// DATABANK - 'VISIONS OF THE CITY' [D. PINDER, 2006]

 “The city expresses, concretely, the prevailing organisation of everyday life. The nightmare of the contemporary metropolis – space and time engineered to isolate, exhaust and abstract us – has driven the lesson home to everybody and its very pitilessness has begun to engender a new utopian consciousness.” – Situationist International

> Revolutionary Urban Transformation

The Situationist International, formed in 1957, developed criticisms of contemporary urbanism and postulated upon possible urban futures. They viewed the city as the principal location for the creation and maintenance of social interactions of domination, as spaces of alienation and control. But, they also viewed the city with hope – recognising the inherent potential of the city as a place of liberty where people could live and satisfy their personal needs and desires free from oppressive urbanism. It was the S.I.’s coupling of urban critique within a wider revolutionary political agenda that separated them from other movements seeking urban transformation at that time. For the S.I., the city was a highly contested territory, both politically and socially. They attempted to investigate the city via radical forms of geographical action and research, in an effort to instigate urban transformation. Terms such as “construction of situations”, “Psychogeography”, and “Unitary Urbanism” were employed to convey their investigations and explorations to the population at large, in the hope of igniting social and spatial revolution.

> Participation vs. Spectacle

“Unitary Urbanism” was not postulated as an urban doctrine, but rather as an urban critique, with its utopianism laying in its vision towards achieving a “Terrain of experience for the social space of the cities of the future.” The S.I. also advocated the city in a permanent state of flux, and was opposed to the notion of urban permanence in both temporal and spatial terms. “Unitary Urbanism” was to be dynamic and evolutionary, preoccupied with the generation of situations, and the outcomes of people’s actions and desires – an urbanism of participation rather than spectacle.

> Unspectacular Spectacular Society

According to Debord, the spectacle was the dominant feature within society and urban space, simultaneously homogenising and fracturing the city and society. Urban participation was being marginalised via the exodus of people and street life from urban centres due to the domineering interests of the state. The S.I. viewed the city as a tool for asserting political oppression and control, and it worked towards the revolutionary aim of realigning urban spectacular society towards a participatory society. The S.I. rejected the remaking of post-war cities by interest groups and “ideal” urban planning schemes [such as by Le Corbusier]. Instead they promoted a new utopianism based upon street activity and everyday life.

+ Visions of the City - the participatory 'urban flaneur' [CTW 2009]

> Social + Spatial Synchronisation

The maps by Debord counter rigidly functional urban plans by suggesting alternate routes and passages through a fluid city. Derives were seen as more significant than the destination, and were seen as an alternative method to immerse oneself in the city and comprehend and synchronise oneself with its flows and rhythms. Debord’s maps “embody a subversive attitude towards representations of the city”. They question notions of temporal and spatial orientation in their quest for future urban potentials. The maps were intended to form the basis for future social utopian spaces within the city, and lead to a revolution in social and spatial interactions. 

// DATABANK - 'VISIONS OF THE CITY' [D. PINDER, 2006]

Utopia is envisioned to be an ideal place, where love and joy is felt by all its citizens, and a sense of community and a shared goal dominate the social structure. Utopia can be understood as an expression of a desire for a better way of being and living, the ideal condition or blueprint for a perfect future. The word utopia refers simultaneously to ‘somewhere good’ and to ‘nowhere’; the double meaning is found in the Greek compounds eu-topos [a happy or fortunate place] and ou-topos [no place]. Interestingly, all visions of utopia focus upon the city, so much so that it can be argued that utopia and the image of the city are inseparable. Utopian ideas vary depending on the ideological basis upon which they were formed. There are those who argue both that utopia is a fantasy which should be left to the pages of history, and others who believe it is a necessary element to the creative process of design. The main characteristic of the visions discussed in this book is that, for the most part, the instigators of the utopian plans insisted that they were not utopian in an unrealistic or impractical, belonging to a distant future or to the realm of fantasy, but rather they asserted that the transformation they imagined could be realised if certain changes to society and space were set in motion.

