His article is here http://ekwogefee.akopo.com/post/2007/10/29/challenge-the-kerawa-effect.-d-day-20

You may read it, it’s very interesting

I just wanted to second Hank’s concluding comment:

Liveblogging like you do has to be quite taxing, and it certainly must dictate/limit much of your engagement during the course of the conferences you attend, but it is quite appreciated by lots of us who read your blog regularly but can’t make it to the (rather punishing!) schedule of quite interesting events you attend.

Whatever you decide related to liveblogging, thanks (from a lot of us) for allowing us in as a fly on the wall to so many interesting conversations.

Cheers,
-Mike

Up in N. California, Mr. Hurwitz’s Pacific Lumber, bankrupt like its owner’s previous savings and loans, is proposing the bankruptcy judge allow breaking up the redwoods into 160-acre timber farms with individual residences on each one. The opposite of the megacity, the rich separate residence.

Looking at the planet I find myself thinking of the two percent of the people who now own more than half of it — ‘you bought it, you broke it, you pay to fix it’ — and wonder if the megacities do have a ‘black energy’ economy that can keep the kids growing up there smart as well as alive.

Much appreciate the blogging from those conversations.

A great example of this is when you see a newly planned park with paths laid out nicely, within a few months different paths will have been worn out by people taking what they deem to be the most effective (if not efficient) route, now imagine this on a city wide scale. The challenge for mega cities is how they can develop systems and infrastructure that fits the unique dynamics of areas on a local level. I’m working with some people on a concept of clustered infrastructure rather like the cellular phone infrastructure operates on a cell/ cluster basis. This approach has redefined communication so why not other infrastructure like water, sewage and electricity.

This gave me a half baked idea – what if you liveblogged with partners, and somehow could do a combination of play-by-play, commentary, and maybe some post-game analysis debate? Kinda like a panel on the panel. Not sure how you’d do it (wiki?), but it would be cool to find a way to have more than one perspective on a conference from one source.

This article brought up many of the questions I had on my mind while riding the bus up there, looking at these neighborhoods where people raise pigs on the third floor roofs, grow vegetables in cut open bleach bottles they hang from their window sills, where everyone walks or rides public transportation, people have great big smiles on their faces: yet buses have to climb on sidewalks and almost swipe any pedestrians when they meet another bus coming the opposite direction since the streets are too narrow, trash heaps up in corners, some houses continue to build upward even when it is obvious that there are serious stress fractures on the main floor, landslides that have wiped whole blocks off the map and sewage seeping into creeks and rivers coming down from the mountain.

I don´t think all slums and squatter settlements respond to the criteria Stewart Brand mentions, in fact, a couple sound implausible for me… I´ve seen starvation in cities, and not that much in rural areas. In this community there is no cellphone coverage, and people depend on landlines for communication.

Perhaps those facts have to do with averages and medians and tendencies reached through statistics, however, humans don´t really act upon statistics, and different communities develop in many different ways, and maybe it would be a good thing to remember, that not every village acts like case studies do.