// 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.

// DIGITAL TERRITORY_WIRRAL

+ Digital Territory_Wirral - masterplan [CTW 2010]

The Wirral has been in a steady state of decline ever since heavy industry began to relocate from its locality. The departure of these key economic, cultural and social drivers left a huge void within the region. Its previous wealth was achieved through the full integration of cutting-edge industrial technologies and techniques into its cultural psyche, which enabled the Wirral to remain at the forefront of global industrial progress.

Could the Wirral regain its industrial-age position as a region of prosperity and affluence if it was ‘plugged’ into the digital world? In order for this strategy to have any chance of success, the Wirral would require a huge overhaul of its digital communication infrastructures, namely those facilitating internet connectivity and penetration. At the present time, the Wirral has some of the lowest rates of urban internet penetration in the country, and is all but by-passed by the current [and projected] digital backbone of the UK, and therefore the world.

+ Digital Territory_Wirral - UK internet connectivity [CTW 2010]

If the Wirral’s connective capacity could be massively upgraded it could acquire a share of the extremely centralised internet data capacity of London, and promote itself as a major new European node within the global information network, thereby gaining all the power, wealth and prosperity that this would entail. The objective of this aspirational project is to investigate a potential future for the Wirral, a digital future; one of digital integration with the global information network and a cultural shift towards the ‘e-lifestyle’ of the ‘network society’ – the Wirral transformed into a Digital_Territory.

// DIGITAL_TERRITORIES

This essay concerns the rise of the digital network culture and society that we are witnessing within our cities, and the subsequent impacts this phenomena is having upon the contemporary metropolis and its future evolutionart trajectory. It encompasses the theoretical postion of my studies into urban utopian models during the first semester of Year 5, and as such framed much of my research and development at the time, and probably will continue to do so for some time to come.

>> Digital_Territories

 

"Globalisation and informationalisation, enacted by networks of wealth, technology, and power, are transforming our world.” [Castells 2010a, p.72]

As society is taking its first tentative steps into the information age, it is increasingly clear that the contemporary city has become a highly contested territory. The rise of the global virtual network has produced the latest manifestation of the struggle between local-cultural and global-technological trajectories. The ascension of the information age, and the increasing impact of the digital urban metabolism, promise to radically transform our current perceptions of not only society and culture, but also our perception of place, and the future function of the city.

New digital technologies and the infrastructures to deliver them are becoming increasingly pervasive and ubiquitous within the city [Varnelis 2008]. The divergence of physical and virtual urban metabolisms, the crisis of global connectivity versus local disconnection, the flow of information and wealth within the globalised network of cities, and their resultant spatial impact upon place, have all become the dominant issues of social and urban discourse.

Cities now exist in two locations simultaneously – the traditional physical landscape and the digital virtual network. This dual identity will have profound effects upon the future form of the city. At present, the city exists as two distinct flows of energy, the physical and the virtual, which has resulted in increasing social, political, economic and spatial fragmentations.

The cities within the globalised network benefit from possessing the means to access all the information, [and therefore wealth], they require or desire. The digital infrastructures they contain are the result of colossal financial investment, and they serve to secure the future of these cities in terms of global financial, commercial and institutional influence. For those cities outside of the global flows of information and wealth, they suffer from massive social, economic and political isolation and exclusion. These urban regions are unable to compete in the globalised network of cities, and as a result they slip further into decline. This urban “tunnelling effect” of digital exclusion can be attributed to a poorer standard or complete lack of digital infrastructure [Varnelis 2008, pp.28].

It can be seen that the future of the networked city rests with its connective capacity, and its ability to integrate virtual-global and physical-local flows of energy and information.

 

>> Digital_Transformation

“Space does not reflect society, it expresses it.” [Castells 2004, p.85]

With this statement, Castells is pointing out that urban transformation and the spatial reconfiguration of cities is the result of cultural and social upheaval, and not the other way around. It can be argued that the rise of a new information age society and culture will undoubtedly result in further changes to the physical form of the city.

