Where We'll Live In The Future

I am fascinated by cities. I grew up in a rural place. There were farms all around me during my childhood. Cities were a place of wonder. I saw them on television and they were distant, gleaming and alluring. When I was nine, I went to the World's Fair in NYC and I was forever changed by what I saw. Rural life just didn't cut it after that.

In my twenties I went to live in Boston, Massachusetts and got to see first hand what city life was really like. As with anything there was good and bad, expectations met and disappointments. But I'll never forget how exhilarating it was. I still miss Harvard Square a lot.

One of my favorite thinkers, Stewart Brand, had a wonderful talk at TED a few years ago about how the rural areas of the developing world were emptying out and the people moving to the cities and how this would start a second economic, social and technological revolution. The talk below by Geoffrey West at TEDGlobal extends this idea and shows how the properties of cities - wealth, crime rate, walking speed and many other aspects can be deduced from a single number: the city's population.