

THE FUTURE OF CITIES

Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998

From: Paul Perry

Ref: FC_001



Peter Drucker (88) interviewed by Kevin Kelly in Wired 6.03 (March 1998):



"I've been telling people for 30 years that material changes in our lives are almost irrelevant. The important changes are demographic, in health care and education. The demographic revolution of the last 40 years is unprecedented. Today, the majority of people around the world live in cities. Urbanization changes your worldview. So, the real change is in meaning, not in goods."



What can we expect to happen because of these changes?



"Thirty years from now, the big cities may be dying very fast. Downtown office buildings have become dysfunctional. As information and ideas have become more mobile, the kind of work that doesn't require contact with customers or contact with other professionals - in other words, 75 percent of the work in any organization - doesn't have to be done downtown. For 300-odd years we have had a continuing, occasionally interrupted real estate boom. It was slowed down by depression, but not stopped. That boom may be over for good."



----------------------------------------------------------------------------



With the advent of bandwidth like ADSL, the migration of knowledge workers to the 'country-side/tax shelter' of their choice seems a step closer.



Drucker is certainly not the first to predict that the city in a few decades will be the terrain of only thrillseekers and the poor.



Do you believe this?



Is our individual investment as city dwellers, architects, critics, and planners riding the tail of the 'boom'? City land development and city government still make good business. Life in the city is still rich enough to justify inconveniences... But for how long?



Comments?



-- Paul







Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998

From: Jouke Kleerebezem

Ref: FC_002



Paul offered us Drucker, and his own questions:



The important changes are demographic, in health care and education. (Drucker)



In a slightly different order of priority: if anything will ruin the city it is poor (handling of, anticipation of) demographics (hey, that's poor politics, poor architecture and poor planning, stupid!), lousy education and suffocated health care -- we are only seeing the shy beginnings of that. Education will be a _huge_ problem. Will de-schooling precede a flee from the city? Diversity is colorful but no compensation for general inflation, or museification. Will dedicated city dwellers find other ways to compensate? Maybe. Will they inherit the earth? I doubt it. Their cities are too full and thus too slooow to respond to radical informational change to come. They spend their energy on old school exotics, picturesque modernities, museum backdrops, old media promiscuity. Cities are too much like cinemas: same death. Cities do'nt breed alternative power anymore: they ate their children.



Where will new cities arise? The distributed ones? They'll develop around the new educational and health care nodes. (Not the airports!)



For 300-odd years we have had a continuing, occasionally interrupted real estate boom. It was slowed down by depression, but not stopped. That boom may be over for good. (Drucker)



Everytime I walk my neighbourhood (where prices went up as high as Dfl. 4,000/sqm, and going) I'm wondering when to sell, and: to whom -- will I see the price drop coming? I'm not gonna wait for 30 years with Peter.



With the advent of bandwidth like ADSL, the migration of knowledge workers to the 'country-side/tax shelter' of their choice seems a step closer.



Nuke the country side. We'll have ubiquitous sub-urbanization. Taxes will disappear alltogether.



Drucker is certainly not the first to predict that the city in a few decades will be the terrain of only thrillseekers and the poor.



Do you believe this?



I tend to go along. I wonder if there are any facts and figures on who are swarming the cities, not living in them but visiting on the busy days. The cities will be burried under Koninginnedagen, Gay Olympics, EU rot ops and like backward politics, batchelor's parties, 24 hr. shopping, Mallification et al. We know this list is extendable.



Is our individual investment as city dwellers, architects, critics, and planners riding the tail of the 'boom'? City land development and city government still make good business. Life in the city is still rich enough to justify inconveniences... But for how long?



Bad education is no inconvenience, it's a gotspe. Run amock demographics is a nuisance: it prevents the forming of special interests. Immobility and lack of change would drive me out of the city eventually. Corporate cities/communities are no alternative (Schiphol, Niketown, Celebration, make your pick).



So the question still stands: where will informationalization-the-big-way drive us?



J.







Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998

From: Paul Perry

Ref: FC_003



In a slightly different order of priority: if anything will ruin the city it is poor (handling of, anticipation of) demographics (hey, that's poor politics, poor architecture and poor planning, stupid!), lousy education and suffocated health care...



