By Kate Torgovnick May and Thu-Huong Ha In the past 30 years, 300 million people in China have left rural areas and moved to cities. Which means that a lot of thinking about the future of cities is happening here. At the TEDCity 2.0 Salon — an event held in Chengdu, China, on November 12, in […]
In 2012, the TED Prize was awarded to an idea: The City2.0, a place to celebrate actions taken by citizens around the world to make their cities more livable, beautiful and sustainable. This week, The City2.0 website evolves. On the relaunched TEDCity2.org, you’ll find great talks on topics like housing, education and food, and how […]
Hacking has always been an important component of healthy democracies. Despite the bad connotation the word often has these days — indicating rogue criminals breaking into computer systems, stealing identities, spying or worse — hacking is really just any amateur innovation on an existing system. And that “system” doesn’t have to be a technical one. […]
Everyone knows Detroit is in trouble. The list of problems assaulting the once-mighty Motor City is long and, from a look at national newspapers, incessantly documented. Most recently, the city filed for bankruptcy; its former mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, was sentenced to 28 years in prison for public corruption. Since the booming 1950s, the city of Detroit […]
Diébédo Francis Kéré grew up in a small village in Gando, Burkina Faso, before heading to Germany to study architecture. And as a student there, he came up with a very ambitious project. “I wanted to open up better opportunities to other kids in Gando. I wanted to use my skills to build a school. […]
“I don’t think protected bicycle ways are a cute architectural feature. They are a right, just as sidewalks are,” says Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, in today’s talk. “Protected bikeways also are a powerful symbol of democracy, because they show that a citizen on a $30 bicycle is equally important to one […]
It might seem strange to show a gallery of images of places the narrator can’t actually see. But as architect Chris Downey explains, he picked these locations in San Francisco because they’re meaningful to him, not because they’re photogenic (though as it happens, they’re that too). “As with any large, great city, its success is […]
Juliana Rotich didn’t grow up in Nairobi, but the Kenyan capital has been her official full-time home since 2011. Now, she describes the city as “another node in my network.” It’s a suitable metaphor for a woman who’s immersed in the technology business, from her work at the nonprofit data and mapping collective, Ushahidi, to […]
Could unemployment be a factor that leads to terrorism? In today’s talk, peace strategist Mohamed Ali (not to be confused with the boxer) introduces us to the youth of Mogadishu, Somalia — 70 percent of whom are unable to find jobs. In this talk, Ali highlights just how appealing the messages of terrorist organizations and […]
Iwan Baan is not as interested in what architects build as he is in the beautiful ways that people appropriate the spaces once the planners are gone. In today’s talk, Baan — whose breathtaking image of lower Manhattan after Hurricane Sandy hangs on at least one of our walls — shows incredible images from communities thriving […]
“It doesn’t need to be a zero-sum game between moving traffic and creating public space,” says Janette Sadik-Khan in today’s TED Talk, filmed at TEDCity2.0 earlier this month. Sadik-Khan tells the story of how she and her team — quickly and cheaply, but not without controversy — changed New York from a city designed for […]
As you can likely tell from this profile of her life and work, Gabriella Gomez-Mont is one connected lady. Ask her for a list of some of the places she likes in her home of Mexico City, and receive a “who’s who” of people doing super-interesting things in cool and unexpected ways. We asked the […]
Oh, the places you’ll go with TEDx. This week, we’ve been exploring everything beyond the urban jungle. We followed an explorer to the dark caverns of underground caves, an astronaut to outer space, a time lapse photographer to fields and mountain ranges, and a group of TEDx’ers to the top of snowy Mount Everest. This […]
The challenges we face in the 21st century are global in nature. Yet it often seems like we are woefully ill-equipped to address issues such as poverty, violence, security or public health with our large-scale political institutions. In this bold talk, Benjamin Barber suggests that we should transition away from nation states towards a system […]
By Courtney E. Martin and John Cary Curating the program for TEDCity2.0 — a one-day conference about the future of cities that takes place, gulp, today — was a true honor for us. The two of us come at cities from very different angles. John is trained as an architect, but has spent his career building the […]
What is the city of the future? What will it look like? How will it come to be? This weekend, from Taipei to Melbourne to Mexico City, over 100 local organizers will offer their answers at TEDx events in honor of TEDCity2.0, a day-long TED event celebrating urban innovation. TED challenged organizers to remix the official TEDCity2.0 posters, […]