Urban Frontiers
What I wish I knew when I first started learning about cities and architecture, and what journey this substack will bring you on
Architecture study is self-deprecatingly termed by many students as “archi-torture”. The spin-off is not far from the truth. It has shaped me in substantial ways, and is the genesis of this newsletter. Instead of traditional practice, I’ve chosen to search for my own frontier in my contribution to the urban environment. Which explains the name of this newsletter. Part of this journey is a deeper understanding on the role in which cities can play to contribute towards collective flourishing, and how I can facilitate this process.
Backstory
The urban environment that we interact with as part of living in the city is shaped less by architects than many may perceive. I delved into architecture without this understanding. My curiosity about the possible impact of the urban environment on the way that people live was nudged by articles about hostile architecture. Spikes, physical barriers, and sneakily, slanted benches. All ways to ward off the sight of the homeless from the streetscape. I was both intrigued and put-off by these attempts - in what ways have I been influenced by the urban environment that I may not have been aware of? Why did we abandon the pursuit of beauty in our urban environment? In those moments, something shifted within me to pursue the questions that arose. Naively, I thought the answer lay in architecture studies.
Those who have made architectural beauty their life’s work know only too well how futile some of these efforts made be. To be momentarily suffused with a sense of pride when a solitary building is completed feels hollow to me when the larger urban landscape does not similarly engender joy. A piercing cry of resistance doesn’t rid the niggling sense that the urban environment could birth many more wonders. John Ruskin had warned devotees who are set on this path that the nobler characteristic of Venetian architecture did not take away the distress of ordinary living, nor did it make right the unhappy circumstances of the city. Beautiful architecture is its own reward, but it is a feeble contributor towards enduring flourishing at a societal level. Ultimately, there are larger forces at work.
That is not to say that the significance of architecture, as a form of art, should be ignored. Ruskin summarises elegantly: “Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last.” My belief in the rectitude of architecture rests on its ability to render vivid to us who we might ideally be. Admittedly, this takes the form of a subtle, and often, unheeded call. A thankless task indeed.
City + architecture and infrastructure
“Society produces buildings, and the buildings, although not producing society, help to maintain many of its social forms.”
Humanity differentiated ourselves from animals by coordinating around mythology. The stories we tell ourselves raised civilisations and cities. Cities began by serving as the gateway between culture and economics.1 This relationship is symbiotic, but also, at times, fraught.2
If I may try adapting a more comprehensive definition, a city is an emergent complex adaptive system resulting from the flows of resources (usually capital, labour, commodities and other materials) and information (usually digital and pricing) that sustain and grow the network of infrastructure and inhabitants.3 Culture and related social technologies are the lifeblood that nourishes the continual flow of resources and information.
The purpose - cities should ideally serve as the scaffolding for individual flourishing. For with it, emerges a thriving society.4
The city 5 should deploy architecture and infrastructure 6 as part of a toolkit so that its inhabitants can flourish. There may be a tendency to equate architecture and infrastructure with a thriving society, but this is to confuse the glimmer of the skyline with the health of the inhabitants. Admittedly, it can serve as a useful proxy. But remember, the real city is made of flesh, not concrete. For the social interactions that power commerce, networks and innovation are the true foundations of a city (see agglomeration effects). This may seem banal and blindingly obvious to some, but what may be underappreciated is that the right social networks can help to catalyse golden ages. The potentially outsized impact of people grouping within a locale should not be understated, for it can essentially engender a (positive) black swan event.
The use of architecture and infrastructure is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. The resilience of humans may triumph over deteriorating urban conditions to generate lasting breakthroughs, especially if network effects surrounding human talent and capital sets in. San Francisco has been consistently plagued by housing and transportation issues, but continue to rake in billions of dollars in tax revenue every year.
This is not to say that architecture and infrastructure stand powerless to facilitate the process of societal flourishing. Much has been made of the economic uplift that infrastructure like rail or highway can bring. Architecture can stand testimony to the hopeful projections of a more enriching future, with its continued presence propagating a society’s lofty ideals.
Urban frontiers and this moment in time
Grand dreams of architecture and infrastructure remaking our societies have cyclically swept through discourse - Cerda’s Eixample, Corbusier’s Plan Voisin, Eisenhower’s interstate highway system, to name a few. The pendulum of public opinion to these newfound ideas of the urban frontier oscillate with time.
The advent of the industrial revolution and the proliferation of cars paved the way for modern architecture and the car-centric city. Foibles of human desire were made subservient to the logically planned city that prioritised the flow of traffic. Eventually, these high modernist ideals of re-ordering the urban environment were met with widespread public pushback. The most prominent - Jane Jacobs’ struggle against Robert Moses. A classic confrontation between top-down planning and bottom-up sensibility. Moses, who essentially held the role of New York’s chief planner, wanted to flatten Greenwich Village to make way for roads. As a native resident, Jane Jacobs’ efforts eventually derailed the plan and firmly pushed the public opinion pendulum away from such grand urban gestures.7 Power in the West has since been largely decentralised to avoid the second coming of Moses.
