TED 2012 dishes out prize to an idea, not a person
By Esther Goh,
Five years ago, Time magazine broke with tradition and named "You" its Person of the Year.
And now TED is making history by awarding its 2012 TED Prize not to an individual but to an idea – the City 2.0.
"It is an idea upon which our
planet’s future depends," the official statement says.
The purpose of the prize has always been to inspire action, and in the past TED has entrusted individuals with that task.
"But the future of cities is such a significant issue, with so many individuals, organisations and companies doing spectacular work, which is why the TED Prize chose not to single out one individual, but honour the idea itself."
The TED Prize grants its winner $100,000 and “one wish to change the world.” In this case, the TED team is bringing together a "group of visionaries" – urban planners, architects, technologists, authors, policy makers, and economists – to act as advocates for The City 2.0 and craft a wish capable of inspiring collaborative action by many. (Anyone who wants to contribute ideas on behalf of The City 2.0 should write to tedprize@ted.com.)
The wish will be unveiled during the TED Prize session on February 29 at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California.
The City 2.0 is the city of the future… a future in which more than ten billion people on planet Earth must somehow live sustainably.
The City 2.0 is not a sterile utopian dream, but a real-world upgrade tapping into humanity’s collective wisdom.
The City 2.0 promotes innovation, education, culture, and economic opportunity.
The City 2.0 reduces the carbon footprint of its occupants, facilitates smaller families, and eases the environmental pressure on the world’s rural areas.
The City 2.0 is a place of beauty, wonder, excitement, inclusion, diversity, life.
The City 2.0 is the city that works.
Comments
paula middleton
The City 2.0 will be a city with wise transport solutions
Bob
Cities 2.0 must be to the natural world what the sail boat is to the sea - moving through it purposefully and benevolently for those within it, drawing all that it needs from its elemental forces, taking nothing from it that it does not put back, and leaving no harmful trail in its wake.
Welcome to the Technosphere, in which everything that is useful is recycled indefinitely. The only difference between City 1.0 and 2.0 is that 2.0 closes all the resource and waste streams, turning them into feedback loops. The difference is in the design of things and systems to mesh together with minimal waste and loss.
Davina Jackson
This is a great idea TED/Chris — all part of developing new systems of urban planning and design in the era of Google Earth.
The City 2.0 is one of many ventures heading towards the old Bucky Fuller idea of 'an operating manual (system) to fly Spaceship Earth'. This now means a globally networked environmental computer model variously named Digital Earth (Al Gore 1992), Google Earth (a commercial version needing much more dynamic data), World Wind (NASA), Earth Simulator (Japan), Sim Planet, Smarter Planet/Cities and Data World.
TED's conferences and videos highlight great contributors to this vision – including Carlo Ratti of MIT, who was on the stage in Sydney in October 2008 when we launched the concept of a 'global data cities network to accelerate climate change solutions'.
Modelling cities is now a key subset of the Europe-based movement of various organisations contributing to the 'global earth observation system of systems (GEOSS). The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is setting up a Climate Technology Centre to administer its forthcoming network focused cleaning the atmosphere.
An exciting potential for the GEOSS project is 'volunteered geographic information' (VGI) — aka citizen science and citizen reporting — where any of us can contribute GPS-tagged information to the emerging 'global spatial data infrastructure' system of databases.
TED founder Richard Saul Wurman's 1963 plasticine models of different cities at same scale was an important precursor, as were his ACCESS travel guides, TED itself and other innovative ideas for packaging valuable information.
His mate Frank Gehry's new advisory panel of leading architects developing efficient building and city models is also cool and there's a new movement called GeoDesign, from another friend of RSW, Jack Dangermond of Esri, which also will be important to deliver the vision.
As a writer on design and architecture, this all looks like the long-sought successor movement to 20th century modernism! Look out for the NY MOMA exhibitions marking critical advances.
Troy McClure
In other words, in City 2.0 we eat our own shit, drink our own urine and warm ourselves on the flames of our body fat.
Can't wait to get there.
(Is it near Perth?)
Esther Goh
Or near Adelaide?
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