UPDATE: To be fair to today’s Shanghai (as jonolan points out), this is also Shanghai.
LOOKING FOR LIFE BEYOND CABLE NEWS AND FINDING THAT RESISTANCE IS FUTILE
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- Louis BrandeisTension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.
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Whatever Works 
Do you see any trees?
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With a population of 21 million Mary Lee (gasp!!), I don’t imagine there’s much room for trees.
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Yes, but how’s the food?
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😆 Perhaps another question Steve might be . . . egad, is there enough food?
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No, that WAS Shanghai. That’s a photo of 1990s or earlier Shanghai. After the Chinese completely rebuilt the city into a Hong Kong killer it looks a lot different and is a lot cleaner. Of course, the cost to the original population was about what you’d expect for the total “gentrification” of an entire major metropolis.
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The last few decades of building these new Chinese cities has just devastated ancient neighborhoods and of course entire communities. I remember seeing a vid some years ago of people weeping as the bulldozers moved in on a compound occupied by one family for 300+ years. (Also, see my update with ‘new’ Shanghai.)
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I see smoky haze and no greenery. Given the levels of air pollution in Shanghai, this isn’t surprising.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10586296/Shanghai-considers-arming-residents-with-anti-pollution-masks.html
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Ahab, there was a story in the paper yesterday about how we’re now measuring air pollution in the Pacific Northwest that’s coming from China and will continue to do so. We see those pix all the time of Chinese walking around with face masks. Imagine living like that!
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Wow. I love cities, so a part of me is thrilled by the megacity, despite its obvious problems. Sadly, Portland is nowhere close to this 😉 What a view in that picture!
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I love the buzz of cities but sprawl just doesn’t deliver the punch. Only traffic and dirt.
(And you KNOW what a jewel of a city you live in . . . lucky brat.)
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Okay, okay…anyone who complains about living in Portland really deserves to get kicked 🙂
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T. Robert Malthus opined:
But what T. Bob surely never envisioned was the impact of science and the internet, as in making knowledge ubiquitous and freeing humanity from depending on children for old-age security. Thus, the globe is now divided and first-worlders are seeing some birth rates lower than replacement. However, as Moe’s pics capture so well, parts of the world have a long way to go. China and Mexico have discovered Big Macs and cars. Oh, oh. T. Bob could very well turn out to be right.
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Jim, I do tend to the apocolyptic (it’s got drama!), so I wonder if perhaps the unseen dynamic of natural forces might force a ‘cull’ at some point – by disease or whatever. It happens all the time in other species.
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Indeed it does, Moe. Actions have consequences and it is only the human compulsion to see patterns in clouds that make people think there’s some supernatural cause behind what happens. Scary.
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