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Copyright © 1998 by Robert Moskowitz. All Rights Reserved
[These thoughts are based on the invitation to the 4th Global
Village Symposium in Vienna, Austria, originally expressed by
Franz Nahrada. The symposium is to be held from 1st to 3rd of
July, 1999, and is intended to convene visionaries from around
the globe for a closer look at ways
to make the interchange between cities and villages more empowering
in today's information age. Interested parties may contact Mr.
Nahrada by email at "f.nahrada@magnet.at"]
The city of Los Angeles has been dramatically changed by the automobile. An area that could have remained a lush, green agricultural valley has instead been sealed with asphalt roads and parking lots. That's why the satellite view of Los Angeles today shows gray as the predominant color. And it's not alone in that look. Urban centers today all over the world are built in a style that offers far more economic and cultural opportunities than natural beauty.
Despite the apparent loss of that battle, however, it may not be too late to ask whether information technology can have a more positive impact than the automobile on the face of our planet. Although automobiles have decimated public transport and driven natural environments away from our cities, perhaps information systems and related telework alternatives can support a different lifestyle and an alternative approach to economic development that will allow people to gain the benefits of urbanization while living in close harmony with unspoiled nature.
If we could substantially reduce the importance of the car in daily life, for example, tomorrow's cities might become a network of pedestrian oriented, clustered communities. This pattern is seen much less often in America than in Europe. But there heavily developed sub-centers provide city and suburban residents with quick, easy access to public transportation, shopping, services and many kinds of leisure activities. The same approach could become more popular on this side of the Atlantic, particularly if facilitated by a closely-knit web of telecommunications infrastructure.
In fact, many observers suggest that European land use patterns (with their tradition of small, clustered community centers) may be far more suitable for meeting the changing requirements of work and life in the rapidly-emerging information society than American patterns (with their vast acreage of pavement and systemic subservience to the automobile). If so, then Europe may be (literally) one hundred years ahead of the United States in terms of sophisticated urban and rural development.
Unfortunately, development patterns in our cities have not yet overcome the tired, old, industrial myths that portray excessive accumulation, concentration and growth as the primary path to progress.
It would be a giant step forward, then, to find practical, beneficial ways to emulate and expand upon time-tested European land use patterns for the new millenium. One promising approach is to link together by telecommunications and rapid transit a network of existing urban and rural environments. Usually, the potential benefits of such a linkage are most heavily promoted by those living in the rural areas. But city dwellers should wake up and smell the coffee: it's equally true that the future of cities may be in the smallest villages.
The City As An Informational Medium
Despite what we commonly believe, the physical size and population of a city are not necessarily the main sources of its success. In fact, a close study seems to show that great size and population often become expensive and problematic burdens.
Nevertheless, people in the developing countries continue flocking to cities, if only because today's urban centers seem to offer better access to jobs, modern conveniences, and an easier lifestyle. This is particularly true when resources and economic opportunities are systematically removed from rural areas.
But the power of information may be what is really at work here. Perhaps the more tightly connected people are to communications media, the more they want to make use of the manifold opportunities of which the media informs them everything from "citified" lifestyles and job opportunities to heavily-advertised appliances and foodstuffs. From this point of view, the printing press, photography, radio and TV may have dragged more people into the cities than all the famines and economic dislocations that have taken place throughout history.
From a slightly different point of view, urban economist Richard Knight argues that the vast amount of stored information in cities what he calls the knowledge base is at the core of the gravitational force currently making cities grow. In essence, he argues that our cities have become vast storehouses of information and giant showcases of information exchange.
It's only natural for people to want to move closer to these centers and take a larger part in this dance of information exchange and economic dynamism. Forecasters say half the world's population will live in urban/suburban complexes by the year 2000 that will cover only two percent of the planet's surface, but will consume three quarters of the total natural resources in use.
While the city began as, and continues to be, a physical crossroads of man and material, today's complex "city-systems" do not stop at their statutory city limits. The current crisis of modern cities, in fact, may result from the heavy burden that more recent suburban developments put on the urban system as a whole.
The Problems Of Being Overweight
It's not difficult to view cities as living systems that process information, matter and energy, just like you or me. And you as you are I can get overweight and compromise our health and our ability to function, cities almost certainly have an optimum size they can exceed only at their own peril.
Some observers have estimated this optimum size to be somewhere between 60,000 and 200,000 inhabitants. Up to this size, the city operates more efficiently in comparison to smaller economic and living units. As the city grows beyond its optimum size, however, efficiency drops off dramatically, and maintaining the urban system suddenly becomes possible only by paying significantly increased costs for additional resources, or by sacrificing services and lifestyle quality.
Although many cities have in all likelihood already exceeded their "optimum" size and trimming them down to more manageable proportions would be difficult and dangerous, it may be possible to use telecommunications technology to support the future growth of cities in a "virtual" dimension that need not add to their physical size.
One possibility was proposed for a business resort near Palma de Mallorca (to be known as the Parc BIT) by the British architect Sir Richard Rogers. His idea was to combine an urban center containing dense housing, offices and telecommunications infrastructures with a relatively rural space of gardens, farms, single family homes, and open space.
