Rethinking future urban planning

After going to the recent TEDxWaterloo I’ve been quite interested in watching various TED videos online. It’s the type of stuff that definitely gets you thinking. Today I checked out this one by James Howard Kunstler as he dissects urban sprawl and how modern urban planning and building design has gone astray. This is a topic very near and dear to my friend Erich‘s heart, who shared this initially on Twitter. So in the spirit of TED, here are some ideas worth spreading.

About the Author

James Harris Blog Bio jamEs harris is the owner/designer for SlideawayMedia based out of Cambridge, Ontario. He’s quite fond of music and the latest and greatest gadgets. Follow him on Twitter.

Tags: cambridge, ideas worth spreading, ontario, ted, urban sprawl

http://twitter.com/ENBdavies Erich Nolan B Davies

am I so strange that all of this presentation seems to be fully totally commonsensical?

09:00 is my belief in the truth of the matter of all things…

for jurisdictional governor govern in a fashion that does not allow them to give a damn about more than 5 years ahead from today.

you know i could go on about this issue for hours days books and tomes worth.
http://www.modsuperstar.ca/ modsuperstar

I suppose the reality is that due to the nature of elected officials they really have no ability to think in larger then 5 year blocks.

The problem we have is that nobody sees the end game with regards to oil and our current lifestyles. The reality is we've been living like this for a century and its become the norm to just expect more homes be built, for cities to grow and eventually merge, because that's what has happened our whole lives. Every North American is brought up with the dream of having a spouse, kids, dog and a detached home with a big yard. So changing that mentality is going to be the biggest struggle.
http://twitter.com/ENBdavies Erich Nolan B Davies

I continue to have hope that people will prefer to have a behavioural change by choice rather than by fear or catastrophic insistence.

What it will take in the biggest struggle of it all will be more entrepreneurial types to take up their purpose and structure their businesses in such a way as that they are ahead of the curve and affording other options to broadcasting “this is normal, this is normal, this is normal, this is normal” we in marketing in some senses are at the edge of this.

Marketers were used to sell the un-sustainable “american dream” per se, and Marketers will be used to sell the truths of sustainability, and the facts that we are all going to have to sacrifice our beliefs in our deserving or ensuring we have as a right the ability to take up and occupy land in such in-humane fashions.