> The Demise of Utopia

During the 20^th Century, utopia has played a vital role in social and political thought and activism across the spectrum. For the S.I. and their avant-garde associates, a key task for radical political action lay in changing cities and social space.  Urbanism was not reducible to planning, but incorporated political questions about everyday life and urban culture.  They critiqued the alienating and image-saturated conditions of the post war era, the ‘society of the spectacle’ and advocated autonomous struggles against hierarchical power in all its manifestations. Many urban commentators have pointed out the numerous catastrophes and horrors to which utopian plans have lead arguing that utopian ideals have been too often driven by authoritarian principles, and too closely associated with totalitarianism, and that its demise should be welcomed. Perhaps, as urban designers, we should be looking upon the recent collapse of utopia as a reflective and long-term crisis of the city and of urbanity generally.  After all, utopia was the collective dream that drove the modernisation process in, by its capitalist and socialist forms.

> Utopia = Dystopia

In Thomas More’s so-called Utopia, and later in George Orwell’s 1984, harmonious social and moral order are maintained via surveillance; overriding traditional utopian values and confronting disordered spaces thus establishing a new order.  Has today’s ‘surveillance society’ fallen victim to these dystopian characteristics? Also the question arises as to the validity of utopian principles when one man’s dream-world is another man’s nightmare. Due to the diversity of opinion about what is a desirable state, utopia can be rendered completely worthless at best or deeply oppressive at worst. Chtcheglov believes utopia has been suppressed by dominant social relations and ideological apparatuses.  He argues that the realm of production and conveniences has overstepped an initial aim of alleviating material cares, and the urban landscape, a once charged and poetic realm, has become drained of mystery and passion, in what he describes as the “banalisation of city space”.

> Post-Utopia?

Our imaginations, haunted by the old archetypes, have remained far behind the sophistication of machines in the information age. With the rise of relativity in all spheres of life, and with the establishment of an increasingly mobile and machine-based society, architecture represents the means of experimenting with a myriad ways of transforming life, with a view to a secure synthesis of inhabitant and environment. There is a sense that any discussion of utopianism today is occurring ‘after utopia’.  There is a widespread feeling that utopian urban projects belong to a previous age, as remnants of hopeful but naïve thought, as depleted husks unable to respond to current social demands. The central paradox inherent in utopian thought for the would-be urban designer is just how to we set about attempting to reconcile the fact that utopia equates to dystopia, whilst simultaneously a lack of utopia amounts to the same?

> A Brave New World?

Utopia is a transformation of our urban consciousness. Fredric Jameson, the political theorist, argued that the question of utopia would seem to be a crucial test of our collective capacity to imagine change at all. Renowned sociologist Karl Mannheim once pointed out that the representatives of a given order will label utopian all conceptions of existence, which from their ideological/social/political point of view, can in principal never be realised.  If this is the case then surely utopia is completely inconceivable.  However, pursuing the inconceivable can still bring about positive change, and as the S.I. succinctly put it, “the transformation of everyday life requires the transformation of everyday space and vice versa”. So, what has become of the ‘utopian search’?  Whether such a thing exists is entirely down to an interpretation of what is utopia, and as Lefebvre argues, “Although utopia might be discredited, it should not be abandoned.” It is our responsibility as architects and urban designers to strive beyond the banal.  Utopian or not, we must plan the ideal city instead of settling upon the ‘good enough’ city, if the banalisation of the city is to cease its cancerous conquest of the urban domain.

// DATABANK - 'PANDEMONIUM: THE RISE OF PREDATORY LOCALES IN THE POST-WAR WORLD' [B. HOOKWAY, 2000]

Buildings and infrastructure, as shapers of the urban milieu, have been superseded by a state of so-called ‘pandemonia’ - the superimposition of cybernetic principles upon the organisation, regulation and control of urban space. For those who cling to the ordered variations of the city plans of the recent past, today’s metropolis is utterly chaotic. Bandwidth has replaced the boulevard, and commuting has given way to the mouse click. After thousands of years of blocks held by mortar, the contemporary city is now stitched together by new modes of communication and control.

> The Three Ages of the Machine

Following the Industrial Revolution, society has advanced through the First and Second machine ages [mechanical and electrical respectively]. During these phases, machines developed from simple mechanical tools to fully electrified tools, and the human-machine relationship remained primarily recurrent and linear in nature, and was based rigidly upon processes of usage and action. 

+ Pandemonium - the three ages of the machine [CTW 2010]

According to Deleuze and Guattari, society has recently entered a third phase in its industrialisation trajectory, their so-called ‘Third Age of the Machine’, in which human-machine systems have now become non-linear [or cybernetic] in nature, replacing the previous non-reversible relation during the First and Second ages. The connection between the human and the machine is now based upon internal, mutual communication, and is no longer driven by processes of usage and action. The ‘Third Age’ has come to dominate all industrial landscapes, particularly in the continuous-process manufacturing and information technology industries.

> The Human + The Industrial Machine

The liberation of information-processing techniques from the human worker began in industry in the 1970s, via the adoption of ‘flexible specialisation’. Previously, Fordist semi-automated assembly lines operated through the resonance of the rhythms of labour and production processes, in such a manner as to enable production routines to be easily quantified and repeated. The advent of cybernetic machines severed this labour-production / human-machine interface – now, the worker has been entirely assimilated into a cybernetically-directed and controlled matrix of production. The human and the machine have been spliced together, and both now function as reciprocal agents within contemporary production environments. As production has become increasingly automated, a deep divide has been created within the workforce. On the one hand, there are the highly skilled engineers and systems analysts who direct, control and maintain complex industrial machinery. However, on the other hand, there are the masses of unskilled workers, whose sole economic asset is their geographic mobility. As a result, a major issue has arisen from the arrival of cybernetic production:  is the worker now forever destined to be either a controller of flux, or to merely become a controlled element of flux?

> The Human + The Information Machine

The organisational and bureaucratic criteria of information environments were subjected to reconsideration in an abstract form in order to free flows of information, which resulted in corresponding transformation to their spatial manifestation. The resulting environment was then recast as a dynamic processing machine, in which variations in the physical environment were shaped by communication flows, and the hierarchical organisation of control began to evolve. The decentralisation of control is seen as a more sophisticated organisational paradigm to a centralised system. With the information age came a new type of office collective, the Burolandschaft, which accommodated the fresh need for greater fluidity in information processing, and a desire to free production from top-down control. Yet a strict level of control is nevertheless implemented, via the creation of an environment of peer-surveillance, in which the work environment has become all-encompassing and relentless. Burolandschaft attempted to embed workers within the process, to act like the parts of a machine as nodes for communication flow. Hierarchy within the information production environment is no longer linear but can now be defined by non-linear networks – the office has become performative.

+ Pandemonium - cybernetic systems [image courtesy of Tim Marjot 2010]

> A Cybernetic Urbanism?

The city, as a complex entity in a perpetual state of flux, has been transformed as a result of the assimilation of cybernetic principles into all aspects of the urban network. Non-linear control organisation, responsive environments in industry and information technologies, and the mergence of the human and the machine; these relatively new concepts are still evolving, and as such will serve to further transform the city, and the architectural theory and practice that creates it. Perhaps, the main task facing architecture in the ‘cybernetic age’ is to accommodate this doctrine through the adaptation of existing urban infrastructures, whilst simultaneously limiting the negative by-products of societal fragmentation and cultural triviality. The traditional dynamics of the city have been irreversibly altered by the integration of cybernetic principles into the fields of design, production and information, particularly when coupled with the increasingly pervasive new digitised ‘global network culture’ we are witnessing. The future prospect of a widespread new ‘cybernetic urbanism’ is a realistic possibility indeed.

// DATABANK - 'A NEW PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIETY' [M, DE LANDA, 2006]

In ‘A New Philosophy of Society’, De Landa explores Deleuze’s investigations into assemblage theory, and postulates that it could be utilised to model the connections and complex, multi-layered interactivity between social entities, from basic inter-personal networks, to government organisations, cities and nations. This, ultimately, could give rise to a more socially-informed urban design methodology, which could have massive benefits for the functioning of the world’s cities. It is in essence, a further branch into philosophical and scientific studies into non-linearity and complex systems.

> Assemblage Theory: In a Nutshell

The book sees De Landa piecing together the scattered work of Deleuze and his theory of assemblages. Basically, De Landa sets out the form of all physical and virtual entities, that being non-linear assemblages of components, which are the outcome of specific historical evolutionary processes. [These components are often themselves assemblages, existing at a smaller spatio-temporal scale]. De Landa explains the central concept of ‘territorialisation’ as that which relates to the extent of homogeneity or heterogeneity of a given assemblage’s internal components, which result in a more or less stable assemblage. The non-linear aspect is in relation to the fact that all assemblages contain built-in feedback loops once they cross a critical complexity threshold – a cybernetic function which enables assemblages to react back upon its constituent components. The notion of non-linear causality, that of “same cause, same effect, always”, is being increasingly discarded in the face of the increasing complexity within contemporary science and society, due to its inability to adequately model systems accurately. De Landa’s hope is that with this insight into how complex systems operate and interact with one another, perhaps the highly complex, yet often misunderstood entity, modern society, could be more effectively understood, modelled, and where necessary, redesigned.

