The Life-Sized City

- Season 1

(2017)

The former main Colombian drug cartel capital is recovering from half a century of bloody street violence and bad governance. Although major projects, including the famous cable lifts, improved public transportation vastly, it remains divided into very unequal neighborhoods, but is tackling some divides, as by transforming the river from a dirty division line into a connected green growth area. Private initiatives -sometime even illegal- are numerous and crucial, inspiring are still substituting the often-absent authorities, but empowerment transforms passive city ...

Danish-Canadian Mikael enjoined previous visits to Canada's true metropolis, and now examines its uniqueness thoroughly. It's very well managed organized, and yet some regret it rarely leads but rather follows examples that proved working elsewhere. The mix is quite attractive and dynamic.

Mikael visits Paris, and he takes his teen son and younger daughter along with him. Paris is a storied city, more than most others in the world. It is synonymous with inspiring change, fighting for it, demanding it, forcing it, the birthplace of revolutions. A new revolution is under way, an urban revolution and he intends to imbed themselves in the middle of this rebel metropolis. He visits some very different areas of the city that have new ideas about how to help people.

The Thai capital and only metropolis, powerhouse and harboring most good jobs, is poorly managed by the military junta. In fact public authorities fail to make any proper training, still working from over fifteen year old demographic premises, outdated by millions of extra inhabitants and vast extension, while sticking to urbanism concepts long abandoned abroad. Colville-Andersen meets some of the private planers who attempt to achieve a more viable approach, taking account of such evident givens as the prominent part of the Chao Phraya river the city was built on and...

With a complex history of religious, political and cultural struggles, this city maintains a liberal reputation and is known as party central. We see the planning, or lack thereof, of city areas and the impact on the residents.

As usual Mikael explores the city with several residents and tries to understand how each component of the largest urban area in the world all melds together and works. This city has 38 million people and there were many homes built rapidly after WW2 through necessity due to much destruction. So now many of those cheaply built homes need renovating or replacing. We see how the culture does not allow for littering, and how residents adhere to the letter of the law much more closely than most other places. Japan on the whole is a very safe destination.