The turn away from the urban frontier, of grand dreams of architecture and infrastructure in the West to effect societal flourishment, coincided with the information age. Emerging technology companies which could harvest unprecedented amounts of data spoke to new abstracted layers of understanding reality. Capital flows were channelled away from the urban environment towards the emerging digital realm. The frontier took a digital turn.
Today, the legacy of existing architecture and infrastructure that benefit its inhabitants create barriers to urban experiments through regulation and the requisite negotiations to share in the use of already-occupied spaces. This confronts urban experiments with a high degree of complexity, due to the need to invest substantial levels of resources and reduces the speed of iteration cycles. Success, an uphill struggle, is made steeper. In part the reason why despite all the proclamations by technology firms on disrupting the static nature of things in the built environment, it has amounted to little thus far. The same can arguably be said about government experiments. Eric Weinstein’s thought experiment can largely be extended to the built environment beyond our rooms - “I have this test, which is, go into a room and subtract off all of the screens. How do you know you’re not in 1973?”
That being said, there have been a handful of successful cases. Amazon, Airbnb and Uber have their businesses coupled to the built environment. Through their ascent, parts of the urban environment have been remade in their image. Let’s cite the impact of Amazon. Unprecedented access to a dizzying array of books at relatively lower consumer prices. The trade-off? Its behemoth presence deteriorates the unit economics of running a local bookstore. The bookstore must now offer community, atmosphere and cats (all good things!) to compete. More resources must be funnelled into the endeavour with no guarantee of a heightened success rate. Will the risk of maintaining a rich urban experience be brunt by those without hefty financial backing?
More structural attempts by both governments and companies alike have grinded to a halt - see smart cities (e.g. Songdo and Sidewalk Labs) and value chain reforms (e.g. Katerra). Walkable and cycle-friendly cities offer alternative visions of a more inclusive society because it caters to the human scale by enlivening street life and uplifting the quality of living in cities. It is a simple but radical foundation of a liveable city. Yet, what does it say about the urban frontier if we hark back to retrograde forms of urban environments which may not be able to absorb new technologies (see last-mile delivery for instance). With the litter of bodies, it is understandable why some societies have defaulted to the status quo instead of pursuing new urban frontiers. But we must do more.
Exploring and constructing the urban frontier remains of persistent importance because it could serve as the scaffolding for human flourishment. Until the Scientific Revolution, it is arguable if most human cultures meaningfully directed resources towards exploration in general. The vast majority of human societies generate little meaningful frontier progress, if measured by economic growth. Persistency of progress is not a foregone conclusion - see the Dark Ages and the precarity of our contemporary technology stack. The arc of human society may be long, but it does not bend towards progress. Because of the simple fact that progress is a result of many onerous endeavours that does not proportionally translate into reward.
Growth and progress may not be all that fashionable as the subtext of Malthusian traps and the limits of growth abound in discussions around the climate crisis. All we can hope for is that human progress improves the tradeoffs we face, for the moral challenges that come with difficult decisions never goes away.
America is waking up to the follies of its sclerotic approach to urban frontiers, with calls to action. China continue to plow on with infrastructure build-outs. New urban frontier are beginning to take shape - see the ideology of the network state and crypto cities or the aesthetic of a solarpunk future. Or consider how the metaverse will impact the unit economics of the built environment. How will the local bookstore compete when the immersive VR experience of its online counterpart can offer a much more vivid and diversified experience - constant author talks and interactions or its sheer grandeur.
We should back the future that we wish to realise. Dreams of a better future is rightly laden with trepidation. My inclinations are towards the urban frontiers that will engender the greatest flourishing ahead. That will require us to understand the future that they promise. We should shape our urban frontiers, for thereafter, they will shape us.
The material foundation of social life. Part of the riddle is sustainable and real economic growth that uplifts the populace’s standard of living. Some have argued that the city is the building block of all economies, and should be the more appropriate unit of study (instead of an over-emphasis at a country level).
Consider the societal impact of the 2008 subprime mortgage financial crisis or the Greek sovereign debt crisis, or worse, policies like hyperinflation.
Adapted from Geoffrey West
My suspicion is that the optimal level of societal control is likely not zero. For the unbridled freedom of the individual will impinge upon the optimal functioning of society, and ultimately constrain individual freedom.
I make the distinction here between architecture and infrastructure. Architecture refers to the (hopefully) artful design of buildings. While, infrastructure, in this case, refers to all kinds of necessary urban forms that meet the people’s needs. This includes buildings, parks, stadiums, public squares, etc.
Both the city government and its inhabitants.
Just as well, because urban planners did not consider the idea of induced demand. In short, the more roads you build, the more traffic there is.