It takes less than an hour on the new high-speed train line to travel the 150 kilometres (93 miles) southeast from Beijing to Tanggu, the dirty coastal port town of nearby Tianjin – the world's fifth biggest port. Here, you can see signs of the past and present: fine colonial architecture built by European settlers a century ago nestle among the gleaming modern high-rises. But for a glimpse of the future, I am driving a few minutes up the coast from Tanggu to see a city so new that most of it is still being built.
Few things can be certain about the future, as philosophers wiser than I have pointed out, but one trend that is likely to continue is urbanisation. The Anthropocene will be populated by city dwellers, in contrast to the rural demography of the past millennia, and this has profound implications for human society.
See full Article: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120503-sustainable-cities-on-the-rise
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