Technology, Business and the Nature of Cities

When we contemplate the effects of technology on urban life, our thoughts first turn to its visible manifestations: the commuter with his headphones, the pedestrian on her mobile phone, the café dweller and his laptop. But these are only surface traces: the stuff of the times, as the newspapers or briefcases of yesterday. The primary impact of today's technologies of instant communication and digital creation comes instead from the changes they effect on the nature of business and work (among them, the creation of the "networked information economy" of Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks). The internet enables new kinds of companies, and with them, new priorities for the nature of our cities.

In The City in History (1961), Lewis Mumford describes the effect of the increasingly bureaucratic nature of business - enabled by technologies of communication and control - on the growth of cities:

"Plainly no great corporate enterprise with a worldwide network of agents, correspondents, market outlets, factories, and investors could exist without relying upon the services of an army of patient, clerkly routineers in the metropolis: stenographers, filing clerks, and book-keepers, office managers, sales managers, advertising directors, accountants, and their varied assistants, right up to the fifth vice-president whose name or O.K. sets the final seal of responsibility upon an action.

"The housing of this bureaucracy in office buildings and tenements and residential suburbs constituted one of the major tasks of metropolitan expansion. Their transportation to and from work, within a limited time-span, raised one of the difficult technical problems that confronted the city planner and the engineer. And not merely did the bureaucracy itself require office space and domestic space: the by-products of its routine demanded an increasing share of the new quarters: files, vaults, place for live storage and dead storage, parade grounds and cemeteries of documents, where the records of business were alphabetically arrayed, with an eye to the possibility of future exploitation, future reference, future lawsuits, future contracts.

"This age found its form, as early as the eighteen-eighties in America, in a new type of office building: symbolically a sort of vertical human filing case, with uniform windows, a uniform façade, uniform accommodations, rising floor by floor in competition for light and air and above all financial prestige with other skyscrapers." (p. 535)

Here we have technology driving business, and business, in turn, shaping the city: uniform, imposing, monotonous; the organization man with his procedures and his house in suburbia; business governed from the top and the growth of cities too; the importance of conformity in work, in home, in life.

The rise of the suburbs was driven not by the technology of house-building, nor that of transportation, but by the secondary consequences of the technologies of bureaucracy. We could long have built isolated sub-divisions of identical houses, but never before would we have lived in them. It required a population with little choice in the location or nature of their housing and jobs to give rise to this conurban sprawl. The suburbs were not the direct result of technology but of the patterns of employment, social mobility, and lifestyle it enabled.

This holds for digital technologies as well. Consider their immediate effects on the city. We find things to do online rather than in the local weekly, look for an apartment on craigslist instead of the classifieds, but this has little impact on the the activities or the apartments. The internet, mobile phones, in-car navigation systems, and the rest of today's electronic devices don't make it any more attractive to live in a city - after all, they work in the suburbs too - nor do they significantly alter the form that the city can take. The highway, the subway, the elevator, the electrical grid, the sewage system: none of these are digital technologies. The houses we live in, the way we get to work, the third places we inhabit: these are shaped by social and political forces that influenced only indirectly by technology.

Given all this, why the current resurgence in urban life? For the answer, we turn to Richard Florida and his book The Rise of the Creative Class. In it, he describes the invigorating impact of a new class of creative professionals on the desirability and vitality of traditional city living. This growing group of educated, selective professionals change jobs every few years, choosing not just a company, but also a place. Not content with any location, they look for one that offers a active nightlife, vibrant culture, and other amenities. No longer forced to live in the suburbs and commute to an corporate office park - or to work in a factory and live nearby - people are increasingly choosing not to. More and more, the city is becoming the center of the enterprise, its employees, and their homes and lives. The increased professional freedom enabled by technology thereby fuels the rise in popularity and affluence of city neighborhoods. It is this, not the ways that we use digital devices in the city, that is technology's true impact on urban life.

toronto subway buttons

toronto subway buttons
Originally uploaded by striatic.

Wonderful pictures of buttons of the tile patterns found in Toronto subway stations. The buttons are from spacing, a magazine and blog about Toronto's urban landscape.

Suburbia

Halfway through Suburban Nation and halfway through my time in American suburbs, I'm trying to reconcile the condemnations and warnings of the former with the beauty of the latter (at least, those priviledged portions in which I'm travelling). Andres, Elizabeth, and Jeff have a fearsome enemy in the quiet nights, idyllic lawns, and ample interiors of the Slingerlands and Birchwood Groves. Would I want to raise my children in either place? Of course not. But could I lounge and reflect as well in the raucous, motley environs of Central Square or the Ile de la Cité? I doubt it. In any case, I'm waiting for the details and examples (in Suburban Nation or elsewhere), that will enable me to apply the theories of the book to the homes and streets of the places I've seen.

Does Anyone Have?

