the food distribution and the routes that were taken to get it into the cities. The Industrial revolution - particularly rail changed the way Cities were developed. They were no longer governed by geography and could grow. After trains came cars and then the city was no longer governed by the food distribution as we can just go to get food in our cars. We don't really value food anymore. Cities have actually distanced us from nature - for the food we eat.
Definition of Utopia - 'Good Place" or 'No Place' She has come up with a new word Sitopia = 'Food place'
What does this look like? Family centric food - we need people who can recognise food - food is part of the social part of the city. there are many projects that are trying to reconnect us with our food - particularly connecting our children with where food comes from. We need to understand how food needs to shape the cities of the future.
Bjarke Ingels 'Theory meets pragmatism meets optimism in Bjarke Ingels' architecture. His big-think approach is informed by a hands-on, ground-up understanding of the needs of a building's occupants and surroundings.'
He has investigated how can you tell the stories behind the scenes of architectural projects and he came up with the concept of a comic book - 'Yes is more' . Question the idea that the Architect is always rebelling against the establishment - rather than revolution he is thinking about evolution. Darwin is a good model for the way the designers and architect works - through a process of architectural evolution the design emerges. Gradually an idea evolves and solidifies.
Sometimes a mutant idea forms and these are put on a shelf for reuse later. How can a sustainable city enhance our lives rather than hurt it - a typical neo-Protestant view. He looked at the parallels between Copenhagen and Shanghai - both are have relied on bicycles and in the Danish Pavilion at an Expo they proposed to put 1000 bikes on the stand so people can visit the other stands - they also decide as they were both port towns and he proposed to take water from the Copenhagen harbour to the Expo so people at the expo can take a plunge in fresh, clean water.
A project in Copenhagen, The Mountain, provides a new look at an apartment block by integrating car parking and south facing apartments with gardens and outside space to provide a take on sustainable living. They used the size of holes in the cladding in the building to represent artwork of an image of Everest.
Ideas evolve from one project to the next and develop into new concepts.
Magnus Larsson - He hopes to build new structures in the desert -- by using bacteria to turn shifting sand into a solid mass.
He is proposing a 6000 mile wall of compressed sand across the desert of Africa. 1 Billion grains of sand are born everyday from the mountains and sandstone's of the world. Dry areas cover 1/3rd of the worlds surface - we are facing desertification af many lands, particularly Africa and China and it is threatening the lives of many people. This leads to forced migration and border disputes and wars the Sahara is swallowing arable land at 1 metre per day currently. Sand dunes only cover 1/5th of our deserts. Green wall Sahara is a project to plant a wall of trees across North Africa to stop this desertification, however the challenge of this is that the people who live there are so poor that they chop down the trees to raise an income.
His proposal is to create a solidified wall of sand - one challenge is how to glue the sand particles together. His proposal is to a bacteria to stick the grains together and creates a form of sandstone. How much with this cost - for each cubic metre of concrete it would cost $90 - if we use the bacteria it would only cost $11. These new solid 'dunes' can be habitable and also provide a home for shade and food plants and trees. His wish is to build a long narrow city in the desert.
"Nothing is built on stone, everything is built in sand but we must build if the sand is stone"
