TED Talks is a clearinghouse of informative and inspirational short lectures from the leading thinkers of our age. In case you didn’t know, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design (its creator was himself an architect and graphic designer).
With more than 1,500 TED Talks available online (not including Mobility Lab’s own mini-TED Talks we hosted recently for Young Professionals in Transportation), and a new one added daily, parsing through those to find great talks about transportation and urban development might seem daunting. Thankfully, we’re rolling out four talks in this arena that you shouldn’t pass up.
Here is the second one in our four-part series:
The Shareable Future of Cities
The most effective solution to addressing climate change, Alex Steffen proffers, doesn’t reside in renewable energy sources or individual efforts to conserve resources, but in a more surprising place: our cities.
Cities are much “greener” than the suburbs, Steffen explains, particularly when it comes to transportation, one of the largest sources of climate-changing emissions. City living makes car ownership unnecessary, especially given the increased availability of bike and car sharing in urban areas such as our own Arlington County.
The sharing economy makes being green about efficiency, not deprivation. Packed with insight in a video that’s barely 10 minutes long, Steffen makes a convincing case for increasing the density of our built environment.
Also check out part 1 of our series, How Bad Architecture Wrecked Cities.
Splash photo by Sally T. Buck on Flickr. Story photo by Steve Jurvetson on Flickr.
Paul Goddin 
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