cities on a small planet

Addressing some of the most important issues facing humanity, this original documentary series from Sundance Channel focuses on environmental topics with interviews with forward-thinking designers and features on green products and alternative ideas that may transform our everyday lives and that could save the planet.

Nothing else damages the earth’s environment more than our cities. As the world’s population has grown, our cities have burgeoned, and their impact on the environment worsened. Meanwhile, from the isolated, gated communities within Houston and Los Angeles, to the millions of residents of Bombay living in squalor, the city has failed to serve its ideal function—as the cradle of civilization, the engine of culture, and the inspiration for community and citizenship. In Cities for a Small Planet, Sir Richard Rogers, one of the world’s leading architects and the designer of the Pompidou Center in Paris, demonstrates how future cities could provide the springboard for restoring humanity’s harmony with its environment.Rogers outlines the disastrous impact cities have had and will continue to have on our world, from waste-saturated Tokyo Bay, to the massive plumes of pollution caused by London’s traffic, to the depleted water resources of Mexico City. He traces these problems to the underlying social and cultural values that create them—unchecked commercial zeal, selfish individualism, and a lack of community. Bringing to bear concepts such as that of “open-minded” space—places within cities that serve multiple functions such as markets, parks, and sidewalk cafes—he explains how urban design can be used to give citizens a sense of shared experience. The city built with comfortable and safe public space can bring diverse groups together and breed a sense of tolerance, awareness, identity, and mutual respect. He calls for a new theoretical shift in the way cities do business and interact with the environment, arguing that many products come to market and are sold without figuring their social or environmental cost.Rogers goes on to describe the city of the future: one that is sustainable within its own environment; that can make a positive impact on its surroundings; that encourages communication among its citizens; that is compact and focused around neighborhoods; and that is beautiful, a city whose buildings and spaces spark the creative potential of its inhabitants.As our population grows larger, our planet grows smaller. Cities for a Small Planet is a passionate and eloquent blueprint for the cities we must create in response, cities that provide for the needs of both their residents and the earth on which they live....

With the new emphasis on environmentalism in the 1990's, Lappe stresses how her philosophy remains valid, and how food remains the central issue through which to understand world politics.

Human Planet are an awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, heart-stopping landmark series that marvels at mankind s incredible relationship with nature in them world today.

Human Planet are an awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, heart-stopping landmark series that marvels at mankind s incredible relationship with nature in them world today.

Cities XL 2012 is the new version of the famous City Builder, which allows you to build, develop and connect together cities of all sizes and types on Cities XL planet. To build your cities, the version 2012 now offers a huge choice of nearly 1.000 buildings and structures and over 60 different constructible, huge, varied and incredibly detailed maps.

Addressing some of the most important issues facing humanity, this original documentary series from Sundance Channel focuses on environmental topics with interviews with forward-thinking designers and features on green products and alternative ideas that may transform our everyday lives and that could save the planet.

Addressing some of the most important issues facing humanity, this original documentary series from Sundance Channel focuses on environmental topics with interviews with forward-thinking designers and features on green products and alternative ideas that may transform our everyday lives and that could save the planet.

America's once-vibrant small-to-midsize cities--Syracuse, Worcester, Akron, Flint, Rockford, and others--increasingly resemble urban wastelands. Gutted by deindustrialization, outsourcing, and middle-class flight, disproportionately devastated by metro freeway systems that laid waste to the urban fabric and displaced the working poor, and struggling with pockets of poverty reminiscent of postcolonial squalor, small industrial cities--as a class--have become invisible to a public distracted by the Wall Street (big city) versus Main Street (small town) matchup. These cities would seem to be part of America's past, not its future. And yet, journalist and historian Catherine Tumber argues in this provocative book, America's gritty Rust Belt cities could play a central role in a greener, low-carbon, relocalized future. As we wean ourselves from fossil fuels and realize the environmental costs of suburban sprawl, we will see that small cities offer many assets for sustainable living not shared by their big city or small town counterparts: population density (and the capacity for more); fertile, nearby farmland available for local agriculture, windmills, and solar farms; and manufacturing infrastructure and workforce skill that can be repurposed for the production of renewable-energy technology. Tumber, who has spent much of her life in Rust Belt cities, traveled to twenty-five cities in the Northeast and Midwest--from Buffalo to Peoria to Detroit to Rochester--interviewing planners, city officials, and activists, and weaving their stories into this exploration of small-scale urbanism. Smaller cities can be a critical part of a sustainable future and a productive green economy. Small, Gritty, and Green will help us develop the moral and political imagination we need to realize this....

CitiesXL 2012 is the new version of the famous City Builder, which allows youto build, develop and connect together cities of all sizes and types onCities XL planet. To build your cities, the version 2012 now offers ahuge choice of nearly 1.000 buildings and structures and over 60different constructible, huge, varied and incredibly detailed maps.

Cities XL 2012 is the new version of the famous City Builder, which allows you to build, develop and connect together cities of all sizes and types on Cities XL planet. To build your cities, the version 2012 now offers a huge choice of nearly 1.000 buildings and structures and over 60 different constructible, huge, varied and incredibly detailed maps.