TED Talks
Amanda Burden: How public spaces make cities work
More than 8 million people are crowded together to live in New York City. What makes it possible? In part, it’s the city’s great public spaces — from tiny pocket parks to long waterfront promenades — where people can stroll and play....
TED Talks
Janet Echelman: Taking imagination seriously
Janet Echelman found her true voice as an artist when her paints went missing -- which forced her to look to an unorthodox new art material. Now she makes billowing, flowing, building-sized sculpture with a surprisingly geeky edge. A...
TED Talks
Enrique Peñalosa: Why buses represent democracy in action
"An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport," argues Enrique Peñalosa. In this spirited talk, the mayor of Bogotá shares some of the tactics he used to change the...
TED Talks
Iwan Baan: Ingenious homes in unexpected places
In the center of Caracas, Venezuela, stands the 45-story "Tower of David," an unfinished, abandoned skyscraper. But about eight years ago, people started moving in. Photographer Iwan Baan shows how people build homes in unlikely places,...
TED Talks
Yann Arthus-Bertrand: A wide-angle view of fragile Earth
In this image-filled talk, Yann Arthus-Bertrand displays his three most recent projects on humanity and our habitat -- stunning aerial photographs in his series "The Earth From Above," personal interviews from around the globe featured...
TED Talks
TED: What a driverless world could look like | Wanis Kabbaj
What if traffic flowed through our streets as smoothly and efficiently as blood flows through our veins? Transportation geek Wanis Kabbaj thinks we can find inspiration in the genius of our biology to design the transit systems of the...
Crash Course
World War II Part 2 - The Homefront Crash Course US History
In which John Green teaches you about World War 2, as it was lived on the home front. You'll learn about how the war changed the country as a whole, and changed how Americans thought about their country. John talks about the government...
TED Talks
Ismael Nazario: What I learned as a kid in jail
As a teenager, Ismael Nazario was sent to New York’s Rikers Island jail, where he spent 300 days in solitary confinement -- all before he was ever convicted of a crime. Now as a prison reform advocate he works to change the culture of...
TED Talks
Gary Lauder's new traffic sign: Take Turns
Fifty percent of traffic accidents happen at intersections. Gary Lauder shares a brilliant and cheap idea for helping drivers move along smoothly: a new traffic sign that combines the properties of "Stop" and "Yield."
TED Talks
Ellen Dunham-Jones: Retrofitting suburbia
Can we rebuild our broken suburbs? Ellen Dunham-Jones shares a vision of dying malls rehabilitated, dead "big box" stores re-inhabited, and endless parking lots transformed into thriving wetlands.
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What happens to our bodies after we die? - Farnaz Khatibi Jafari
Since the dawn of humanity, an estimated 100.8 billion people have lived and died, a number that increases by about 0.8% of the world's population each year. What happens to all of those peoples' bodies after they die? And will the...
Crash Course
The War on Drugs: Crash Course Black American History #42
The War on Drugs is a decades-long United States policy intended to curb illegal drug use and trafficking. Long story short: it has not worked to reduce drug use or trade, and the policy has had devastating effects, especially on...
TED Talks
TED: How to build a thriving music scene in your city | Elizabeth Cawein
How does a city become known as a "music city"? Publicist Elizabeth Cawein explains how thriving music scenes make cities healthier and happier and shares ideas for bolstering your local music scene -- and showing off your city's talent...
TED Talks
Jaime Lerner: A song of the city
Jaime Lerner reinvented urban space in his native Curitiba, Brazil. Along the way, he changed the way city planners worldwide see what's possible in the metropolitan landscape.
TED Talks
Stephen Lawler: Tour Microsoft's Virtual Earth
Microsoft's Stephen Lawler gives a whirlwind tour of Virtual Earth, moving up, down and through its hyper-real cityscapes with dazzlingly fluidity, a remarkable feat that requires staggering amounts of data to bring into focus.
TED Talks
Philip Rosedale: Life in Second Life
Why build a virtual world? Philip Rosedale talks about the virtual society he founded, Second Life, and its underpinnings in human creativity. It's a place so different that anything could happen.
TED Talks
Robin Chase: The idea behind Zipcar (and what comes next)
Robin Chase founded Zipcar, the world’s biggest car-sharing business. That was one of her smaller ideas. Here she travels much farther, contemplating road-pricing schemes that will shake up our driving habits and a mesh network vast as...
TED Talks
Robert Hammond: Building a park in the sky
New York was planning to tear down the High Line, an abandoned elevated railroad in Manhattan, when Robert Hammond and a few friends suggested: Why not make it a park? He shares how it happened in this tale of local cultural activism.
TED Talks
TED: What can we learn from shortcuts? | Tom Hulme
How do you build a product people really want? Allow consumers to be a part of the process. "empathy for what your customers want is probably the biggest leading indicator of business success," says designer Tom Hulme. In this short...
TED Talks
Carlo Ratti: Architecture that senses and responds
With his team at SENSEable City Lab, MIT's Carlo Ratti makes cool things by sensing the data we create. He pulls from passive data sets -- like the calls we make, the garbage we throw away -- to create surprising visualizations of city...
TED Talks
David Rockwell: A memorial at Ground Zero
In this emotionally charged conversation with journalist Kurt Andersen, designer David Rockwell discusses the process of building a viewing platform at Ground Zero shortly after 9/11.
TED Talks
Jonathan Trent: Energy from floating algae pods
Call it "fuel without fossils": Jonathan Trent is working on a plan to grow new biofuel by farming micro-algae in floating offshore pods that eat wastewater from cities. Hear his team's bold vision for Project OMEGA (Offshore Membrane...
TED Talks
TED: Refugees want empowerment, not handouts | Robert Hakiza
The prevailing image of where refugees live is of temporary camps in isolated areas -- but in reality, nearly 60 percent of them worldwide end up in urban areas. TED Fellow Robert Hakiza takes us inside the lives of urban refugees -- and...