“I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.” – FDR
“Yes we can.” – Obama – But we didn’t.
Small-scale urban spaces can be rich in biodiversity, contribute important ecological benefits for human mental and physical health (McPhearson et al., 2013), and overall help to create more livable cities. Micro_urban spaces are the sandwich spaces between buildings, rooftops, walls, curbs, sidewalk cracks, and other small-scale urban spaces that exist in the fissures between linear infrastructure (e.g. roads, bridges, tunnels, rail lines) and our three dimensional gridded cities.
via Urban Life and a Microscopic Attention | Sustainable Cities Collective.
We are living in the midst of the urban century. Though it is common knowledge that the world is urbanizing, it can be striking to visualize this growth on a map. This animation from Unicef maps countries’ urban populations from 1950 to 2050, and shows that urbanization is a global phenomenon set to continue for decades:
Maps and Measurements of the Expansion of Cities | Sustainable Cities Collective.
Now that the Pentagon wants to address climate change, progress may be possible.
After all we only implemented food assistance when the head of the Selective Service in WWII warned Congress that too many draftees were being rejected due to malnutrition, the interstate highway system is actually the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, and the internet and numerous other technologies were funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).
No fear, no funds.
Pentagon says we could soon be fighting climate wars | Grist.
Control of water as military asset:
Water Supply Key to Outcome of Conflicts in Iraq and Syria | Mother Jones.
