Human Movement

Transportation Networks

With over 1.2 billion cars, 40,000 airplanes, 50,000 merchant ships and millions of freight trains all travelling as quickly as they can, the earth has never in its history seen so much movement. Over 64 million kilometers of road and one million of railway track bind over 4,000 cities, 44,000 airports and almost 5,000 ports into a global network for the movement of people and goods. This infrastructure is now complimented by the post-industrial infrastructure of cables and satellites enabling words and images to move close to the speed of light.

Seen at the planetary scale, it is possible to think that the proliferation of these systems indicates that the earth is entering into an entirely new and unprecedented evolutionary phase. These networks of global connectivity are however exclusively to the advantage of the human, and the challenge now is to also develop a global network of green infrastructure so that all species can adapt to climate change.