| Workshop Results: Urban Footprints
If ecology is the study of systems and connections, how might information technology be used to reduce the 'ecological footprint' of a city? The Intelligent City "We all love the city. We see it as one of the greatest achievements, perhaps the greatest achievement of all human history. But we don't want to love it to death. We don't want to save it from itself and destroy it in the process. We recognise the ambiguous nature of the city. A city is not some kind of boy scout utopia, nor is it an ideal hill town in Tuscany. A city is about possibilities. It is a place to find the freedom to take risks, as well as to find security and conviviality." (excerpt from Deyan Sudjik's Doors 3 workshop presentation) The `Urban Footprints' group asked itself how the city could be made into a kind of intelligent organism that responds to change in its surroundings. They started from the premisse that the city is a complex, self-organising, networked, fractal system. The city is a baby, not a spaceship! The point is not to make a massive, pre-programmed technostructure orbiting under the control of HAL, the all-powerful computer from 2001, who refuses to open the pod door for his hapless passengers. Maybe a city, a succesful city, is more like a baby. It grows and it learns in doing so. Understanding comes from experience. Good environmental outcomes need positive encouragement, and maybe some gentle smacks for bad behaviour. The group envisioned three strategies:
* Smart Support Systems - The smart appliance Refrigerators can monitor conditions: for example, how frequently the fridge door is opened, how much ice is built up on chiller coils, external temperature, etc., and adapt temperature and defrosting cycles to suit conditions. Another example is `Smart Movement': a portable digital assistant showing the arrival time of the next bus provides better information to minimise waiting uncertainty. * Closing Communication Cycles - the EBB The amount and ecological quality of products bought is measured, as well as the mobility of the household members. This is done through a special credit card which allows entering the types of products and their eco-points into the information system. Through the monthly EBB (Ecological Behaviour Bill), the user is given economical incentives from the positive points acquired in the buying of environmental products, the reduced consumption of water, gas, etc, and on the use of `sustainable' transport.
* Accepting Limits - the Singapore Lash Monitor devices in the city measure the air quality. The city is closed down (i.e. roads, train stations, airports) when preset levels of congestion and pollution are reached. The Slow City The Urban Footprints group also looked at ways in which the city, as it changes under the impact of teleworking and other factors, can be designed in a way that reinforces and maybe creates new kinds of urbanity. The idea of the Slow City was appealing for its association with some of the precious things of the city: contemplation, accidental encouters, the unpredictable. A slow city allows the speedy world that goes on in our heads to coincide with a slow world of spending maybe an hour in that sad night café of Hopper's melancholy, bleak painting. How do you bring the virtual into the real world of the city? When everybody works at home, how do we concentrate life in the urban quarter around us? How does the area close to our homes get to be designed so that we don't lose out, become urban peasants, but gain some kind of new understanding of urbanity? What institutions might emerge as a focus for this sort of urbanity? School We thought about a new kind of school as one possibility. Children still go to study in a local classroom, but it's part of a city-wide school network. Their classroom is connected with other classrooms around the city. They have an electronic window, a wallboard to create collaborative environments and they are plugged into a wide pool of teachers. But they also meet from time to time, for sport and social functions. This way, one classroom has access to all the resources of the best schools in the city. Participants
BEYOND BEING THERE INFO-ECO WORK INFO-ECO SOCIAL CARE
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updated 1995 |
