Author Description

The Urban Innovation Imperative There is now no doubt that the destiny of humanity lies in our cities. The human population crossed the halfway point around 2010 on our journey toward becoming a fully urbanized civilization, and each day the populations of our cities continue to increase while rural populations decline. This urban growth is occurring in a time of great turbulence, and due particularly to worsening climate change, the fate of these very cities is now in question. Will they thrive, or will they be overwhelmed by tumultuous storms and bitter droughts brought on by climate change? Much of the human situation during the next century will be defined according to our capacity to adapt to this new, entirely unprecedented, and frightening set of climate conditions. But in fact we have no choice but to adapt, which also means that we must innovate, and prolifically. So perhaps it is our ability to innovate that will largely determine our fate. Innovate well and we can survive and thrive; fail to innovate and we are doomed to prolonged suffering and decline. The necessary innovations will be developed across countless dimensions of modern society. They will involve how we build, what we build, and what we build with. They will impact our systems of food and water, our ideas about a healthy economy, our approaches to governance and decision making, and our use of technology. And perhaps most of all, they will involve a fundamental change to the energy infrastructure of civilization, both where we get our energy from, and how we use it. CO2-producing fossil fuels will be replaced by sources that do not produce greenhouse gases, a switch that’s going to be expensive and disruptive, which means it’s a technological, economic, and social transformation. But with it also comes a unique and enormous opportunity. While many have resisted the need to abandon fossil fuels since to them it means sacr