FUTURE OF CITIES
(FELICIANO/GREEN/KREGER) -- PBS NHWE MARCH 2017
FINAL. TRT 7:38.
(SUGGESTED LEAD)
A DOCUMENTARY SHORT RECENTLY POSTED ONLINE
EXPLORES INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE POPULATION GROWTH -- WITH FOOTAGE
PROVIDED BY AN ARMY OF CITIZEN VIDEOGRAPHERS. THE FILM, CALLED “THE FUTURE OF
CITIES,” IS NOW APPROACHING A MILLION VIEWS ON THE INTERNET. NEWSHOUR
WEEKEND’S IVETTE FELICIANO HAS MORE.
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(PKG)
IVETTE FELICIANO: Fifty percent of the world’s
population live in urban areas, but that will grow to 70 percent by the year
2050, according to the United Nations. Today, there are 31 mega-cities..metropolitan areas with
more than 10 million people: Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, Mexico City, Sao Paolo,
Cairo By 2030, the UN predicts, there will be 41.
IVETTE FELICIANO: As the number of city dwellers
rises, so do problems like overcrowding, pollution, housing shortages, and
aging infrastructure like mass transit and highways
OSCAR BOYSON: So is future urbanization going to
be a good thing or a bad thing? If you care about people, this is the defining
question of our time.
IVETTE FELICIANO: In his new mini-documentary,
“The Future of Cities,” New York-based director Oscar Boyson
stepped out of the commercial film and TV world to explore what governments,
communities, and everyday people around the globe are doing to make increasing
density in their cities sustainable for the future.
IVETTE FELICIANO: What were the central problems
that you were trying to address?
OSCAR BOYSON: Cities can get a bad name as far
as being dirty or contributing to congestion, carbon output, etc. But what
people often don’t think about is that when we all are packed in living in
dense quarters, there’s so much to gain, we’re using that as an opportunity to
innovate more, exchange more ideas, use energy more efficiently, use water more
efficiently, right? And let’s look at examples of how we’re using density and
doing it right, and how that’s actually the best, if not the only way to save
the planet.
IVETTE FELICIANO: In partnership with the
Nantucket Project -- an ideas incubator that hosts a TED talk-like yearly
conference focused on innovations -- and a private investor, Boyson set out to show sustainability projects, in
transportation, energy, and water-use, that can be replicated all over the
world...from countries as varied as Iceland…
WOMAN IN REYKJAVIK: Geothermal energy power
plant!
...and Peru...
MAN IN LIMA PERU: This is a fog catcher
and it can catch up to 500 L of water a day.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Boyson
put out a global call for ideas on YouTube
MAN: Hi, Oscar. Nice meeting you over the
Internet.
IVETTE FELICIANO: And received more than 1300
responses from 75 countries. Many who sent Boyson
ideas agreed to serve as tour guides and videographers during his 3-week-long
shoot in 16 cities. Other participants sent him video they’d filmed on their
own.
IVETTE FELICIANO: This man in Santiago, Chile
introduced Boyson to an electric rickshaw that
residents can ride for free.
OSCAR BOYSON: This is Lucas. We met on YouTube
IVETTE FELICIANO: How did you go about meeting
these people?
OSCAR BOYSON: I’d never met a stranger on the
internet. I’d never done anything like that.
MAN: You’re very trusting to just hop in my car
and I’m going to take you somewhere in a country you’ve never been.
OSCAR BOYSON: I would show up, and somebody
who’d emailed me would meet me at the airport. I would say hi, and sometimes
they were a professional camera operator or someone who works in media, and
other times they were just somebody who wanted to hang out and talk or show me
parts of the city that they find interesting.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Over the course of two weeks, Boyson traveled all over the world to places like Chile,
New Zealand, Mumbai and Copenhagen.
OSCAR BOYSON: And I think part of the deal was,
hey, if you help me with this video while I’m in your city, I’m going to really
take the time with the incredible editing team that helped me to make something
you’re going to be proud of.
IVETTE FELICIANO: In South Korea, Boyson visited what urban planners call the world’s first
“smart-city,” Songdo. This high-tech real estate has been built during the past
15 years on mud flats filled with sand..at
the edge of the Yellow Sea. Sensors monitor the city’s energy use, traffic
flow, and waste management system that sends trash and recycling through
underground tunnels to waste processing centers.
IVETTE FELICIANO: And he also went to smaller
projects in the developing world -- like the cities in Nigeria, Pakistan and
the Philippines -- embracing homegrown solutions to its climate
change-related problems.
OSCAR BOYSON: Flooding is an issue in Makoko, so they built a school that floats by using cheap
and available materials. This woman turns discarded plastic into bricks in
Karachi. In Manila they turn water bottles into solar light bulbs.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Boyson
also studied American cities. He met resident Abess Makki in Detroit, where the city’s debt crisis caused water
shutoffs in 2014. Makki created City Water, a phone
app that allows residents to monitor their water usage in real time...or report
leaks.
ABESS MAKKI: We’re no Silicon Valley, but we’re
trying to become a city that brings tools and brings solutions and brings jobs
back.
IVETTE FELICIANO: In Los Angeles, Boyson found one man using his solar panels and atmospheric
generators to extract clean drinking water from humid air.
DAVE HERTZ: Every building ideally can make it’s own water and be water
self-reliant.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Then there is the problem
traffic and the air pollution it causes. Instead of building larger highways to
accommodate more cars, Boyson found Seoul, South
Korea, and Shenzhen, China, have replaced old highways with public
thoroughfares that have bike paths and greenways. In Singapore, where 80
percent of the population lives in subsidized high-rise housing, the government
charges citizens higher taxes for the social costs of car ownership, caps car
leases to 10 years and also plans to build carless city.
OSCAR BOYSON: Obviously so much of 20th century, megacities were built around the car, to service the
car, which we’re learning is not necessarily the best thing for people, whether
that’s air pollution or people getting hit by cars or running large highways
through neighborhoods.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Boyson
wasn’t able to include all of the innovative projects into his initial
mini-documentary, like one of his favorite submissions from Medellin Colombia,
which built a greenbelt that surrounds the city to benefit residents who have
been pushed to the outskirts of the city by gentrification.
OSCAR BOYSON: And it’s giving the people the furthest
away from the center of the city this place that will produce jobs, but also
shared public space, shared green space. So I love that idea.
IVETTE FELICIANO: Since posting the “Future of
Cities” to the Internet in December, Boyson continues
to receive unsolicited videos, and he aims to produce a series of small films.
IVETTE FELICIANO: And you say in the film that
the people that you met are the ones that gave you the most hope for the
future. Why is that?
OSCAR BOYSON: I’d get off a plane and I’m with
somebody who’s donating their time and their energy to show me around their
city. Their perspective, their energy, their effort is informed just by love
and interest, right. So the point of view that they’re sharing with me is
totally about a citizen. If I hire a production services company in one of
these cities, they’re going to show me what they think I want to see, right.
(37:16) So to have this very pure relationship with the city that I was
seeing was really inspiring and a real reminder that cities are about people.
They’re not about buildings, they’re not about cars. People have always made
the difference. And feeling that again and again, whether it was someone I met
in person or just corresponded with over the internet, was very inspiring.
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|
TIMECODE |
LOWER
THIRD |
1 |
1:16,
3:16, 5:52 |
OSCAR
BOYSON Director,
“The Future of Cities” |