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.

Sustainability is an attempt to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the indefinite future. It relates to the continuity of economic, social, institutional and environmental aspects of human society, as well as the non-human environment. It is intended to be a means of configuring civilization and human activity so that society, its members and its economies are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals in a very long term. Sustainability affects every level of organization, from the local neighborhood to the entire planet.

Wikipedia

This may be the first time that I look for a definition of a word in wikipedia and it is able to encompass the main concepts covered in the readings. The definition is clear despite the broadness of the ideas it defines, and one understands the different scales and depth the processes are implemented. Is the ability to define sustainability in such a manner a resultant of a growing consensus in society as to the functioning of our “spaceship”? Paul Hawken in Natural Capitalism would say so. He suggests that despite the different colored interests groups, (red, blue, green, and white), and the different competing industries, that a general consensus of the world’s path is growing. “What is remarkable about this period is the degree of agreement that is forming globally about the relationship between human and living systems…Now they are being joined by the deeper voice of international organizations and companies, large and small….Never before in history have such disparate and independent groups created common framework of understanding around the world” (pg. 321-322). He describes that framework as a comprehensive and complex system full of interconnections in which natural capitalism plays a key role. If we were to compare the notion of natural capital to a term that Buckminster Fuller would have used it would be Space Ship Earth’s manual. Hawken argues that the groups and organizations taking on the task to create a user’s manual are the world’s new capitalist. “Arguably they have now become the world’s real capitalists. By addressing such issues … they are now doing more to preserve a viable business future than are all the world’s chambers of commerce put together” (pg. 315).

During my daily activities I came across something that related very much to Roger’s writings in Sustainable cities. He stresses the concept of “compact city” as a new model for future cities, basing that through the proximity of resources as being more efficient and healthier. He looks at transport, energy sources, and a sense of community. I was confronted with this idea of proximity today when walking to Wurster I came across the selling of produce from community gardens, and a huge flyer with the red words of sustainability were plaster on their tarp billboard. The idea was that they were selling high quality produce at a cheap rate. They were local growers and using natural methods to harvest their crops. Also because of their location less energy was used to get the products to the people resulting in situation that benefited consumers and the environment.

sustainability_liwen

Sustainability


Hawken, Lovins and Lovins’ article on Natural Capitalism is both a very informative and perhaps logical reading of what is to come in the face of a capital driven economy that is obsessed with results on a purely statistical level.

What is very successful about Hawken, Lovins and Lovins’ article is the way upon which the authors reinvent connotations of the word capitalism. When one thinks about capitalism, often negative images of giant ruthless yet efficient corporations come to mind, very reminiscent of Kwinter’s manifestation of Houston, Texas. However, as brought up in Natural Capitalism, the running out of natural recourses available has caused previously perceived evil multinational corporations to reconsider their futures when what is described as 'natural capital' becomes limited. Thus upon taking into account the opportunity costs imposed by the diminishing natural resources available, companies are now reassessing what was once the traditional means of making profit – as advertised by current worldwide trade policies. What companies are looking into now, besides capital gain through resource exploitation is the need to take what Hawken, Lovins and Lovins’ calls ‘natural and social capital’ into account.

However despite the innovative yet highly optimistic outlook the authors present (‘for the first time, employees’ activities at work are fully and directly aligned with what is best for their children and grandchildren at home’) which is plausible since the environment is finally taken into account with a certain degree of seriousness, both Hawken’s (and Lovins and Lovins’) and Gumuchdjian’s articles fail to take into account the informal sectors of work that is currently one of the most problematic paradigms of our time, as manifested by Mike Davis’ Planet of Slums . In our current Post-Fordist society, (Marx’s) alienation coupled with deliberately permeable borders between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries, namely the relations between the US and Mexico, mean that the labor force responsible for much of the extensive yet rapid productions for many formal sectors, such as the construction (i.e. day laborers) or fashion industries (i.e. sweatshops), is much attributed to that of the informal sector, workers that are not registered citizens and thus cannot enjoy the spoils of being in the group which Hawken considers as 'social capital'. When Hawken, Lovins and Lovins’ mentions great hopes in ‘rebuilding human capital and restoring natural capital’, one cannot stop but question what exactly this human capital embodies.

Sustainability

‘Cities for small planet’ shows Richard Rogers’s Lu Zia Sui district proposal articulated as a sustainable compact city. Advantage of compact city is described as interventions triggering further opportunities for efficiency. Fewer roads but more landscape and reducing the heat bloom of cities so ultimately reducing the waste of energy is the theory of the Lu Zia Sui in Shanghai project. Process of planning is made possible by computer modeling that brings together the complex matrix of criteria that make up the modern city. (Page 2) This term can be compared to description about Houston-“Houston’s development is uncommonly exposed to economic buffeting and fluctuation at all level from local and national to global. A city model generated by complete simulation with a development strategy vs a sprawling city with totally unexpected factors.
Economical factors which can not be under control would be a key difference in this circumstance.

