The city as a life-support system

This chapter considers a suite of disparate and fragmented issues and elements that converge as a potential synthesis for evolution beyond collapse through the ecological realignment of cities. The film Demain starts with a brief summary of the transformative challenges humans and our planet face: global warming, climate change, pollution, and the Sixth Extinction of species. The Wars of the Roses between Yorkshire and Lancashire ended in 1485 when Henry Tudor defeated the Plantagenet king Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Vincent Walsh takes a whole systems approach to designing urban infrastructure for potential future needs. The Biopolus concept uses the richness of microbial communities and higher-level organisms that naturally live in the root zones of plants. Biopolus is developing a long-term, action-led research program to create high-yield and highly automated biological manufacturing systems with a limited physical footprint to enable the widespread appearance of commercially viable Metabolic Hubs.