> The Cybernetic City

Throughout the course of the book De Landa highlights the benefits of, and potential application, of assemblage theory in studying and illuminating the connections between various levels of social networks and entities in urban studies. An understanding of the complex interactions and processes that combine to generate an entity called ‘society’ has obvious benefits for the would-be urban designer seeking to understand the collective he is designing for. The internal functioning of society ultimately impacts upon its external environment, namely the city, hence its relevance to the overall study into the future of the city. De Landa elucidates the non-linear, cybernetic functioning of assemblages upon their component parts, and this is indicative of the nature of assemblages’ part-to-whole relations and interactions. These result in non-linear, emergent properties and/or assemblages, whereas whole-to-part interactions react back to affect future successive emergence. This dual-direction cyberneticism is mirrored in the relationship between society and the city, each reacting back upon each other to produce emergent results, due to the interactivity of their respective assemblages.

+ A New Philosophy of Society - network society diagram [from 'Digital META_CITY' CTW 2010]

> The City Assembled

De Landa eventually applies assemblage theory to the city. In his view, the city is composed of countless internal components, each of varying heterogeneity and material manifestation, physicality and expressivity, and including social actors and agents, buildings, infrastructures, organisations and institutions. De Landa postulates that the city’s spatial form is the result of recurrent social rhythms over time, the connections and interactivity processes of these internal components and assemblages. De Landa also shows the processes of territorialisation and de-territorialisation to be a critical factor in the spatial form of the city, in terms of social, cultural and economic distribution of people, resources and infrastructures. Congregation and segregation are thus two methods of increasing the internal homogeneity of a given physical locale, whereas two examples of increasing the internal heterogeneity [de-territorialisation] of an urban region would be increased geographical mobility and land rent impact upon land usage. Perhaps, given the exponential increase in urban complexity over the past few decades, assemblage theory has role to play in the design of the future society and city. Due to its ability to operate in a non-linear manner without having to make the traditional sacrifice when modelling complex systems, that of multi-layered complex interactivity, assemblage theory has the potential to infiltrate urban design theory and practice, just as it has done with other fields of design - the future of the city is unmistakably complex and ultimately cybernetic.

// DATABANK - 'NON-PLACE' [M. AUGE, 1995]

The contemporary city exists as an amalgamation of two distinct types of physical territory – place and non-place. Place, in the anthropological sense, is created through a mixture of interactions between local references, social and cultural codes and practices, as well as the individuals themselves who inhabit the physical space. [Architectural place would include the architectural significance, or lack of, within that locality]. On the other hand, non-places are those locations devoid of collective interaction with a physical location in possession of a distinct identity or socio-cultural significance. In other words, place is an inherently social territory whereas non-place promotes social solitude and individuality. With an understanding of the particularities of place and non-place, urban planners could be more effective in reconciling their intrinsic differences and polarities, and could potentially formulate new strategies for more effective integration of place and non-place within the modern city.

> Modernity or a ‘Supermodernity’?

Auge defines the term modernity as “the presence of the past in a present that supersedes it, but still lays claim to it.” This definition would suggest that, far from eradicating the old places and temporal rhythms of the city, modernity simply nudges them into the periphery. By doing so, the city is imbued with the ability to evolve and develop, whilst maintaining its historic and cultural soul. According to Auge, we have now entered into the age of Supermodernity, in which the old rhythms and places are segregated from the whole into less-significant sub-narratives, being treated as mere spectacle for the consumption of the masses. In effect, Supermodernity produces non-places, meaning spaces which are not anthropological places and which do not integrate the earlier places. Instead, these historically- or locally-referenced places are promoted [or demoted?] to the status of ‘places of memory’, and permanently consigned to a restricted and specific location.