But while the idea makes a great deal of sense, placing a village telecenter within an existing city often raises fears, concerns and protests. We are still experiencing only the slow beginnings of what will likely become a profound change in future decades: the rise of horizontal networks in which urban and rural institutions work together for mutual benefit. How long will it take for village dwellers to recognize that their fear of rural areas loosing their identity is simply not justified. In stark contrast to this fear, telecommunications technology actually makes it possible and practical for rural areas to escape the cultural domination of one urban center and theoretically link by choice to another center of excellence, and perhaps even more than one.
If cities continue to focus on growth in terms of ownership of contiguous land and promoting their population's physical proximity, the levels of growth we have seen until today are probably not sustainable, nor even desirable. Urban centers like Mexico City, Tokyo, and Beijing are already experiencing infrastructure inadequacies and systemic breakdowns (traffic snarls, everyday pollution problems, intense overcrowding, rapacious pricing, excessive crime and serious personal safety concerns) that are rapidly rendering them almost unlivable.
But if cities can learn to focus instead on growth through information linkages rather than agglomeration, they can very likely continue to grow in some of the most important ways by increasing their "virtual" populations, and so increasing their available knowledge resources, job opportunities, cultural depth, and economic dynamism.
The Telework Opportunity
Experience is now beginning to demonstrate that a telecottage, telecenter, telehouse and even a teleport cannot stand alone. Whether based in a village or an urban center, each can operate successfully only in relation to at least one complementary location that matches its basic form and function. This makes sense because telecommunications is really only a support technology for people-to-people information exchange, and the people inhabiting a telecenter necessarily want to be in touch with other people people who must be supported by compatible telecommunications equipment in one configuration or another.
Telecommunications is therefore best seen not as a stand-alone monument to future economic activity, but as a bridge between individuals and groups of people, to be used for all the various purposes which people historically pursue. Wherever this simple truth is not put into both theory and practice, the telecommunications projects that result will quickly die or never even come to life.
Conceiving and building such telecommunications bridges is therefore the most important challenge for cities that want to expand beyond the practical limits of physical size and population density that want to maintain and expand their knowledge bases by linking telematically with additional populations that don't require physical support in the city's necessarily limited spaces.
Within Every City, A Village
It now appears that cities are undergoing a deep, structural change. The city center still houses political, economic, spiritual, and intellectual power, as well as major cultural and recreational resources. There continue to be lots of start-up enterprises, subsidiaries, branches and headquarters of large corporations populating the office towers and central city districts which so many observers recently proclaimed obsolete. It appears that the needs for clustering, for support services, and for communication cannot be met entirely within a rural or suburban setting. It may also be that the greater our global reach becomes, the more we expect leadership to emanate from the long-established centers of power.
Yet a host of traditional city functions are being moved toward the edge of the city, toward suburbia. Much work is now being done from call centers, back office operations, and diversified or "virtual" organizations situated in comfortable suburban settings where middle class labor is abundantly available. Look around at your own closest city and notice how residential facilities, shopping, and even work are distributed not in a central mass, as they once were, and not in a ring or a doughnut around the center, as they might be imagined. In many cities, the cutting edge of life and work is beginning to be distributed unevenly among a score of "mini-centers" located at key sites throughout the urban/suburban complex.
This tendency is enhanced by the rise of multi-function developments in and around natural gathering places, such as shopping malls, cultural centers, and sports complexes. The synergies that arise in combination with nearby retail, office, and residential facilities are resulting in entirely new micro-environments with new power to attract populations and activity. Within our cities we are seeing a variety of new sub-centers competing for attention and growth. What is this but the renaissance of smaller cities and even villages within the urban/suburban complex?
Pathways to the Future
Experience now shows that it is wrong to oppose centralization with decentralization. Instead, it should be countered with increased cooperation, primarily through telecommunications and shared information. In this telematic scenario, it's possible to imagine for the first time a village enjoying with the help of a cooperative city better medical treatment, wider job opportunities, more satisfying entertainment options, and a broader range of cultural activities. Villagers could even tap into all the resources of a major university, and earn a degree by means of distance education from an urban center, supported by local educational institutions.
The increasing maturity and miniaturization of telecommunications technology already allows for the transformation of existing institutions like libraries and schools into outlets of codified and dynamic knowledge. It also supports the convergence of previously separate institutions into a shared resource where information and data transfer are easily integrated into everyday activities, without the need for a special "telecommunications center." A single "multi-use" village center, for example, can easily function as an educational facility, community library, and cultural resource, morphing from a workplace during the day to a seminar or lecture all in the evening and a theater or opera house at night.
Such a future is almost here. Technology will soon allow community-based auditoriums anywhere in the world to show "first run" features, classics, or even independent productions by downloading high quality images from one or more centralized sources. High definition television will allow villagers to enjoy and support at a distance the opera, ballet, and theater provided by cooperative urban centers.
Villages thus have the potential, quite literally, to become "global villages" by linking themselves widely and wisely into the full range of information and experience that urban centers have to offer.
This gives rise to a vision in which villages let the cities win the race for global competitiveness, and instead become the refuge for a lifestyle apart from the "rat race" of competition and jobs.