Article ‘Natural capitalism’ focuses on ‘The resource productivity as a societal strategy between business and government’. Throughout color-code which is mentioned as matrix of four worldviews, authors try to exam system of capitalism. It might be slightly biased and narrowed as a way of reflecting a perspective among business, environmentalist and synthesist. Anyway, from that approach, this article refers ‘Natural capitalism’as the alternative. Natural capital is an opposite notion against manufactured capital. For advanced resource productivity, business should play a role as link creating production and distribution in order to balance between two capital systems.

Article ‘A Question of Design' is a question on which side design purpose has put since Industrial Revolution- not planned, but has a definite motive. It would valuable in terms of those specific, limited to the practical, efficient and linear goals of early industrialists which mentioned (page 24) in the article, is still a shared general assumption about the world. McDonough points out design solutions for a worse-case scenario, cradle to grave design, hostile force about diversity, measuring of progress with only economic activities and high-tech products composed of low-quality materials.
There is no perfect solution with the passed footprint. Like he said, only strategy for change is on site.

more to come, out of time for now ...

As an inroads to discussing JCR Licklider’s Man-Computer-Symbiosis of 1960, it would be interesting to analyze the simultaneous “tetrad” of effects as outlined in MacLuhan’s Laws of Media of 1992 to that theoretically supreme example of new media prefigured so presciently in Licklider’s writing, the internet.

Enhance – The internet clearly enhances the velocity and volume of the exchange of information in a multitude of digital forms, those being primarily audio, video, text and image.

Obsolesce – The internet tends to obsolesce those forms of communication or information transfer which now have a digital equivalent. The easiest example is e-mail which changes dramatically the role of the traditional paper mail service (now referred to as “snail mail”). An interesting post-e-mail phenomenon has been that companies such as Netflix have been able to find adaptive reuses for the USPS that expand and exploit its potential beyond that of a basic message delivery service.

Recurrence – I would argue that the recurrence of a suppressed fantasy of democratic culture is engendered by the internet. The internet is simply too broad and too open of a forum for a multitude of agendas, desires and opinions not to be expressed. Of course internet access has initially been available to only the most privileged. But, as time goes by, as bandwidth becomes cheaper, as the means and modes of expressing oneself become disseminated and more importantly modified by new user groups, the internet could become a more highly charged political space, not merely mimicking the partisan divisions and representations of the traditional media (which tend towards bullet-pointed filtrations) but rather micro-broadcasting a disparate array of differentiated agendas, within which the ultra fine silt of individualized desire might start to emulate the utopian dream of true representative democracy.

Reversal – The immersive interactivity of the internet that allows for the emergent political potential here previously argued has embedded within it a simultaneously regressive character, that postmodern condition best described by Baudrillaird, that culture could become a completely simulated experience.

Media Interface

I'll take the physical challenge on this one.

Media

The media brings the issue that what is the limitation of human activity. From McLuhan’s article, all man-made material things can be treated as extensions of what man once did with his body or some specialized part of body, men start using themselves as media. And when it goes with scientific developments, it’s hard to tell where the media come from. After then as McLuhan raised the issue, sometimes we could see the debate whether media is from man’s biological or psychological means or technical ingenuity. And from this argue, man cannot trust himself and it cause the radical change of identity.

To identify the man, mcluhan says the transformational effects of our artificial organ- they generate totally new condition of environmental service and or life- these are the concerns of Law of Media’ (p97, Law of Media). He tries to bring the issue about law of media that provide a means of identifying the properties of and actions exerted upon ourselves by our technologies and media and artifacts. (p98, Law of Media). It’s time consuming argue that man is genuine human even though he has the transmitted organ. The artefact is the active and utter if human mind or body that transforms the user and his ground. And the artifact has the meaning as a media.

In the Laura Burd Schiavo article, how the human eye became the source of image tool. From the concept of perspective, man percept the depth of space. It brings the question about the status and reliability of vision (p114, Laura Burd Schiavo).The body became as an active producer of sensation and it gives other possibility to see the view of world. The science of vision could become less geometric and less predictable. And it obscured the boundary of real image of the world. Photographers could reform the image and we could see the world as we want even though true facts are sometimes hidden and only the surface are exposed.

