Cities as blisters

Cities can be usefully seen as being cultural blisters on the planet. Here is New York City:

As with many blisters, cities contains swarming organisms that are capable of spreading the blisters to new areas - in this case, meme-infected humans. Roads act as the main vessels through which the infection is spread. Ships can spread the infection across the oceans.

It's hard to avoid epidemiological terminology in this sort of discussion, but I don't mean to imply that humans or cities are bad or undesirable. They spread like a plague on the planet, but that doesn't mean that we need a cure for the pox. Instead, encouraging the spread of the phenomenon - using education - seems more appropriate. In the glorious future it seems likely that the whole planet, including the oceans, will be covered.

To the right, is a picture of Europe at night: