Provocations for the Global Place Conference

Abstract

I wrote these “provocations” to be superseded: their real value was to provoke the invited scholars at our “Global Place” conference to develop their own thoughts. Indeed, what is most important about any conference is not what is planned but what is unexpected: the unexpected themes and passions that only occur when people are brought together. For example, I certainly did not foresee the passion over preservation that Anthony Tung brought to the conference, and the way that passion became part of our concept of “global place.” That said, I believe my “provocations” did anticipate many of the major themes of the conference, and perhaps of the Taubman College’s next century. I can see more clearly now what was perhaps implicit in my text: the overwhelming crisis of the next century will be the intersection of mega-city with climate change and resource exhaustion. The explosive urbanization of perhaps 3 billion people over the next fity years - an urbanization concentrated in the already chaotic and overburdened megacities of the developing world - will demand massie resources just to provide for the survival of these billions, no less the better life that they have a right to expect. At the same time, the planet’s energy resources will be dwindling, and the real costs of using the remaining fossil fuel, mostly coal, will escalate with global warming.