Media/ Interface

Mcluhan is saying Media observes human operation and affects them in every place where they are implicated in his article. Like he is saying, if a human artifact is not merely an implement for working upon something, but an extension of our body, affected by the artificial addition of organs, Media can called the human extended eye itself.
But, he emphasizes evolutionary standpoints of media. ‘The transformational effects of our artificial organ- they generate totally new condition of environmental service and or life- these are the concerns of Law of Media’ (p97, Law of Media).
This view would be valuable as the sense of reading both deadly and advantageous power of media generating unfathomable consequence.

In the Licklide’s article, concerning the separable function of men and computer for Man-Computer Symbioses, Licklider mentions ‘The information-processing equipment will convert hypotheses into models and test the model against data’ (p58, Man-Computer Symbioses). And, he assumes that digesting and converting data is the role of computer for successful symbioses. Letting computers facilitate formulative thinking and men’s infilling the gaps between particular circumstance and program, sounds great combination for ideal symbiotic cooperation.
Yet, I am curious that how a symbiotic cooperation with computer is actually possible in terms of time sharing.
If computer which is expected in Man-Computer Symbiosis is not just semi-automatic system and it is extended human arms and eye, it might perform like Media. With that sense, I am suspicious we can we easily ignore Laws of Media-interface, of the resonant interval as ‘where the action is’ in all structures, whether chemical, psychic, or social, involves touch (p102, Law of Media).

Media/Interface

Media/Interface
Bin Wang

The world is subjective, but not objective. Obviously the world in the human being’s eyes is totally different with the one in animals’ eyes. The world is also different in different people’s eyes. I think it is not important what the difference we can see through camera and stereoscope, because what the world really is is less important than how we see and understand it.
When we see something behind a fence or a panel with holes, we can see clearly what we want to see, however, if we use a camera, it will focus on the fence or panel automatically. The most important function of our eyes is that they can choose and adjust. So does our brain. As Schiavo’s article mentioned, “the fact that shifting ideological and philosophical meanings were not wholly constrained by or contained in the structure of the medium makes us turn for explanation to culture.”, medium are only tools through which we could see and understand the world better.

The articles talked about everything but architecture. It forces me to ask, “What’s the relation between media and architecture”. J.Z.Young put it, “all of man’s artifacts-whether language, or laws, or ideas and hypotheses, or tools, or clothing, or computers-are extensions of the physical human body or the mind.” In other words, the development of medium is the development of human body. Everything we invented is part of our body. Architecture should not be an exception.

The contradiction is that after we invented and built something, including architecture, they also became part of the world. Hence medium, built with the intension to understand, also become the things that need to be understood. Probably this is the real meaning of “media”.

sha_media_interface

In an age of information design and user interface design, it is interesting to turn back to an article like Licklider's Man-Computer Symbiosis, where the meeting point between men and machines is approached cautiously, almost self-consciously. Small points like "the purposes of this paper are to present the concept and, hopefully, to foster..." or "that assumption may require justification" reinforce the hesitant tone taken by Licklider presenting this article to his peers.

What he is proposing is fascinating, that through each sides' strengths and weaknesses the man-computer relationship can become finely tuned and optimized. In some ways it reminds me of the CAD vs BIM tools, where the program's responsibility is to keep consistent and update information which enables the user to focus more on the changes needed to be made.

In Mcluhan's article, Mcluhan shows how the interface of a mechanism changes the perception of the action (bomb vs petrol, tusk vs spear). This reminds me of a recent post by iA, on the idea of interface as brand. In it, iA writes about how the iPod's (and potentially the iPhone's) success is based around the interface/brand, and how competitors have failed because all they have done so far is to mimic the interface. "Copies can’t “kill” the original if the original is that protoypical." This contemporary view of interface as a realm of advertising or branding shows how entwined the man-computer symbiosis has really become. It reminds me of Alan Kay's comment that people who are really serious about software should make their own hardware -- the idea that interface and interaction can actually drive the machine, much like Schiavo's description of the discovery of the eye as a mechanism for sight and then the subsequent process of replicating and rediscovering the machine as a mechanism for "viewing pleasure."