> Place vs. Non-place

Anthropological place can be defined as a physical territory, located in time, in which events occur, potentially political, social, economic, or religious. Therefore, place is always in possession of a specific identity that is rooted in historical events, customs, practices and processes. If a physical territory is not in possession of these qualities then it is merely space. Space is an abstract representation of place [virtual place?], that is free from time, and in which exists the potential or capacity for physical events to occur. Spaces which contain events and activities which are non-relational with historical, social or cultural aspects of a particular location and which possess no specific identity have been coined non-places. Non-places only form relations towards a particular event and the inhabitants of those spaces. Examples include transportation networks and nodes, temporary accommodation, and large-scale leisure and retail outlets. Non-places are partly defined by their visual references and indicators, which may be either prescriptive, prohibitive or informative, [or a combination] and are either projected in ordinary, written or oral language [signs or loudspeakers] or graphic mechanisms [maps or symbols].

> Non-place: The Dominant Urban Territory?

Has the non-place become the dominant and defining element within the contemporary urban landscape? Certainly their influence is considerable and is seemingly ever-increasing and pervasive. This undoubtedly raises issues with the subject of urban planning – just how do you integrate place with non-place, modern with ‘supermodern’? As place and non-place exist as opposing polarities, with place incapable of being totally erased, and non-place being immune to completion, this would appear to be a difficult task requiring a pragmatic and locally-informed solution. The primary problem that non-place creates within urban locations is widespread and socially divisive – that of promoting social solitude and similitude, whilst simultaneously eroding the social, cultural and architectural identity of a specific physical territory. Not only do they erode the identity of the present, but they also sever the present from its past – history is merely employed as a spectacle, a superficial and somehow peripheral event within the wider urban tapestry, rather than as the foundation for cultural, social and architectural practices, and a pilot guiding the future evolution of urban civilisation.

+ Non-place vs. Place - [place = land + society + nation + history/culture + religion] [CTW 2010]

> A Future ‘Place’?

In contemporary society, place has become the sanctuary of the regular user of non-places. The relentless and regular loss of identity is having a profound effect upon the nature of the city and its inhabitants. Non-place is exclusively lived in the present moment – a perpetual present, and we exist in “a world thus surrendered to solitary individuality, to the fleeting, the temporary and the ephemeral.” Unfortunately, having to experience non-place has become an essential and unavoidable constituent in modern urban life, due entirely to the twin phenomena of the acceleration of human history [a combination of social, cultural and technological upheavals], and the contraction of our physical territory [as a result of communications and transportation technology]. It would appear that our urban future will continue to contain a major element of non-places, and that these will remain an essential mechanism for the future functioning of the ‘supermodern’ city.

// DIGITAL META_CITY

+ Digital META_CITY - dissertation front cover visual

This is an extract from my dissertation produced during 2009/10, entitled the ‘Digital META_CITY’, in which I explore the rise of the virtual urban metabolism, and its architectural, social and cultural impact about the city. It represents a deeper study into issues surrounding the escalating ubiquity and pervasiveness of digital infrastructures and their increasing assimilation into every facet of urban life.

>> Abstract

Contemporary society is in the midst of a massive upheaval; an upheaval of a comparable scale to that of the industrial revolution. Social injustice, poverty, resource depletion, ecological devastation, congestion, terrorism, coupled with the relatively new concepts of ubiquitous instantaneous telecommunications, globally networked economies and institutions, and pervasive mass media; the city as we knew it is rapidly transforming, and the impact of these issues upon the spatial configuration and architectural expression of the city has been considerable.

Society is currently engaged in an evolutionary progression from the industrial age, and as a result, today’s cities are witnessing the formation of an increasing chasm between physical urban processes, mostly dating from the industrial age, and the newly digitised virtual urban processes of the information age.

This state of events is by no means unusual, however. Throughout the ages, society has always been a dynamic evolving entity, with the city, the principal manifestation of human civilisation, acting as the focal point for progression. Ever since the first cities, there has always existed within their internal workings, the potential for conflict between their physical and virtual urban metabolisms. Virtual in this sense refers to dematerialised processes, including the flow of information, cultural symbols or even political power, as opposed to physical processes such as agriculture, energy generation or transportation.

These ‘Analogue Cities’ have undergone spectacular collapses in the past as a direct result of urban metabolic segregation, and a failure to comprehend the importance of maintaining symbiotic connections between physical and virtual processes. The significance of this issue for the contemporary city is exacerbated by the sheer scale of today’s virtual urban metabolisms, and the global power, ubiquity and pervasiveness of the networks within which they operate.