Huh? What's this? Are you saying that city's today are being planned in a 'poorer' fashion than they were in the past? I'm under the impression that city's (like businesses) were *never* planned as well as they are today! More specialists are involved, more conferences, journals, workgroups, ideologies. Same goes for education and health care.



Could it be that we perceive large flaws in these 'social goods' because we're paying too much attention to them? That we (as a social body) have too much excess energy to devote to these questions? I'm reminded of the psychologist Celia Green's critique of sociology in the 'Human Evasion' http://www.deoxy.org/evasion/toc.html which basically proposes that our frustration with the fact of our limited conditions (read: lifespan) breeds a social neuroticism. In other words, our attention to our neighbors (and their situation) is pathological...



Pessimism is the plague. Take me away from all this death.



Where will new cities arise? The distributed ones? They'll develop around the new educational and health care nodes. (Not the airports!)



Interesting idea. Cities as schools. Cities as hospitals/preventative medical centers. Groningen, Amsterdam and Maastricht already have their (enclave) academic hospitals which function as small self-contained cities.



I wonder if there are any facts and figures on who are swarming the cities, not living in them but visiting on the busy days. The cities will be burried under Koninginnedagen, Gay Olympics, EU rot ops and like backward politics, batchelor's parties, 24 hr. shopping, Mallification et al. We know this list is extendable.



Another interesting idea. The city designed for the flash crowd. (The 'flash crowd' for those not familiar with the term describes a phenomena of the world wide web- where an enormous crowd descends on a web site for a short period of time (a few hours to a few days) and then suddenly disappates. The term is derived from 'flash floods' of water.)



So the question still stands: where will informationalization-the-big-way drive us?



Mr. Gates is asking (I wonder, is this his *real* name?) "Where do you want to go today?"



-- Paul



(who is thinking about davidkremers' retelling of Gene Wilder's Frankenstein skit 'walk this way' as 'this way to the stars')







Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998

From: Jouke Kleerebezem

FC_004



Paul,



I mean exactly what you say, but i'm not a historian and i did not refer to the past, just said that cities are suffocating today: in the Netherlands this means DBP: death by planning (using the specialists, conferences, journals, workgroups, market ideologies for all the wrong reasons). Building (cities, communities) is about getting it right and not about getting the vote. Same goes for education and health care. Of course we can get it right in any hood.



Could it be that we perceive large flaws in these 'social goods' because we're paying too much attention to them? That we (as a social body) have too much excess energy to devote to these questions? I'm reminded of the psychologist Celia Green's critique of sociology in the 'Human Evasion' http://www.deoxy.org/evasion/toc.html which basically proposes that our frustration with the fact of our limited conditions (read: lifespan) breeds a social neuroticism.



social neuroticism built cities and communities before



In other words, our attention to our neighbors (and their situation) is pathological...



we are our neighbors (i am the other), but what if they come over the fence... foraging information. Maybe 'building' is about keeping others out (i feel my misanthropy itching). Building as immunity.



Pessimism is the plague. Take me away from all this death.



bored _stiff_ is the plague



Interesting idea. Cities as schools. Cities as hospitals/preventative medical centers. Groningen, Amsterdam and Maastricht already have their (enclave) academic hospitals which function as small self-contained cities.



Much more interesting so than the acclaimed new cities: let's hang out at school, hospital, kindergarten (the 24hr economy will change where we hang out)



Another interesting idea. The city designed for the flash crowd.



Flash crowd schools, hospitals, sanatoria, health farms. Kindergartens are great pick-up places (for over thirtysomethings), even better than museums...



Mr. Gates is asking (I wonder, is that his *real* name?) "Where do you want >to go today?"



Gates' own place is informationalized to the bone. Shall we flash crowd his estate and build a two-day city around it? Burning Man needs some competition. A tent camp. TAZ. Festival. Hackers conference. Festive cities. There's lots of optimism in not getting it right too!



J.







Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998

From: davidkremers

FC_005



hi all...



In a slightly different order of priority: if anything will ruin the city it is poor (handling of, anticipation of) demographics (hey, that's poor politics, poor architecture and poor planning, stupid!), lousy education and suffocated health care



...exactly...the cummins engine company did a study on community size in the 70's upon which to base their factory locations...they came to the conclusion that humans only operate communities well up to the size of about 100,000 people...and all their factories in the past two decades have been sited according to this policy...



