If in the next 100 years we can expect human population to reach 11 billion people, can we think this is sustainable? The Bio City World Map by Terreform is a forecast of the world population density in the next 100 years. It has been modeled by combining all the world cities together as one continuous growth system. The current phenomena of explosive growth – the “Mega-city” and the “Instant City” merge together into a continuous urban construct. As human population expands, we see it as one single macro city spread across the continents. Other cities, mainly in the developed world, demonstrate the opposite tendency, because they are shrinking at a significant rate.

In Terreform they argue that most nations cannot view the effects of planetary population density through the lens of just one city or region. Instead we aim to reveal the long-range effects of massive human population in areas of present and future urban intensity.

On the reverse side of the mapping installation are focal points of biological details in specific localized city forms. They zoom in on density zones that are dispersed throughout the globe. These points use the technique of “bacteriography” – bacteria photography – to shift scale and underscore the highest zones of growth. Our method creates a real-time parametric display using Gammaproteo Bacterium Escherichia coli Strain K12 in agar medium that has been genetically modified to express color under UV light. The strains used are harmless variants of E. coli, commonly studied all across Europe and the United States. They have been utilized in schools for decades without any safety issues and are considered non-pathogenic and innocuous.

By using bio lab based materials, in Terreform they expect to narrow the gap between idealized mathematical interpretations and observable events in nature.