New Orleans -- Aclamor is rising for redesigning the world, so I thought I'd offer some solutions.
The population problem can be easily solved by moving everyone to Texas. According to the Toups Facts Service, the world's population can fit in four-person 5,000-square-foot homes the state of Texas, with 117 million homes left unoccupied. This is spacious living, less crowded than most neighborhoods in the world's largest cities.
There is enough room between houses for pigs and cows. Of course, there is no need for that, since all the pigs and the cows in the world can fit in the state of Iowa, with plenty of room left
over.
The rest of the world's regions can be given over to specific wildlife or crops: India, tigers. Russia, wheat. France, libraries.
Of course, this ideal scheme need not be implemented all at once. We could begin with major exchanges between cities of similar size: Everyone in New York would move to Tokyo. Everyone in Detroit to Liverpool. Everyone in New Orleans to Marseilles. This way we will become used to new conditions, and living in Texas should be a breeze.
Nor do we need to be overly concerned with overpopulation: All the new-born babies can fit in the Vatican, which during the nine-day world conference in Cairo, had zero population growth. Plenty of room just in St. Peter's.
The wholesale relocation of people would leave us much needed time to pursue the activities for which the human race was designed. Re-decorating, for instance. If everyone gave up their credit cards there would be enough of them to pave the Grand Canyon. Wouldn't that feel good? Walking on a plastic carpet over the Colorado River? Redesign the race and you will find the original design which is the creative need to design everything.
Andrei Codrescu's new book is "Zombification" (St. Martin's Press). He is editor of "Exquisite Corpse."
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