Several years ago, I posted a link to the nasa animation of land reclamation in houhai, one of my obsessions. I repost because the flick rewards – in that i can’t stop watching – repeat viewings. I’m also hoping that at some point the movie will be updated to include the past ten years. Also of note, G Burak and Karen C Seto (2008) have analyzed the environmental effects of urbanization, using Shenzhen as their case study. All scary, but unfortunately not unique. Shenzhen is merely a useful baseline for evaluating urbanization as a geological process because thirty years ago the area had not been industrialized. To see how New York has remade the world, for example, we close our eyes and imagine Mannahatta.