Everytime I walk my neighbourhood (where prices went up as high as Dfl. 4,000/sqm, and going) I'm wondering when to sell



...watch for the numbers of children in your neighborhood to change...



Nuke the country side. We'll have ubiquitous sub-urbanization.



...see frank lloyd wright's broadacre city...



dk







Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998

From: davidkremers

Ref: FC_006



hi guys...



[i'm dropping the others since they don't appear to be following the thread]



Huh? What's this? Are you saying that city's today are being planned in a 'poorer' fashion than they were in the past?



...in a sense yes...since they are planned with a more short term view...the best parts of denver [with the exception of the new baseball stadium] were all planned at the last turn of the century...and the new stadium is an excellent example...it was constructed to strengthen the sense of community along the north end of downtown...and in the first few years it worked...but in the past couple of years that trend has reversed...the community has been totally destroyed and except for game days there's no longer anyone there...



in short...the flash crowds drive away anyone who's life is not closely tied to that specific industry...and strong human communities depend on a balance of diverse human interests...



dk







Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998

From: Jouke Kleerebezem

Ref: FC_007



hi david,



Mr. Gates is asking (I wonder, is that his *real* name?)



...in fact it is...a friend of mine in seattle has known his family since before he was dos...



'Gates before dos', this man has a history...



Gates' own place is informationalized to the bone.



...no it's merely electrified to the bone...and like all great xanadu's it isn't finished yet...



let's assume it is gonna be datafied? He'll have to feed it continuously to keep the place alive and indeed it will never be finished, like all great xanadu's. It will make a great themepark after his death.



[who's rethinking macluhan in terms of electricity rather than information]



come again?



J.







Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998

From: davidkremers by way of Paul Perry

Ref: FC_008



hi guys...



[i'm dropping the others since they don't appear to be following the thread]



----------



NOTE: david, I'm reposting this to the others as the point of the thread was to begin a discussion concerning another project I'm working on (future planning of amsterdam)... Hope you and they don't mind. I like that you've brought up the issue of 'shelf life' in relation to a plan. Can a plan that would support long-term communities (planned for hundreds of years, like the english garden) be hybridized with a plan for next weeks flash crowd?



Nathalie, Maurice, Arjen?



----------



Huh? What's this? Are you saying that city's today are being planned in a 'poorer' fashion than they were in the past?



...in a sense yes...since they are planned with a more short term view...the best parts of denver [with the exception of the new baseball stadium] were all planned at the last turn of the century...and the new stadium is an excellent example...it was constructed to strengthen the sense of community along the north end of downtown...and in the first few years it worked...but in the past couple of years that trend has reversed...the community has been totally destroyed and except for game days there's no longer anyone there...



in short...the flash crowds drive away anyone who's life is not closely tied to that specific industry...and strong human communities depend on a balance of diverse human interests...



dk







Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998

From: Paul Michael Perry

Ref: FC_009



At 10:55 +0100 12/3/98, davidkremers wrote:



...exactly...the cummins engine company did a study on community size in the 70's upon which to base their factory locations...they came to the conclusion that humans only operate communities well up to the size of about 100,000 people...and all their factories in the past two decades have been sited according to this policy...



I'm not sure whether I'd consider research results from an engine manufacturing company. It sounds a bit Tayloristic don't you think?



But let's discuss the optimum size of a community or city from a number of different perspectives--a spectrum with the 'city for one' at one end and the global megapolis at the other.



I'd like to live in a city where it was possible to be constantly surprised by new neighborhoods/squares etc. I was (rather naively) excited when I moved to Rotterdam with the idea that there'd be lots of cool places to explore. I haven't really been out much yet (except to run) but I've already got the feeling that I've seen everything *interesting* here.



I'm starting to believe that *small places* can actually have (afford?) more *rich* diversity than large places. Funny huh?



And what about the size of the city in relation to its potential for interaction? I found the following in my archives, culled from the Extropian List in 1993. I like the author's idea of 'cohorts'- community ontologies/common ground where the common factor is the 'amount' of experience with a new and rapidly evolving technology.



For example: people who were online before the web see the net differently from those who used netscape as their first net interface (or bought a computer because of the internet).



Arjen: what would the design of a city as a stage for a singularity look like?



