'The power of the post-industrial city'

In this illuminating TED talk, Don Carter of Carnegie Mellon University places the future of Pittsburgh and other post-industrial cities in the context of global environmental trends and concerns.  He makes the point that, like many so-called “shrinking cities,” Pittsburgh hasn’t really been shrinking but, in fact, expanding in the wrong way while its population remains stable.

Nonetheless, the city hasn’t been growing.  But Carter believes that the proper measure of a city’s future prospects is not population growth but, rather, growth in per capita income.  On that measure, it turns out, Pittsburgh is doing just fine.  The problem with Sun Belt cities, he argues, is that the Sun Belt is going to become the “Drought Belt” because it is on its way to running out of water.  Pittsburgh and other post-industrial cities are much better positioned for a future where “water is going to become more important than oil.”  Twenty percent of the surface fresh water in the world, it turns out, is in the watersheds and water bodies of the Great Lakes and American Upper Midwest.

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