An arbitrary sample of items requested on a mailing list here at IDII (found by searching my inbox for "does anyone have"):

• the book No Logo by Naomi Klein
• coffee liquor
• the DIN font for the PC
• an air matress
• DiskWarrior 3
• the movie Zoolander
• a cassette player
• the book Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
• green felt
• a tape-based answering machine
• desk lamp
• the font Helvetica 47 Light Condensed for the Mac
• a ride to the electronics fair
• expert knowledge on prototyping for mobile devices
• hot water
• large, white socks to make sock puppets
• a knitting mushroom
• laundry tokens
• board games with little game pieces
• the Matrix

Interaction Design Institute Ivrea: Thoughts

(Update: an introduction. I'm spending two years in Northern Italy getting a Masters degree from the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea.)

First, the students. We are from all over the world. Many have lived in countries across the globe from their homes. Nearly everyone (except me) speaks multiple languages. We divide evenly into three groups (more or less): programmers, graphic/web designers, and industrial designers. Compared with the latter two groups, my visual skills are non-existent.

Second, the school. The building itself (la casa blu) is striking with its bright blue brick and red trim. There are three floors and a basement: workshops, auditorium, gallery, studios, meeting rooms, offices. Not much technology in evidence, but lots of IDII press and cork boards. It feels like the right size and composition for the program.

The returning faculty have presented their backgrounds and interests to us first-year students. Each seemed expert in their field, whether product design, graphic design, electronics, or software. They come from Italy, Germany, and England, and I haven't figured out how they all interact.

In fact, I haven't found out quite how the academics function. We have a short project next week, and then four workshops (GUIs, tangible interfaces, service systems, and service applications), two applied dreams (collaborations with corporations), some reviews, exams, etc. But who teaches which classes? Are all the first-years always in class together? What assignments will we be given?

I have a bunch of ideas and lots of technologies I'd like to explore, but I don't know how they'll fit into the curriculum. But the work I do for class may be more interesting than anything I would have done on my own anyway, because of the structure and collaboration. I can't wait to get started.

These first two weeks have been mostly bureaucracy and Italian lessons. I had learned enough of the language before coming to attempt a conversation with a man on the train, who informed me that I had better switch trains in Settimo if I wanted to end up in Ivrea. I was thankful to arrive without further problems or conversations. Class, shopping, and reading undici novelle (eleven stories) of Luigi Pirandello have expanded my vocabularly and improved my grammar, but I have a lot to learn.

I've been surprised, however, to discover that the language requires less adjustment than the smallness of Ivrea and the difference in culture. Nothing here is open on Sundays, and supermarkets are a new idea. Fruit and vegetables come from one store, salami and cheese the next, bread from a third, fresh meat yet another, and for salt I have to go to the tobaccanist.

The street from my apartment in Talponia to the Institute is lined with gas stations, office buildings, and cafes; the sidewalks are cobblestone; and the road to town is a highway. We inhabit the commercial, formerly-Olivetti section of Ivrea, across the river from the old center. There, the streets are narrow and hilly and the buildings older. The town has a disproportionate number of shoe stores and sellers of home furnishings, which in the States would be fast food joints and Walmarts.

I've been drinking many 24-cent espressos from the school's vending machines, and eating (surprise!) lots of pasta. The tomatoes and peppers taste richer here, and there's no mass-produced foam-rubber bread. The stalls at the Friday market offer an abundance and variety of food and clothes, all thoroughly Italian. There are a few Chinese restaurants, but I haven't found any other foreign fare.

I will eat well here, though I may miss sushi, corned beef, and chocolate chip cookies. Lunch at il convento (a former convent, built in the 15th century), however, tastes better and costs less than anything within a 15 walk of LaSalle and Van Buren (and that covers dozens of restaurants). The language may become a problem if I attempt a user study or want to meet anyone outside of the Institute, and I may never get used to the shutdown on Sundays, but it will be a good two years.

imagemaps :: an “online geographic map of historical documents” built with Processing

Wired article on using geolocation to customize web sites

Open Source GIS Conference 2004 via /.

Hortus in Urbe

So that's what the City Hall Rooftop Garden looks like. I pass City Hall on my way to work, but haven't ever been on the roof.

From a Metropolis magazine article about Mayor Daley's Green Crusade.

Subway systems of the world, at the same scale.

Manhattan Timeformations: beautiful visualizations of Manhattan's topography, skyscrapers, and other urban features through the years.

Tiger Map Server: dynamically generate road maps of the U.S. (and a Slashdot thread on related software)

Determining your location from cell-phone camera photos.

A Brief Lesson in Chicago Demographics

I found these stickers with the office supplies at work.

I'm assuming the third line is Polish.

On The El

Have you ever had a stranger, standing across from you on the train, look up as you were getting off and say “Your name's Dave, isn't it”? Technically, he wasn't a stranger, as he once sold me a print at the Gallery 37 store downtown, but that was months ago. I'm amazed he remembered me. Maybe it was the beard. Still, he even knew what I bought.

It was the sort of thing that makes me question my work-induced inclinations towards solitude and taciturnity. When it's so easy to bring a smile to someone's face, how can we not?

What is your generic term for a sweetened carbonated beverage?

Some researchers at Harvard surveyed the country to find out where the folks who don't call it “pop” live. See the results. Also, note that Chicago is, indeed, the second city.

Thanks to Jason for his link to the survey.