What does this picture… 
…and this question, which concerns the picture above…
If human beings disappeared at this moment, what changes would occur on Earth 2 days after humans are gone? What about 1 year after humans disappear? 10 years? 300 years? 35,000 years?
..tell us about the global project to green our cities? 
MVRDV architects have won the award to design the city centre of gwang gyo, located approximately 35km south of seoul, south korea. the concept design consists of a series of overgrown hill shaped buildings with great programmatic diversity, aiming for high urban density and encouragement of further developments around the ‘power centre’, one of the envisioned two centre’s of the future new town.
What the first picture and the related question reveals is the hidden essence of the green movement or the ideal green city: humans being here without being here. It’s a strange disappearing act. In order to sustain life as we know it on this planet humans must appear not to be here. This is the point at which the first picture meets the second one. That point is the ideal: the seeming absence of those who are actually present.
I have to thank Melanie Coerver for the first image and a place in my heart for the second.
Have you read The World Without Us, Charles? I think you would enjoy it.
wrong again. we must be here in equilibrium with the planet. we are learning, but there may not be enough time.
Then there won’t be any blonde white wimminz for you to lust over, Charles.
Charles Mudede is the best contributor the Stranger has ever had.
Charles – I love your architecture posts. I now read Dezeen and BldgBlog regularly. Thanks!
We have to become a cold or a symbiotic digestive bacteria instead of a cancer on the planet.
I agree. The World Without Us is a very interesting book.
Charles, I wish you would find something constructive to do…..
If you want an excellent fiction version of something like The World Without Us I highly recommend Earth Abides, written in the 40s. I enjoyed it thoroughly….
Sta-Puft FTW.
To put a fascistic spin on things, this reminds me of Nazi architect Albert Speer’s concept of “ruin value.” Speer designed buildings so that they would leave behind aesthetically pleasing ruins that spoke to the former glory of the Third Reich. But in this case the goal is not to leave a monumental trace, but to attempt to leave no trace at all.
Showing Warsaw’s downtown overrun by everything wild and green is unfortunate. We all know Poles will be the last to disappear, judging by their persistent will to NOT FUCKING DIE. If ever.
Consider the ant. By biomass, they exceed humans by a factor of four. But nobody ever says that ants are ruining the planet.
One of the Discovery channels did just such a program.
@ 12: beat me to it.
All my Varsovian friends tell me that the best view of the city is from the top of the Palace of Culture and Science.
It’s the only place that you can’t see the Palace of Culture and Science from.
Such a tacky stalinist monstrosity!
Na pewno on jest najładniejszy budynek w Warszawie, i w tym obrazie jest ładniejszy.
What does this comment, when subverted into the solar fractum of dichotomous relations, have to do with the comment which will follow it, if it can be assumed that the nature of the photograph to the right is a contextual representation of the way context defies every comment preceding this one? And also.
@17
On the contrary, only the presumed object of insensate corpulence could rightly be objectified by comments regarding placement of before and after dichotomous relationships. Besides.
@ #16, Yes, it is beautiful. Manhattan and London look dreary.
“A World Without Us” reminds me of the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Be…. Or the PBS mini-series Guns, Germs, Steel. North & South America already had a plague that wiped out 95% of the human population and let nature re-claim the continent.