What If Everyone Lived in Just One City

current estimates put the total world population at just over seven point seven billion and despite there being more people alive now than have ever lived or died before it seems like were actually pretty well spread out the majority of people live in Asia around 60% while 16% live in Africa 10% live in Europe 8% in North America 5.5 in South America and only 0.5 in Australia and Oceania today however 55 percent of the world's population lives in urban areas and that number is expected to increase to 68 percent by the year 2050 meaning we're not nearly as spread out as we think if that urbanization trend continues we should expect to see more and more large and extremely dense mega cities developing in order to accommodate population growth now this got me thinking what would it be like if everyone on earth lived in just one huge city what would that city look like how would we cope with it and would it even be possible let's find out first let's find out how small a single city of the world's population could be at a density that people could live with defining a city as a place with over 150 thousand inhabitants the world's top three most densely populated cities are Dhaka and Bangladesh ebuy in the Marshall Islands and Manila the capital of the Philippines of these three Dhaka has the highest total population at 14 million and the BI covers the smallest area but Manila's density of 40 1515 per square kilometer is the world's highest despite its relatively small population of 1.78 million so if we were to try to fit the entire world's population into a city of manila's density that city would need a total area of 185 thousand five hundred square kilometers so roughly the size of Syria or its South Dakota now that would be some city but could we make it even denser the highest population density ever recorded was that of kowloon walled city in 1987 which was a chinese military fort in had a density of 1.25 million inhabitants per square kilometre here's an illustrated cross-section that gives you some idea of its compactness the settlement was demolished in 1993 after an arduous eviction process but the legend of the absolute real limit for population density lives on so in order to fit the entire world's population into a single city at that density you would need an area not much larger than modern-day Palestine 6160 square kilometers the total area of Palestine is less than half the size of the Tokyo Metro area which should give you some idea of just how tightly packed this mega city would have to be now that we figured out the smallest possible area of land that could feasibly house a city of the world's population let's now think about where we're going to put it there are plenty of factors to consider here safety from environmental and ecological disasters proximity to water and food sources and ease of construction to name a few the countries that are safest from natural disasters according to MDOT the International disaster database are Estonia Qatar Bahrain the UAE and Andorra unfortunately and Torah is far too small and mountainous and the three Middle Eastern countries don't have enough nearby agricultural land Estonia however is a fairly flat country with over six hundred and sixty-nine thousand hectares of arable land and plentiful access to water and electricity as well as the rest of Europe and Asia it's also relatively safe from flooding so we wouldn't have to worry too much about the ice caps melting the climate is temperate and mild characterized by warm summer's and fairly severe winters though cold winters would probably be the least of your worries if you are packed into 6,000 kilometers squared with every other person on the planet like some kind of Titanic penguin colony so Estonia it is now that we've chosen the location of our world mega city it's time to think about what it would look like in this photo taken in 1989 kowloon walled city looks kind of like a dump it's shabby makeshift buildings were limited to 13 or 14 storeys in height and even then sunlight was almost totally unable to reach street level some parts of the street had to be lit with florescent lights even in the daytime our Estonian mega city however would have no such height restrictions so it would probably have quite a few enormous skyscrapers further blocking light at street level Illustrated cross-sections of the walled city show lush rooftop gardens a primitive example of our ecology our ecology is a portmanteau of the words architecture and ecology and describes the field of architectural design concerned with creating very densely populated ecologically low-impact human habitats a world mega city would need to employ the principles of our ecology in order to maintain biodiversity and anything close to safe levels of air pollution the overall result would probably consist of a variety of different structures although tightly packed tenement structures would certainly dominate because of their efficient use of space potential structures might also include presently conceptual buildings like the shimizu tri 2004 mega city pyramid which was designed to be coated in photovoltaic film to convert sunlight into electricity and would have made use of pond scum to generate power they could even look like the mighty exceed 4,000 the tallest and largest building ever conceptually designed the architects of such a city would need to make use of strong light and energy-efficient materials such as carbon nanotubes or graphene particularly if they were planning to build extremely high as the structures we need to bear their own weight and withstand hurricane force winds past a certain height but then there's the problem of transport you'd think getting around this enormous congested City would prove troublesome to say the least if the pictures of Khaldoun walled city are anything to go by there might not even be space for traditional ground-level roads citizens would probably be reliant on a combination of public pathways underground tube networks monorail systems and airborne taxis the benefit of being so tightly packed is you wouldn't have to travel too far to reach places but that means transportation networks must be efficient and punctual assuming the city will take many centuries to construct we can assume technology will be