>Date: Sat, 4 Dec 93 13:44:21 GMT

>From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu

>Subject: Re: VirtSem: VirtBiz

>

>Douglas Barnes piece about the importance of interactivity reminds

>me of the idea in the Jane Jacobs books about cities that a lot of the

>value of cities lies in the random interaction they offer.Any ideas

>for how a net can offer interaction with random people in a conveniant

>way? I think the features required are having control over about how

>many randoms you meet and having a reason to interact with them (people

>tend not to like having someone come up to them for no reason at all).

>

>I've been speculating on what the net might be like when billions

>of people are signed on--it's got to be different--the bandwidth

>is almost unmanagable as it is. (I'm speaking as a reader.) Will

>there be more local groups? Cohorts? (Cohorts are people who have

>joined at roughly the same time.) Maybe really big cohorts (10E6 or 7

>people) with review services to let you know about discussions you

>might be interested in from other cohorts? In effect, I'm talking

>about a hierarchy of nets.

>

>

>Nancy Lebovitz



Can we view the city as collaborative filter? An ontology? A common ground in which a unique society can evolve?



Jouke: Nuke the country side. We'll have ubiquitous sub-urbanization.

david: ...see frank lloyd wright's broadacre city...



Could you explain Wright's Broadacre City to me david, (or can someone else)?



-- Paul







Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998

From: davidkremers

Ref: FC_010



hi all...



I'm not sure whether I'd consider research results from an engine manufacturing company. It sounds a bit Tayloristic don't you think?



...well actually they are a rather important patron in architecture and city planning...they've paid the architectural fees for schools etc so long as the towns agree to use internationally recognized architects...and these small towns have attracted the best...in an experiment that's been going on now for almost 40 years...



dk







Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998

From: Nathalie de Vries

Ref: FC_011



Hallo allemaal,



I think there will always be cities, only their places, shapes and purposes change continiously. At the moment it seems they develop in 2 directions, becoming both more concentrated (like maybe the corporate cities) and thinner (90% of the Netherlands could be considered as such a thin city). This could be interesting if only the differences become clear, and this development doesn't stop half way. Broadacre could be a model for the thin city, one could also think of a well connected sprawl of small communities. For the concentrated city I can't think of a good example, maybe Manhatten, but they are indeed prepared for flash crowds. In both cities, the individual house is the most important element, neighbourhoods are just one (the material) of the communities one lives in.



Nathalie de Vries







Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998

From: Jouke Kleerebezem

Ref: FC-012



Nathalie wrote:



In both cities, the individual house is the most important element, neighbourhoods are just one (the material) of the communities one lives in.



this brings in the profound shifts in private/public space and communication that also my appreciation of the city (and for that matter of any mode of exchange) deals with. I increasingly benefit the way in which private/public expression is served in mailing lists like this one, and in one-to-one correspondencies.



Jouke







Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998

From: Paul Perry

Ref: FC_013



At 15:47 +0100 15/3/98, Nathalie wrote:



I think there will always be cities, only their places, shapes and purposes change continiously.



I think that there will always be cities too. But one can not help wonder WHY THERE ARE CITIES?



I'd propose 3 reasons: Love, Defence and Money.



LOVE



Most of humanity is social and gregarious, so much so that they even consider heaven as a place (city) inhabited by other people. People love to be around other people. Psychoneuroimmunologists would even argue love breeds health.



Howard Bloom in 'Biology, Evolution and the Global Brain':



"The immune systems of creatures with few or no friends and intimate kin shut down, while the immunological resistance of those who are part of the social web remain far more vigorous."



(compare this to Satre's view that: 'Hell is other people').



- a neo-darwinist would argue that love is selfish rather than altruistic. This would be an interesting point to explore, to what extent are cities (designed) zones for either selfish or altruistic behavior?



- Bloom and others are arguing from the point of view of 'group selection'. They see the city as a 'single being', a superorganism. The individual human is reduced in this vision to the emphemerality of a cell.



>From the superorganistic perspective, cities are really born, products of the intercourse between other cities. Cities can have sex (with and without love).



DEFENCE



Virilio in 'Pure War':



"The city has existed for a long time. It is there to bear witness to the human species' extraordinary capacities for concentration."



And:



"There are two great schools of thought on urban planning: for one, the origins of the crystalization of the city, of urban sedentariness is mercantilism; for the other-the minor one, with Philip Toynbee-it's war, commerce only coming afterword. Obviously I find myself in the minority, which claims that the city is the result of war, at least the preparation for war."



