Stewart Brand: City Planet - How Urbanization Will Drive Innovation (6/14/2008)

Stewart Brand, Founder and Publisher, The Whole Earth Catalogue; Co-founder, The Long Now Foundation; Co-founder, The WELL; Co-founder, Global Business Network

Over the past four decades, invincible rabble-rouser Stewart Brand has spent time anticipating cultural revolutions and launching a medley of new ideas, movements, organizations, and communities. In the process, he has turned conventional thinking upside down. Today, Brand spends considerable time talking about the "city planet," a term used to describe the expeditious growth of cities. By the middle of this century, 80 percent of the world population will be urbanized changing everything from economics to the environment and global population. Brand argues that these new "squatter cities," though impoverished and seemingly chaotic, will incubate untapped human ingenuity.

This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club on June 14, 2008.