Dani,
I also have been fascinated with the Future World Vision initiative, especially for the Mega City. The main reason being, I think our current path is already moving towards mega cities, as more than half the worlds population now live in cities. I also think that concentrating a majority of the human population in cities can help protect our diverse ecosystems and wildlife (something I am also very passionate about). If we concentrate most of the worlds population in mega cities, and allow nature to reclaim a majority of the areas between mega cities, we can see a drastic improvement in our ecosystems. David Attenborough (narrator of many nature documentaries, including Planet Earth) has a film called A Life on Our Planet which dives deeper into this concept. There are examples of how nature can transform urban and rural man-made areas into thriving ecosystems that can support numerous wildlife in a timeframe of only 25-30 years. Of course, that is with either the help of humans (by planting trees, restrictions on hunting, etc,) or by the absence of humans all together (in the case of contaminated areas like Chernobyl). The film also highlights the need for humans to reach a sustainable equilibrium with our surroundings. An example of this was rather than fishing everywhere continuously (which is unsustainable and depletes the fish population), have protected areas where fishing is not allowed. This causes the ecosystem in the protected area to thrive, which results in a higher fish population. The greater fish population will expand outside of the protected area, where they can be fished, in a sustainable manner. I think a lot of these principles can work well together with Mega Cities with the right foresight and planning. It can be a way to protect our planet as we know it, with all of its amazingly diverse wildlife, rather than a planet that has been completely taken over by one species: humans.
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Doug Cantrell P.E., M.ASCE
Professional Engineer
Durham NC
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