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FERNTV: Can you tell us about the film you were executive producer of that being "10,000 Shovels" and how this idea came along and a brief synopsis of it?
Karen: 15 years ago, I began to study the patterns of land-use change and urban growth in South China using satellite imagery. From our research it was apparent that the scale, rate, and style of urban growth in China are astonishingly and unlike the urbanization process in the United States. Roads and buildings are constructed largely without the aid of mechanized effort. Instead, land-use change occurs almost entirely through manual labor. Satellite observations of the region show that over the last thirty years, urban areas have more than quadrupled in size. South China—and indeed many regions in China–have metamorphosed into cosmopolitan metropolises complete with luxury golf courses, master planned communities, and gleaming skyscrapers. There have also been significant advances in the quality of life, as evidenced by better housing, rises in income, and improvements in diet.
The idea for the film came after of years of empirical work when it became evident that research papers alone could not capture the distinctive character of urban growth and parallel changes in everyday Chinese life. The original goal of the film was to visually document the causes and consequences of land-use change: that is, to put a human face on the patterns we saw from space. But as the film project evolved, so did the objectives, and ultimately, I saw the film as an opportunity to challenge our ideas about urbanization, the environment, and development using 3 themes.
The first theme is urban land-use change. The physical changes in the landscape are readily apparent from remote sensing. A single satellite image affords a birds-eye perspective that is visually arresting. But a time series of satellite imagery provides a pattern of change that can be a powerful tool for understanding underlying social processes.
The second theme is the transformation of the economy. China’s economy is changing at lightening speed, and this in turn is changing the world.
The third theme is cultural change. The last three decades have witnessed unprecedented changes in Chinese lifestyles, family structures, and values. Who knows what the next three decades will bring.
FERNTV: That's funny there is no narrative in this film...why is that?
Karen: One of the hardest decisions in making the film was how to present these changes. Traditional documentaries use voice-overs and spoken narratives. They tell you information. But because the changes in China are so visually dramatic, I thought we could eliminate a spoken narrative and allow you, the viewer, to draw your own conclusions about the implications of urbanization based solely on film footage and music.
The film is intended to be thought-provoking and to stimulate discussion about the complex nature of our relationship with the environment. It is meant to challenge our conceptual models of development versus conservation, of the modern versus the traditional, of east versus west. It is meant to evoke a visceral response. Hence, no narrative. Of course, the music carries the emotions in the film. We used Asian—not just Chinese—music, and combined scores from modern Japanese drumming with traditional Chinese instruments.
FERNTV: From your perspective, how is the technology of today in terms of remote sensing and GIS? Is it always improving and is it allowing us to do what we really need to do in terms of planning urban centers that have less of an impact on the environment and do we have the technology today to monitor that impact? Or are there more people using this technology to make money for different things?
Karen: The routine collection of satellite images and the ability to see Earth in its totality at different scales has fundamentally changed our understanding of the relationship between humans and the planet. Most of the research on land cover change over the last three decades has focused on frontier environments—the deforestation of the Amazon, desertification in North Africa, loss of Greenland ice sheet. It is at these coarser scales that the impacts of humankind are most dramatic. Urbanization—and by this I mean urban land change—is significantly less dramatic and occurs at a very different scale. We are just now starting to understanding the morphology (changes in form) of urban areas and remote sensing and GIS have been critical in that development.
On a different scale altogether, GIS and geographic positioning (of your location, your friends, your favorite coffee shops, traffic jams) via iPhone, Blackberry, smartphone, is changing the way in which we interact with each other and understanding our impact on the environment.
FERNTV: Are urban planning companies accepting a lot of urban planning graduates who are environmentally conscience to work for them and develop their ideas for a sustainable future or are there still a good percentage of companies that are just up to their old money-making ways?
Karen: The January 3rd issue of the Sunday New York Times of this year had an article called “Master’s of the New Universe” in the education section in which they listed top 10 master’s degrees for the future. Urban sustainability was one of them. There is a growing recognition that urbanization will need to be part of the solution and not the problem. Many developers and urban planning companies are recognizing that, including Jonathon Rose Co, Arup, Jurong, and Skidmore Owings and Merrill.
Over the next 40 years, the planet will gain another 3 to 5 billion urban residents. Whether these 3-5 billion people live in single-family homes in low-density, automobile-dependent cities, or compact cities with multiple transportation options—- including walking and biking—-will have significant consequences for energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, the conservation of habitat, wildland, and biodiversity, and ultimately the sustainability of our planet.
FERNTV: What are we going to do about an issue that nobody rarely talks about which is light pollution in urban areas and what are some of the ways we can improve that in the future?
Karen: Researchers are examining the issue of light pollution from urban areas and have shown that it affects everything from the health of vegetation and birds to our ability to see the universe at night. So far, this issue hasn’t gotten much attention from policymakers, but that may change with the confluence of three major environmental challenges of the 21st Century: an urbanizing world, climate change, and meeting the global energy demand