I've always found this point of Virilio interesting, and useful when applied to views of schools (education as defence), and corporations (business as defence).



In an unstable and unpredictable environment we attach great significance to information which can help us (or our family group) survive.



Howard Bloom in 'Social Synapses to Social Ganglions: Complex Adaptive Systems in the Jurassic Age'



"Many species of birds are attracted to their equivalent of the big city as we are, and given the chance, will congregate in the largest clusters they can possibly form. Some bird flocks outdo the largest human municipalities by a factor of two - reaching 50 million or more. This sociable overcrowding seems to court extraordinary risk. The larger the flock, the larger the territory it must cover to feed itself, and the greater the chance of a famine. So why do avians become hypnotised by the urge to join a crowd?...



... Why then, do birds congregate in avian megalopolises? There is something far more critical than energy to be gained - information. Birds rely for their perception of the world on those around them."



- The flash crowd (without a physical city) is a nomadic information processor. Hungry and high. Can we describe the internal dynamics (and turmoil) of this crowd as architecture (in terms of architecture)?



MONEY



The city as a stage for business is well understood, as is the energy economy of the city as a complex ecosystem. I am under the impression that our cities are becoming less economic attractors and more cultural attractors, whereas the third world cities are more economic attractors and less cultural.



--------------------------------------



Nathalie:

I think there will always be cities, only their places, shapes and purposes change continiously.



Questions:



1) To what extent future cities need to be material? Can we apply our design skills to developing cities of software?



2) Can we design cities without considering present day society? Instead of structures being designed to fulfill (ie. follow) social needs can social needs and structures emerge to exploit the niches created by radical city designs? (Maurice: Is this what Lebbeus Woods is all about? 'Build it and they will come?')



3) How can we SPEED UP the "continuous change" in "places, shapes and purposes"? In software this is being achieved by the move to 'object orientedness'. Not only is object oriented code modular it also functions very cleverly and permits smaller scale (micro) economic gains by its builders.



Nathalie:

At the moment it seems they develop in 2 directions, becoming both more concentrated (like maybe the corporate cities) and thinner (90% of the Netherlands could be considered as such a thin city). This could be interesting if only the differences become clear, and this development doesn't stop half way.



There are only two universal directions, Nathalie, in and out, matter imploding and exploding, contraction and expansion. In order to design for these (and not stop half way) one would have to explore the physics of the black star/black hole at one extreme and the void at the other. (In today's terms Kowloon vs. Broadacre?)



The cosmologist Frank Tipler, in his book 'The Physics of Immortality' describes an interstellar von Neumann probe containing a city of 10,000 people weighing in at approx. 100 grams:



"To get an idea of what can be encoded with 10e24 bits of information, recall in the previous section I showed that a human-level intelligent being can probably be simulated with 10e15 bits. Asssuming that a simulation of the biosupport system for this being will require a 100,000 times more memory, a simulation of a human being with biosupport system would require 10e20 bits. Thus this 100 gram probe would carry a simulation of a complete city of 10,000 people!"



Nathalie:

In both cities, the individual house is the most important element, neighbourhoods are just one (the material) of the communities one lives in.



How large or how small should a home be (measured in atoms)? For how long (or short) a period should a home last (measured in half-lives)?



Cities we will always have. But they could be in such strange forms...



-- Paul (who appologizes for the length of this post)







Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998

From: Paul Perry

Ref: FC_014



Nathalie wrote:

In both cities, the individual house is the most important element, neighbourhoods are just one (the material) of the communities one lives in.



Jouke wrote:

this brings in the profound shifts in private/public space and communication that also my appreciation of the city (and for that matter of any mode of exchange) deals with. I increasingly benefit the way in which private/public expression is served in mailing lists like this one, and in one-to-one correspondencies.



Please see my last post. The private/public dichotomy might better be phrased as the self/other dichotomy to include the possibility of the private superorganism on one end of the scale and the private (selfish) gene or cell at the other.



It's all a question of containment. Which house, which city, which country does an individual (gene, person, superorganism/group) declare and use...



Thus the concept 'private house' can 'house' entities of varying scales. Cities then are loose connections between 'private houses' and various structures that have evolved for exchange (and love and defense).



-- Paul



(who wonders whether this _conjecture_ is useful, and would like to hear from Arjen and Maurice) Please report errors to --> errors@alamut.com

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