In the view of Castells, the future transformation of the city will centre on the main axes of function and form. Firstly, in describing the functioning of the city he states that the,

“Network society is organised around the opposition between the global and the local.” [Castells 2004, p.85]

He points out that although the dominant economic, technological, communicative and administrative processes within the city are organised around global networks, the everyday activities of work, play, culture and political participation are inherently local affairs. Interactions between and within cities have become increasingly multi-layered, with interactivity now being co-ordinated simultaneously within the physical and virtual realms. The scale of this duality of function has been somewhat exacerbated by the rise of ever-more pervasive networks, and the city, in attempting to respond to both conflicting logics, is becoming increasingly fragmented. Castells suggests that the future spatial form of the city will be dependant upon the resolution of the conflict between the ability of the city to connect and communicate digitally with the global flow of information, and to interact physically with its locality and society.

“Cities are structured and destructured simultaneously by the competing logics of the space of flows and the space of places.” [Castells 2004, p.85]

This capacity for dual communication means that the notion of place is more critical than ever before, as it not only accommodates network connectivity and facilitates digital communication, but also provides the physically-grounded traditional social and cultural functions of a city. The new-found dominance of the virtual network has not resulted in the collapse of the city as a built form. According to Mitchell, although forecast to the contrary by many ‘cyberprophets’, the rise of the virtual does not,

“[…] destroy the power of place: local cultures and advantages still matter.” [Mitchell 2004, p.210]

The all-encompassing ‘city of bits’ has not come to pass, and the primary function of the city now in the information age is to fully integrate the “space of flows” with the “space of places” [Castells 2004, p.86]; it has to become a digitally-compatible communication device stitching together both virtual and physical urban metabolisms.

>> Digital_Dilemmas

The onset of a new cultural revolution throws up many obstacles for a society to overcome. With the digital revolution, society will have to adjust to new ways of interacting, communicating, and working. Post-industrial visions of a utopian future based upon the limitless possibilities of the virtual, without the burdens of the physical world have not materialised, and in all likelihood never will. Varnelis is all-too aware of the naivety of the ‘go anywhere, always online’ notion of virtual connectivity.

“Far from the mythical distributed ideal that ideologists of technology claim it to be, the network has its own physicality, its own material presence.” [Varnelis 2008, pp.27-8]

Here Varnelis makes reference to the fact that although digital networks appear to be ultra-modern and ubiquitous, they are completely reliant upon an archaic infrastructural system based upon subterranean or submarine conduits. These cables of copper or fibre optics shuttle all the world’s digital information, and the data itself is concentrated in a highly centralised and vulnerable network of relatively few routes and exchange nodes. If regions are outside of this digital backbone then they will suffer the consequences of economic and social exclusion as Varnelis rather pessimistically states,

“Areas and populations outside of this logic are subject to the tunnel effect: they virtually don’t exist as far as the network and, hence, the dominant world economy is concerned.” [Varnelis 2008, pp.28]

This urban tunnel effect is the result of inequality in the distribution of new digital infrastructure. This is not a new occurrence however. Over the centuries, new technological innovations were more often than not distributed in those areas that possessed favourable characteristics, usually economic and institutional in nature. As an example, the creation of national grids eventually provided the majority of people with a reliable and secure supply of electricity. But initially, the grid was only available in the primary urban centres, such as London. As Castells suggests,

“The higher the value of people and places, the more they are connected into interactive networks.” [Castells 2004, p.84]

Mitchell also advocates the importance of place and proximity to new digital infrastructures to enable economic growth, but also in a rather cautionary tone mentions the need for equality in public policy in the distribution of new infrastructure when he stated,

“It will be economically vital to have […] the high-speed backbone in your vicinity. It will be an increasingly important competitive advantage if you have […] and equity considerations will motivate public policies that encourage wide and even distribution […].” [Mitchell 2000, p.19]

The digital backbone of the world appears to be developing and expanding along a similar vein to the national grid, and consequently a whole new round of social conflict will have to be overcome to resist the spread of digital apartheid. As Varnelis observes,

“[…] the global city’s connections create local disconnections.”