http://www.informationarchitects.jp/the-interface-of-a-cheeseburger

Media/Interface

Architecture 209X, Spring 2007

Words and Cities: The rhetoric and meaning of statistically improbable phrases

Nicholas De Monchaux

Qing Wang

Media/Interface

It is interesting that both Man-Computer Symbiosis and Laws of Media treat machine/computer/tool/weapon/the extension of our human being as another independent individual. By contrast with the common senses which human being invented those tools and they serve us, both of two readings emphasize on the independence and interaction of the interrelationship. In Licklider’s article, he interpreted the current problems of computation devices and the reasons they need be shifted. The computers were designed to solve the problems by pre-determined programs or formulas. They are used to do the tedious repetitive works for people who normally are considered low efficient in that kind work. All of those performances of computers rely on human-designed pre-determined program and formulas. Computers only do what you designed in advance. They execute only one or few commands every time but in an extremely fast speed. They can find the answer of a set question much faster than human brain. However, the problem is sometimes that it is harder to find the question rather than the answer. Once computers can participate into the question-finding jobs, the process of solving a problem will be accelerated dramatically. On the contrary of optimistic thinking of Licklider’s article, Laws of Media starts with a much shadowy tones about the influence of media. It implies that the inventions of tools make people distrust and isolated psychologically. Artificial weapons as one of human body’s extension make people cruder. The more advance the weapon is, the less sympathetic people are. The analogical influence happens on the relationship between people and media. The detachment of people and physical reality enhances the deconstruction of social identity. “Radical changes of identity, happening suddenly and in very brief intervals of time, have proved more deadly and destructive of human values than wars fought with hardware weapons.” Based on that provocative narrative, artists (or architects?) have been described as the counter-force to resist the negative impact from media. “Without the artist’s intervention man merely adapts to his technologies and become their servo-mechanism. …the role of art is to liberate man from the robot status imposed by adjusting to technologies.” It recalled me some familiar ideas that art should save the society when the Germany National Museum was commissioned to design. Instead of the fetish of art or artist, I more believe that this counter-force is derived from the deepest part of our subconsciousness. The art is the materialized subconsciousness. The artist is the person who executes it.

Interfaces and iPhones

I remember reading Descartes for an undergraduate class in philosophy—the last philosophy class I ever took. The answers conjured up by Descartes to the very questions that led me to take the class (i.e. what is reality and are perceptions real) I found to be beyond tedious. Descartes, for all his brilliant arguments, failed to recognize what any high school biology class made clear: the eyeball is an interface to the brain. By using the history of the stereoscope and camera to map our understanding of the how the human eye works, Schiavo traces our understanding of the eye as an interface, or as dictionary.com defines it, “a common boundary or interconnection between systems, equipment, concepts, or human beings.” In Schiavo’s words, “creating a situation in which we “see” that which is not really there, the stereoscope insinuated an arbitrary relationship between stimulus and sensation.” This means that the two are related in that the interface othrough which a stimulus is received will certainly affect its sensation.
In McLuhan’s “Laws of Media,” this argument is extended to “all man’s artifacts – whether language, or laws, or ideas and hypotheses, or tools, or clothing, or computers – are extensions of the physical human body or mind.” Certainly the stereoscope falls into this group, as do all other devices, such as guns, bombs, cars and birth control. McLuhan’s realization that “man has developed extensions for practically everything he used to do with his body” is not nearly as fascinating as how this has affected social relationships. His cited analogy between the emotional differences between a solider killing a child with petrol and a match versus dropping napalm from an airplane represents how the interface between two people affects emotions. In the case of the bomb, all senses (our integrated interfaces) are removed from the subject: the bomber is not going to smell the burning flesh, hear the screams of agony, or see the carnage up close. Unlike the stereoscope, the effect of the artificial interface no longer creates the same experience as the original.
This makes me consider the new iPhone by Apple. Rumors of its existence have been circulating through blogs for years, but until several months ago it was only subject of speculation. Part of the reason for wait was the extensive research and development of the phone’s interface. The importance of how the iPhone’s surface felt was essential; it could not smudge, it needed to be perfectly touch sensitive with an appealing surface, it needed to be intuitive, etc. The inverse of the bomb, the iPhone—a remote interface between two people conversing—was developed to compliment the interaction between natural interfaces (e.g. touch) and artificial media. This recalls Licklider’s “man-computer symbiosis.” If Licklider had seen the iPhone, his hope that “human brains and and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly” would certainly have come to fruition. That “the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought” is maybe not so clear: an awful lot of automobile accidents happen as someone is arguing over a cell phone.

Media Interface

“Man the tool-making animal has long been engaged in extending one or another of his sense organs in such a manner as to disturb all of his other senses and faculties” J.Z. Young writes. Mans strive for stimulations, external or internal, is to break up the unison of action of the brain.

In our age man has developed extensions for almost everything he used to do with his body. The ‘laws of media’ reading argues that “all man-made material things can be treated as extensions of what man once did with his body or some specialized part of his body”.

Mans creation of new environments will lead to the changes of man himself. A new service environment will modify the very nature and image of people who use it. As electric media booms people becomes detached from mere bodily or physical reality. In this IT-era the personal and community values disappears in a rapidly increasing pace. I am actually very glad that I have had the privilege to live in the pre-internet world and experience the change of modes to communicate.

