The Revolution Will Be Designed

“Cities have never contained so many…” begins Richard Rogers. (Rogers, 27) One could end this sentence with an ‘x’. Cities have never contained so many variables. Slums, cars, dollars, corporations, lattes, networks, hybrid cars, systems, people! As situation normal reaches its entropic conclusion, we will need a systems view to deal with so many variables and design the next urban revolution.

“[T]he Industrial Revolution as a whole was not really designed.” (McDonough, 18) McDonough argues that the form of the modern city is largely resultant from a singly focused world view. Inherent in his language and argument is an argument for a systemic view of cities and infrastructure that values resources as much as profit, rejecting what he calls the ‘cradle to grave’ mentality. A parallel can be seen between the development of and problems now facing mono-cultured farming and the modern city. “The single-minded cultivation of one species drastically reduces the rich network of “services” and side effects in which the entire ecosystem originally engaged…The GDP takes only one measure of progress into account: activity.” (McDonough, 35) An infrastructure devoted to one thing, profit, and the terrible reality of how common it is, is elucidated in Kwinter’s horrifying descriptions of Houston.

“[Houston] is arguably no real city at all but is rather a loose confederation of industrial profit centers that together form an ethereal web of shared infrastructure and economic and statutory partnerships... Houston’s entire logic and raison d’etre is as a profit center, and as such it remains the experimental model for nearly all other developing cities in the world.” (Kwinter, 547)

It seems that to design healthy cities, we have to accept the idea of Natural Capital, and operate from the view of the ‘whites’. Social, natural, and financial capital need be regarded as equal variables in a systemic world view. “Just as businesses are beginning to see the loss of natural capital or ecosystem function as harmful to both their short- and long-term interests, they may also come to realize the social inequities are harmful to their interests as well.” (Hawkens, Lovins & Lovins, 318)

Rogers argues for a reactive systems design of the Compact City. “The creation of the modern Compact city demands the rejection of single-function development and the dominance of the car….The whole premise of the Compact City is that interventions trigger further opportunities for efficiency.” (Rogers, 38,50) These further opportunities become new variables, and provide feedback. We need recognize the ideal city as an emergent system to be able to design it. “Sustainable Compact Cities could, I contend, reinstate the city as the ideal habitat for a community-based society.” (Rogers, 40) Much of the reading was focused on the pressing need for this utopia to be sought, a need invoked by the growth of slums, the pollution and alienation of the car, or the contamination of everyday items. McDonough argues that these are necessary results of a flawed design. “The waste, pollution, crude products, and other negative effects that we have described are not the result of corporations doing something morally wrong. They are the consequence of outdated and unintelligent design.” (McDonough, 43)

This can, on one hand, sound fatalist, but on the other empower us to change the design. Rogers reminds us that "computer modeling [brings] together the complex matrix of criteria that make up the modern city.” (Rogers, 52) Rogers also refreshingly reminds us that all politics, including natural politics, is local. “Tackling the global environmental crisis from the vantage point of each city brings the task within the grasp of the citizen… [T]he dense city model need not be seen as a health hazard. This means we can reconsider the social advantages of proximity, rediscover the advantages of living in each other’s company.” (Rogers, 33) The example of Curitiba shows that preserving all types of capital, natural, human, and social, within the confines of the city not only leads to richer civic life, but prompts the local citizens to invest more into their community.

All of the articles argue that the response to the environmental crisis lies in greater understanding of the systems and infrastructures of the city. Only by admitting more variables, and understanding the ecosystem of the city can we design the next revolution.