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Lifting Gates | Kenny Liu | TEDxHongKong


the world will not be destroyed by those

who do evil but by those who watch them

without doing anything

let’s not prove this guy right he’s

proven a couple of theories right in his

lifetime so recently I was presented

with this amazing opportunity I design a

city in China as the city is called

Ansan

it’s located where you see here and the

the next picture is the picture on the

side is of wayde’s oh where the city

resides and swayin is a third-tier city

it’s a tear threesome Utley about three

million folks live in that city and so

it’s got a kind of a middle-income its

up and rising this is the site it’s

literally at the center of the city and

basically it’s a redevelopment project

there are existing about 20,000

inhabitants on the site and they’re

these mountains are called karst

formations and they were formed by the

dissolution of the land through kind of

acidic rain and other things over

millennia and I was looking at these

sites and I was looking at the mountains

when I was on site and I thought to

myself wow you know something seems

really familiar here so I called up my

dad and I said didn’t didn’t grandfather

didn’t grandpa fight the war in these

mountains and my dad confirmed that he

said yes he did the Battle of Mount song

was a pivotal battle in China during the

I know Japanese war in which the Chinese

began to take back China and my

grandfather fought diligently in that

war in the third battle before they took

over he actually got wounded and but the

Chinese one obviously eventually and

then he moved to Shanghai and then

Taiwan and then the US where my family

and I grew up but he took back China and

now growing out America I live and work

back in China China as you all know is

about 1.3 billion people but that’s only

accounted for the there about two to

three hundred million not accounted for

there about sixty different distinct

minority groups in China as well so it’s

quite a diverse community in China but

China is crowded and industrialization

hasn’t been really great to China it’s

caused a lot of crowding over building

but also caused a lot of loneliness

people at web cafe people taking dumps

in the subway not knowing where the

bathroom is neglected seniors people on

the ground that fallen and nobody helps

them out cities that are built but

nobody actually lives in them even

though it’s crowded

kind of a weird paradox isn’t it and

then there’s cities that are polluted

terribly because of industrialization

cities that are just horrible to live in

dust and grime and smog children suffer

suffer remarkably as well in these

cities so I saw it to myself my god I’m

back at the site I got a lot to do I got

a lot to figure out here so we don’t

kind of repeat those mistakes so I

thought real estate development could be

what determines the future of humanity

and I reflected upon in terms of real

estate being a cradle a cradle for our

values a cradle that determines how we

interact as a community but technology

hasn’t been kind necessarily technology

like the elevator have lifted us off the

land that we toiled and on but

technology has also brought us elevators

that have done this created terrible

spaces cars bring us from point A to

point B but they’ve also created

disparate social conditions in which in

which people are separated safety is an

issue 50% of paved roads in 50% of the

land in China is paved road and then

big-box retail is thriving because of

the car and I’ll show you a video from a

zombie video from World War Z what Brad

and no sorry this is actually from Black

Friday two weeks ago and you can see how

much people care for each other as

opposed to that old toaster but so there

are so many divisions in the world right

now there are mental their political

truck oh sorry so excuse me sorry

there are their country divisions there

are topographies roads apartments walls

all sorts of divisions in the world

right now how can we begin to heal those

divisions bring people back together

make communities happen and we can look

at this video and kind of get a sense of

how that could be possible we did was we

took one rat who is always the free rat

and then we had a stable of strangers so

on each day and we do 12 days of testing

each day the three rats saw a different

track track and they open for strangers

just like they were cage mates however

when these rats were tested with rats

from another string in this case a black

caked variety they would not help the

stranger in distress that think that

there might be some kind of social bias

will rational only help rats who are

similar to them and that’s the question

we paired the two rocks of different

types and house them together and we

found that once they were housed

together those rats

for each other so they were willing to

help each other even though they weren’t

similar to each other to figure out

whether helping the Navy required

familiarity with an individual or with a

string

the researchers house albino rat report

picked one for two weeks

the albino rat was then green house with

another albino rat before testing they

still remember living with these this

one one individual black cape breath and

consequently they ended up opening for

the black cape strangers what that says

is that by Iraq needs to know one

individual of that type in order to

extend a very pro-social feeling towards

others that look like or smell like or

feel like that so in other words it’s a

birth social environment make them so I

cut that off a little bit but a diverse

social environment created empathy

empathy empathy empathy indifference

because of a lack of shared experience

if a cat and a dog can hug each other in

this very cute little picture here so

can humans rights so can humans just by

having experience together I’m sure they

didn’t just get together today they got

together because they were in the same

space so back to the site again so we

look at the site and say oh my god now

now we have a way of looking at this in

a special way how can we build a

sustainable community for 45,000

individuals that bridges diversity using

technology in the right way that that is

really represents our high values and we

look at the site and it’s beautiful it’s

got these cars formations so how can we

take those cars formations and not

create who knows what Midwestern City is

this who knows where what city this is

in China so how can we create a city

that has some character here right that

doesn’t become any old city that was

Nanjing I don’t know what the Midwestern

city is it just

so you have these land formations

outside of the city and then you have

the future planned roads inside the city

that then begin to cause those divisions

again right there are seven plots of

land here there could be seven different

divisions there but we’ve been begin to

take those cars formations and the idea

of them and begin to integrate them and

create these peaks and valleys in the

site and begin to bridge those divisions

lift those gates and we’ve caught we

begin to create these interconnected

paths similar to how you have in Hong

Kong but we we’ve widened them so that

they have kind of these Park connector

issues and then there are these

waterways and and peaks and valleys in

the site that are the buildings and then

there’s the section where where people

can walk across the street feel safe and

not not feel the division of the road

and that’s the plan and the beauty of

this particular site in Gwaine so is

there are 20 distinct minority groups

currently living on the site and instead

of assimilating them we are integrating

them into the fabric of the site we are

taking them allowing them to farm the

land on the site farm the the urban

farms allow them interact with the

communities the social activities that

occur on the site allow them to the farm

survive thrive for themselves and for

the communities beyond and sell and make

living for themselves they’re working

with Hitachi to do that we working with

Hitachi to to bring the best of

technology in terms of AI and

supercomputing into the sensors into the

community to be able to track and

monitor everything in the community and

keep the affordability of the community

key real estate is what really

undermines the the the divisions in in

poverty and in people in the world right

now and there are sustainability as well

we’re making sure that all these

communities are sustainable and

affordable by by introducing solar

panels and greens and waterways and and

water conservation and passive and solar

heating cooling so these are some of the

photos from the site we’re terracing the

residential to allow for that urban

farming we’re creating

conditions where the center of the site

is this big Greenway you never see any

roads hopefully in the site and you

bring people together and the buildings

become those karst formations that

exists in the site and they Terrace back

and and people are hanging out and the

buildings become these kind of

sculptures in the landscape and people

are having fun and and it’s only in a

third-tier city imagine if we could do

this in a third-tier city and this is

that karst formation condition and this

is a rendering of the condition so in

the next 10 years this is going to be

built piece by piece so empathy and

design design and empathy empathetic

design we believe is key to really

bringing and bridging families and

communities together and I would hope

that I could make my grandfather proud

of the country he saved and children

raised in these communities can lift

those gates and hopefully one day save the world themselves thanks

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