The Laws of media reading further stresses the main characteristic of man to be the communication as a tool itself.

In the Stereoscope reading Burd Schiavo writes “that media do not function as neutral systems for the storage and communication of information or opinion. She further quotes Jean Baudrillard; “media are not coefficients but effectors of ideology”.

Anders response

Duncan Watts starts his article with a series of questions. I really like this manner of writing as it capture my attention straight away. I want to know the answer of these questions. All his questions are the same version of one question; “How does individual behaviour aggregate to collective behaviour?” Watts suggests that sometimes the bigger mass is easier to understand than the complicated individual itself, as long as you ignore the more complicated individual details. Knowing the behaviour of the individuals does not necessary help us understanding the way of the group. At the levels of groups, systems and populations a new phenomena can emerge. Individuals in a large system can generate greater complexity than the individuals themselves.

Jane Jacobs uses the city as the principle of emergence. “Cities happen to be problems in organized complexity” Jacobs writes (p433). She goes on and refers to Dr Weaver who suggests that cities consist of a number of situations all varying simultaneously and in subtly interconnected ways. Jane Jacobs implies this reasoning to city planning and recognizes the problem of just looking at a few factors individual instead of looking at the city and reasoning from particulars to the general (rather than reverse).

Gould and Lewontin writes in their critique of the adaptationist programme that organisms must be analysed as integrated wholes. They further points out that in an integrated whole the “constraints themselves (between individuals) become more interesting and more important in delimiting pathways of change than the selective force that may mediate change when it occurs”.

So, in trying to end my response in the manner Watts starts his article, with a question: Is an emergent system something that is created with a number of individual parts that together form a more complicated whole? Or is it just a mass of whatever, together in a system?

Emergence

Both Jacobs and Gould critique the existing models of thinking about progress in their respective fields. Interestingly the two authors characterize these existing models of thought as inhabiting two opposite poles of the philosophical spectrum. Each posits a completely different existing paradigm for how man considers his relationship to nature. For Jacobs the existing model of thought about how cities progress is flawed because man has completely detached himself from nature. She writes on pg. 443, “Underlying the jejunue belief in ‘the dark and foreboding’ irrationality of chaos of cities, lies a long established misconception about the relationship of cities - and indeed of men - with the rest of nature.” Gould critiques the “adaptationist programme” of biology by claiming that it relies on a Panglossian view of nature. Dr. Pangloss, a character that Voltaire created for the explicit purpose of ridiculing his contemporary philosophical competition (Leibnitz), suffers from the misconception that “Things cannot be other than they are … Everything is made for the best purpose.” To sum up the differences between the two critiques in a far too simple manner we could say that Jacobs critiques a worldview that is overwhelming complex and irrational while Gouuld critiques a worldview that is overly totalizing and simplistic. Modern analogues to these critiqued paradigms could be nihilism and intelligent design perhaps.

sha_week6

The idea of emergence [and cities] has always fascinated me, so it was interesting to read Jane Jacobs’ article and have this idea slowly emerge as if we were afraid to ever think about cities in such a way. Even the title refuses normal capitalization. Much of the theory is introduced by narrating and parsing the ideas of Dr. Weaver. The extensive italics that appear show the focus [and in some sense, excitement] of the author on this idea of complex systems, where the Jacobs has deemed it necessary to place even more emphasis — kind, disorganized complexity, organized complexity, organic whole, subtly interconnected ways, etc…It is an odd shift when Jacobs, having lead the reader through Dr. Weaver’s impressive theories and impressing upon the reader how impressive these ideas of organized complexity are, she begins to lead this reader into critiquing current planning practices and the disrespect of cities in general. This notion of disrespect was very interesting, because of the tie in she uses later with nature and sentimentality. Jacobs says there “are dangers in sentimentalizing nature. Most sentimental ideas imply, at bottom, a deep if unacknowledged disrespect…” It reminded me somewhat of taking photographs, something I struggle with in my trips to China. By taking a photograph, you acknowledge to some degree the event or scene’s ability to become an image — the scene dies a little when you agree to that assumption. What Jacobs proposes, then, is a refusal to sentimentalize nature and deny real nature from intruding upon cities; Jacobs suggests that the vital city [along with its own biological descriptions] is capable of being active, not diseased, because of their complexity. This then raises an interesting challenge to planners, and is perhaps why planners have always seen cities as either “disorganized complexity” or “irrational.” Jacobs critiques planners and designers but does not suggest ways to create lively, diverse cities — vital cities. It is implied that vital cities exist, but how can we learn from them? Are planners an obsolete idea?