sufficiently able to make use of some really cool features airborne taxis which uber are currently developing under the name Ober elevate would most likely be fully automated taking up the slack of a hyper busy public transit system and providing comfortable transport for wealthier citizens given the relatively small size of the city however many people would probably just opt to walk to their workplace Architectural Digest magazine predicts that transportation methods will be increasingly clean and efficient bike and electric scooter shares will be on every corner and green low-carbon trucks will improve the last mile delivery of consumer goods strangely this overpopulated mega city is starting to sound pretty good for the environments increased urbanization favors pedestrians and there would be fewer if any cars on the road we would however need to conduct manufacturing and processing on the edges of the city which would cause a massive bubble ring of smog to form there would also need to be vehicles to transport food in from the surrounding agricultural zones which are tended by robot farmers by the way air pollution would quickly reach dangerous levels if we didn't do something about it thankfully the problem would be all concentrated in one place so if we found a solution we would only have to implement it once large extractor fans could help isolate the breathable air or we could use outward facing wind turbines to blow the polluted air away from the city center generating power at the same time sophisticated our ecology would make use of widespread rooftop gardens and vertical farms in order to maintain oxygen levels and supplement food production we'd also need a considerable number of beehives and beekeepers to pollinate these plants so there'd be a steady supply of honey being produced to visiting these gardens would hopefully satisfy people's desire to be around nature which would be crucial if you lived in a sprawl of this magnitude with the basic structure set out let's talk about the economy and any social problems that may arise what sort of effect would living in a city like this have on people's psychology would there be greater levels of intimacy connection and sharing or would we see social breakdown as people get sick of living on top of each other it would be a mixture of both probably in an article about large cluster cities in China The Economist mentions the theory of agglomeration benefits which holds that the bigger the city the more productive it is the city's large integrated labor market would make it easier for employers to find the right people for the right jobs leading to an overall increase in personal satisfaction and fulfillment knowledge would also spread more easily and the large concentrated working population would maximize the world's total productivity but surely this lack of space would lead to terrible working conditions well not necessarily assuming industries have worked their way towards full automation we're likely to get robots to do most of the tiresome work for us humans would still be involved in quality control programming robot mechanics etc but many people would not have to work at all at least not in the traditional sense of employment that seems great but it would all depend on the system of government the city settles on and who's in power forming a stable version of democracy would be challenging with such diverse densely packed communities crime and other social problems will be heavily influenced by the dense environment very studies new and old show that high-rise living can lead to crime stress and delinquency kowloon walled city had notoriously high rates of prostitution gambling and drug abuse and was controlled by local triads although the non criminal community was apparently tight-knit increased automation means fewer working hours and more idle people who if not taken care of properly might well descend into criminal activity it would also be far more difficult to catch criminals in the massive maze of entangled streets so we would probably enlist drone police squads to do this for us this is all starting to sound pretty Orwellian to me a dystopia with a look and feel of Blade Runner but did we really expect the all-inclusive mega city of nuevo Estonia to turn out any different probably the most serious issue would be disease outbreak such close quarters living would be encouraging fast spreading of new viruses and there would be undoubtedly a massive vermin population to help with that people's immunities would vary drastically given that they would be from different cultures and climates meaning we could expect some serious outbreaks early on in the foundation of the mega city medicine by this point would hopefully be advanced enough to help treat and prevent a truly disastrous epidemic and automated medical robots would certainly help meet healthcare demands and prevent patient doctor infections there are countless more issues the city would have to deal with such as waste management water and energy networks as well as fire safety but we're inventive creatures and I'm sure we'll find some clever solutions rather quickly so what would happen to the rest of the planet if all the humans were crammed into Estonia good things I imagine but I think the only conceivable scenario in which we'd have to live in a hypothetical mega city like this is if we continued polluting the world environment to such an extent that it became unlivable then the only way to protect the population would be to create an anthropologist it E is inevitable and do you think it would look anything like the idea set out in this video maybe you have some big ideas for a future mega city let me know your thoughts in the comments down below thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: BE AMAZED

Views: 254,066

Rating: 4.7729797 out of 5

Keywords: beamazed, be amazed, top 10, world map, world geography, real life lore, facts you didn’t know, what if, everyone lived, one city, giant city, mega city, huge city, geography (field of study), world population, cities: skylines, tallest building, what if scenario, largest building, biggest building, did you know, real life lore geography

Id: JyQRXuVi6CA

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 10 2019

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