[Varnelis 2008, pp.28]

At the local level, people are increasingly forsaking physical interactions in favour of leading their lives online through social networking websites, mobile phones and television, the so-called “telecocoon” [Varnelis 2008, pp.22].

Despite this inescapable truth, two emerging technologies are poised to bridge the gap between the global and the local – the geospatial web and ubiquitous computing. The rise of Geographic Information Systems [GIS], such as Google Maps and Google Earth, have imposed geographic co-ordinates upon placeless data within the internet, and conversely left virtual traces across physical environments. This meshing of the virtual and physical is intended to reduce local disconnectivity whilst maintaining connection to the global network, through the creation of social connections via mobile networking technology. The convergence of the geospatial web with locative media and mobile networking technology will enable society to read, and leave behind virtual traces on the world, re-creating physical place as a digital map – the virtual has become grounded in the real.

This overlay of virtual data over place will enable society to have access to a whole web of locally applicable information, thus enhancing local connectivity and the social significance of place. However, it could also render place a prisoner of memory and ‘someone else’s’ experiences. It may also exacerbate the issue of digital exclusion for those without network access. And, of course, the rise in locative media will undoubtedly result in an ever-expanding surveillance culture within a ‘virtual police state’ society.

Clearly, the assimilation of global and local networks is a problematic task, and one which requires economically pragmatic and socially sensitive planning and execution strategies to ensure a de-fragmentation of global network cities of the future.

 

 >> Digital_Urbanism

The current global network condition does raise the question of an almost ‘chicken or the egg’ scenario – do cities require digital infrastructural intervention in order to take their place within the global network of information flow and achieve prosperity? Did these cities, by now within the global network, already possess the infrastructure necessary to be globally prosperous and competitive? Can new cities join this elite group? This surely is one of the most pressing issues for all urban planners and policy makers – for the city to survive in the information age it must be connected globally and integrated locally.

So what does the rise of the global digital network entail for architecture in the Digital_Territories of the future? Perhaps a new approach to urban design is required, one which has at its heart the issue of integrating global and local connectivity within the major flows of information, capital and culture. The spatial materialisation of such a city is open for debate. In Castells’ opinion, the information city does not exist as a concrete physical form but rather as the result of cultural transformational processes.

“[…] based upon knowledge, organised around networks, and partly made up of flows, the information city is not a form but a process, a process characterised by the structural domination of the space of flows.”

[Castells 2010b, p.429]

As such, the city is re-conceptualised as a network system of virtual and physical processes [or metabolisms], each working in a symbiotic capacity to enable the city to communicate at both the global and local scales. However, there is a risk inherent in the very idea of a global city – its architecture could become progressively more generic and homogenised. As many architectural and urban design commentators have pointed out over the past decades, architecture has become increasingly banal and predictable, especially in the fields of infrastructure. According to Castells,

“Because the spatial manifestation of the dominant interests takes place around the world, and across cultures, the uprooting of experience, history and specific culture as the background of meaning is leading to the generalisation of ahistorical, acultural architecture.” [Castells 2010b, p.449]

He acknowledges this very real danger, and suggests that perhaps an architecture more rooted in the locale, more contextually driven and reflective of the increasing heterogeneity of the network society can avoid the pitfalls of intensifying issues of cultural identity loss.

“The more societies try to recover their identity beyond the global logic of uncontrolled power of flows, the more they need an architecture that exposes their own reality […].” [Castells 2010b, p.449]

Mitchell, on the other hand, takes a much more optimistic perspective on the new networked city. In his book ‘e-topia’ he proposes a new digitally-networked utopia, one that could facilitate the transformation of society, economy, culture and architecture for the information age. He sets out his manifesto for urban transformation based around five themes: “dematerialisation, demobilisation, mass customisation, intelligent operation, and soft transformation” [Mitchell 2000, p.147]. These themes all have one major characteristic in common – they involve the replacing of outdated industrial modes of communication, infrastructure, design and manufacture within the city with new digital technologies and techniques facilitated by the advent of the network era.

