This is a fascinating TED Talk that talks about urbanization, climate change and building with wood. It makes me wonder –
What will Charlottesville, Albemarle – Central Virginia look like in 25 years? What do we want it to look like?

“Now there are exceptions, but there needs to be some exceptions, and things are going to change, I’m hoping. And the reason I think that way is that today half of us live in cities,and that number is going to grow to 75 percent. Cities and density mean that our buildingsare going to continue to be big, and I think there’s a role for wood to play in cities. And I feel that way because three billion people in the world today, over the next 20 years, will need a new home. That’s 40 percent of the world that are going to need a new building built for them in the next 20 years. Now, one in three people living in cities today actually live in a slum. That’s one billion people in the world live in slums. A hundred million people in the world are homeless. The scale of the challenge for architects and for society to deal with in building is to find a solution to house these people.”