full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Alex Steffen: The shareable future of cities

Unscramble the Blue Letters


The solution, in fact, may be closer to hand than we think, because all of those cities we're bdiuling are opportunities. Every city dnrteeeims to a very lagre extent the amount of energy used by its inhabitants. We tend to think of energy use as a behavioral thing — I choose to turn this light switch on — but really, enormous amounts of our energy use are perenditesd by the kinds of cneotuiimms and cities that we live in. I won't show you very many ghraps tadoy, but if I can just focus on this one for a moment, it really tells us a lot of what we need to know — which is, quite simply, that if you look, for example, at transportation, a major croeagty of climate emissions, there is a direct relationship between how dense a city is and the anumot of climate emissions that its residents spew out into the air. And the correlation, of course, is that denser places tend to have lower emissions — which isn't really all that difficult to figure out, if you think about it.

Open Cloze


The solution, in fact, may be closer to hand than we think, because all of those cities we're ________ are opportunities. Every city __________ to a very _____ extent the amount of energy used by its inhabitants. We tend to think of energy use as a behavioral thing — I choose to turn this light switch on — but really, enormous amounts of our energy use are ___________ by the kinds of ___________ and cities that we live in. I won't show you very many ______ _____, but if I can just focus on this one for a moment, it really tells us a lot of what we need to know — which is, quite simply, that if you look, for example, at transportation, a major ________ of climate emissions, there is a direct relationship between how dense a city is and the ______ of climate emissions that its residents spew out into the air. And the correlation, of course, is that denser places tend to have lower emissions — which isn't really all that difficult to figure out, if you think about it.

Solution


  1. category
  2. large
  3. building
  4. today
  5. graphs
  6. communities
  7. predestined
  8. amount
  9. determines

Original Text


The solution, in fact, may be closer to hand than we think, because all of those cities we're building are opportunities. Every city determines to a very large extent the amount of energy used by its inhabitants. We tend to think of energy use as a behavioral thing — I choose to turn this light switch on — but really, enormous amounts of our energy use are predestined by the kinds of communities and cities that we live in. I won't show you very many graphs today, but if I can just focus on this one for a moment, it really tells us a lot of what we need to know — which is, quite simply, that if you look, for example, at transportation, a major category of climate emissions, there is a direct relationship between how dense a city is and the amount of climate emissions that its residents spew out into the air. And the correlation, of course, is that denser places tend to have lower emissions — which isn't really all that difficult to figure out, if you think about it.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
climate change 4
fossil fuels 2
clean energy 2
people living 2
climate emissions 2
entire city 2
home power 2


Important Words


  1. air
  2. amount
  3. amounts
  4. behavioral
  5. building
  6. category
  7. choose
  8. cities
  9. city
  10. climate
  11. closer
  12. communities
  13. correlation
  14. dense
  15. denser
  16. determines
  17. difficult
  18. direct
  19. emissions
  20. energy
  21. enormous
  22. extent
  23. fact
  24. figure
  25. focus
  26. graphs
  27. hand
  28. inhabitants
  29. kinds
  30. large
  31. light
  32. live
  33. lot
  34. major
  35. moment
  36. opportunities
  37. places
  38. predestined
  39. relationship
  40. residents
  41. show
  42. simply
  43. solution
  44. spew
  45. switch
  46. tells
  47. tend
  48. today
  49. transportation
  50. turn