The post-industrial city is already engaged in transformation as a result of the rise of the globalised digital network. The social, cultural and economic value of each individual city will determine its position within the network. For those cities unfortunate to find themselves outside the network, they are caught in a catch-twenty two situation whereby they are denied access due to a lack of connectivity, but yet cannot gain connectivity without access. The only escape is through massive investment in digital communications infrastructure, and the hope that the investment will be returned through the influx of new capital, information and people. The task facing architecture in the information age is to accommodate the mostly invisible functioning of the global network infrastructure, whilst simultaneously facilitating and encouraging interpersonal social interactions, and providing a significant cultural materialisation.

What is certain is that the traditional dynamics and metabolisms of post-industrial place have been irreversibly altered by the folding of power and information flows into the global virtual network. The prospect of a pervasive new urban future, that of a truly global ‘e-lifestyle’, is a very real one indeed.

>> Bibliography + References

> Castells, M. [2004] Space of Flows Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age. In: Graham, S. ed. The Cybercities Reader. London, Routledge, pp.82-93.

> Castells, M. [2010a] The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. 2 - The Power of Identity. 2^nd ed. Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell.

> Castells, M. [2010b] The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. 1 - The Rise of the Network Society. 2^nd ed. Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell.

> Graham, S. & Marvin, S. [2001] Splintering Urbanism. New York, Routledge.

> Mitchell, W.J. [1996] City of Bits. Cambridge, MIT Press.

> Mitchell, W.J. [2000] e-topia. Cambridge, MIT Press.

> Mitchell, W.J. [2004] ME++ The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. Cambridge, MIT Press.

> Varnelis, K. ed. [2008] Networked Publics. Cambridge, MIT Press.

// WPA 2.0 COMPETITION - RE_AQUE[DUCT]

RE_aquæ[DUCT] is an urban prototype, entered into the WPA 2.0 international design competition on 03/11/09, and was developed in collaboration with Tim Marjot, Graeme Mill and James K. Thorp [fellow MSA students]. The following is an extract from our design intent statement:

"The context for this proposal is the particularly polluted and historic waterway that was integral in the launch of the industrial revolution; the River Mersey. Pollution levels throughout the Mersey were mapped at key tributaries, and the extent of  pollutants relative to population and building density investigated. As a result of our findings, the town of Birkenhead has been selected for our infrastructural intervention. This involves replacing existing infrastructure [road network] with a reinterpretation of historic infrastructure [canal network], combined with bio-technological processes [reed bed filtration] in a bid to prevent run-off pollutants reaching the river, and injecting life into an otherwise under-occupied area. We propose to introduce a series of capillaries running alongside the Mersey with the capacity to process polluted water flowing from the Wirral Peninsula; a large scale water run-off purification prototype in which canals are integrated with reed bed technology."

+ RE_aquæ[DUCT] - competition entry submitted 03/11/09

"In subtracting from ‘non-place’ and adding to ‘place’ we intend to provide scope for redevelopment, public circulation and potential leisure activity.  Through replacing roads with reeds in selected areas of high vacancy within the existing urban fabric, Birkenhead provides a model through which we can gauge the improvement in standard of living in relation to water quality and an increase in biodiversity. RE_aquæ[DUCT] provides a prototype for urban ecological intervention throughout the world."

The competition provided an opportunity to experiment with data gathering strategies, visualisation techniques, and an opportunity to engage in-depth with an urban region suffering from the many issues facing contemporary post-industrial society in the UK. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful in securing a place amongst the shortlisted entries, but it proved a valuable exercise in innovative, radical urban masterplanning and prototyping.