The city is now being infiltrated and consumed by mass digitisation and the rise of the virtual urban metabolism. Urban designers and architects now have the opportunity to engage with the re-modelling of the city, to cast off its predominantly negative industrial age legacy, and embrace the potential of the information age future.

>> Aim

In the twenty first century, the city is confronted with a wide range of issues concerning its physical and virtual processes. Local and global network connectivity, societal inequality, economic instability and political volatility; all pose questions to the would-be urban designer – to what extent has the rise of the virtual urban metabolism transformed the city, and what impact has the digital transformation had upon architecture? How do we assess the impact upon the city of the digitisation of the built environment, in the hope of facilitating and directing future transformations that are required to ensure the functioning of the modern city during the transition into the information age, and its evolution beyond?

The answer to this predicament is an elusive one indeed. A grasp of the complexities of the city’s relationship between its physical and increasingly pervasive virtual metabolisms, and its ever-more significant digitised local-global functioning, is critical. Only with a solid understanding of these connections and processes within the urban domain, and the impact of the rise of virtual urban metabolism upon the urban fabric and architecture, can the true extent of urban transformation due to digitisation be known.

This dissertation will elucidate the impact of the virtual urban metabolism upon the city, and will demonstrate how the future of the city is reliant upon an urbanism that attempts to integrate its physical and virtual processes, via the re-conceptualisation of the city as a metabolic entity. Such a new approach to urbanism could result in a city that thrives economically, technologically, culturally and socially, through an in-depth understanding of its internal processes, and the symbiosis of its physical and virtual metabolisms – the Digital Meta-CITY.

>> Methodology

The dissertation will begin with The Metabolic City, in which the city, as the materialised form of numerous components and processes [or metabolisms] within human civilisation, will be de-constructed as a metabolic entity to illustrate the internal workings of its physical and virtual urban metabolisms. This section will also include a broad, but brief, sweep of the historical evolution of the city as a metabolic entity. The purpose of this is to provide a level of clarity, [beyond the metaphors and analogies often utilised to conceptualise the city], for viewing the city as an amalgamation and concentration of metabolic processes within complex physical and virtual networks. The digitisation of the flows of wealth, power and information within the city, and the rise of the virtual metabolism, in particular its two most influential networks, [that of the mobile phone and the internet], will also be explored. It is hoped that, having illuminated the metabolic evolution of the city and highlighted the recent prevalence of the virtual over the physical metabolism, that the question of the impact upon the city brought about via digital transformation can now be examined in more detail – has digital transformation ultimately had a positive or negative effect upon our urban evolutionary trajectory? And will the potential future intensification of urban digitisation have similar results?

A study of the urban landscape as a Digital Dystopia will be undertaken in the second section of this dissertation. The negative aspects of the digital transformation of the city are numerous but often veiled, and as such they shall be analysed in detail. Issues concerning the segregation of physical and virtual urban metabolisms, the divergent dual local-global functioning of the city, the new social and economic dilemmas due to increased connectivity, and the spatial consequences of the aforementioned will be examined.

To give a balanced perspective of the digital transformation of the city, in part three, the city as a Digital Utopia will be explored. The positive impacts of the digital transformation of the city are often somewhat more conspicuous than the negative, but they shall also be studied in detail. Issues concerning the symbiosis of physical and virtual urban metabolisms, the convergence of the dual local-global functioning of the city, the new social and economic advantages due to increased connectivity, and the spatial developments as a result of these issues will be examined.

In the final section, The Digital Meta-CITY, all of the fundamental issues discussed throughout the dissertation will be reviewed. Conclusions shall be drawn and speculations made concerning the impact of the rise of the virtual urban metabolism and to what extent it has transformed the city. During the course of this section, a tentative proposal for a new approach to urbanism and architecture shall take shape, the aim of which is to provide a useful structure upon which to model existing urban landscapes, and to guide the future transformation of the Analogue City into the Digital Meta-CITY. An important point worth noting is that the objective of this proposal is to construct a theoretical framework to aid the materialisation of a vast array of urban potentials within existing cities, rather than prescribe a physical spatial form – an open process of urban metabolic symbiosis, as opposed to a closed, spatially deterministic urban plan. An urbanism based upon the symbiosis of physical and virtual urban processes, within a metabolic conceptualisation of the city, may facilitate humanity’s transition into the information age and safely beyond into the unknown urban future.