Location: Yakutsk.
A documentary by David Rosanis, from an idea by Bruno Nahon.
Duration: 03:02
Description
EXTREME CITIES
The unlikeliest habitations in the world
Yakutsk, Cherrapunji, Hammerfest, La Paz… these are the cities that top the charts.
They struggle doggedly against the toughest environmental conditions on our planet to provide their populations with an acceptable level of existence. These cities persist and continue flourishing in places where normally only traditional villages would be expected to survive. With a temperature of 50 degrees below zero, or the most horrendous monsoons in the world, or an altitude close to that of Mont Blanc, or a latitude where the sun disappears for more than three months… in these inhospitable locales, tens of thousands of people live, work, study, seek amusement, and sometimes fall sick because of their environment.
These cities, with the extreme adaptations they impose on their populations and the scientific and technical innovations necessary to maintain their infrastructures, are in effect open-sky laboratories on an urban scale. Armies of scientists study these people and their cultures, mining them for information on the settlement and development of human colonies in the most challenging environments imaginable. These cities are true guinea-pigs.
What the urban environments presented here all have in common is rapid demographic change, and at the same time a significant degradation of their geographic and climatic realities. Since their founding, their survival has always been an exercise in tightrope walking. But today the balance is breaking down. Most of these cities are caught between the demands of development and the inescapable realities of climate change.
The cities of Yakutsk, Cherrapunji, Hammerfest and La Paz are mobilizing all their reserves of courage, ingenuity and culture to prevent their extreme environments from winning the battle. They are experiencing either great societal success or great difficulties. But how are they managing really? And what can we learn from them about the urban animal?