[Urbanstudy] Are Smart Cities Condemned to Be Stupid?

[Vinay Baindur]

http://www.archdaily.com/576480/rem-koolhaas-asks-are-smart-cities-condemned-to-be-stupid/




Rem Koolhaas Asks: Are Smart Cities Condemned to Be Stupid?

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<http://www.archdaily.com/?attachment_id=576481>The Smart Cities
<http://www.archdaily.com/tag/smart-cities/> concept is linked to highly
“liveable” cities such as Vancouver superseding more recognizable cities in
our collective consciousness. Image Courtesy of SFU

*Originally published by the European Commission
<https://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/kroes/en/content/my-thoughts-smart-city-rem-koolhaas>
as
part of their “Digital Minds for a New Europe” series, this article is an
edited transcript of a talk given by Rem Koolhaas
<http://www.archdaily.com/tag/rem-koolhaas/> at the High Level Group
meeting on Smart Cities, Brussels <http://www.archdaily.com/tag/brussels/>,
24 September 2014.*

I had a sinking feeling as I was listening to the talks by these prominent
figures in the field of smart cities
<http://www.archdaily.com/tag/smart-cities> because the city used to be the
domain of the architect, and now, frankly, they have made it their domain.
This transfer of authority has been achieved in a clever way by calling
their city smart – and by calling it smart, our city is condemned to being
stupid. Here are some thoughts on the smart city, some of which are
critical; but in the end, it is clear that those in the digital realm and
architects will have to work together.

¥€$ REGIME

Architecture used to be about the creation of community, and making the
best effort at symbolizing that community. Since the triumph of the market
economy in the late 1970s, architecture no longer expresses public values
but instead the values of the private sector. It is in fact a regime – the
¥€$ regime – and it has invaded every domain, whether we want it or not.
This regime has had a very big impact on cities and the way we understand
cities. With safety and security as selling points, the city has become
vastly less adventurous and more predictable. To compound the situation,
when the market economy took hold at the end of the 1970s, architects
stopped writing manifestos. We stopped thinking about the city at the exact
moment of the explosion in urban substance in the developing world. The
city triumphed at the very moment that thinking about the city stopped. The
“smart” city has stepped into that vacuum. But being commercial
corporations, your work is changing the notion of the city itself. Maybe it
is no coincidence that “liveable” – flat – cities like Vancouver
<http://www.archdaily.com/tag/vancouver/>, Melbourne
<http://www.archdaily.com/tag/melbourne/> and even Perth
<http://www.archdaily.com/tag/perth/> are replacing traditional
metropolises in our imaginary.
<http://www.archdaily.com/?attachment_id=576484>In the late 1970s, “we
stopped thinking about the city at the exact moment of the explosion in
urban substance in the developing world.” This can be seen in the New
Urbanism movement, which from the early 1980s attempted to restore
traditionalist urban design principles. Shown here, Seaside, Florida began
construction in 1981. Image © Flickr CC user Paigeh

APOCALYPTIC RHETORIC

The smart city movement today is a very crowded field, and therefore its
protagonists are identifying a multiplicity of disasters which they can
avert. The effects of climate change, an ageing population and
infrastructure, water and energy provision are all presented as problems
for which smart cities have an answer. Apocalyptic scenarios are managed
and mitigated by sensor-based solutions. Smart cities rhetoric relies on
slogans – ‘fix leaky pipes, save millions’. Everything saves millions, no
matter how negligible the problem, simply because of the scale of the
system that will be monitored. The commercial motivation corrupts the very
entity it is supposed to serve… To save the city, we may have to destroy it…

When we look at the visual language through which the smart city is
represented, it is typically with simplistic, child-like rounded edges and
bright colours. The citizens the smart city claims to serve are treated
like infants. We are fed cute icons of urban life, integrated with harmless
devices, cohering into pleasant diagrams in which citizens and business are
surrounded by more and more circles of service that create bubbles of
control. Why do smart cities offer only improvement? Where is the
possibility of transgression? And rather than discarding urban intelligence
accumulated over centuries, we must explore how to what is today considered
“smart” with previous eras of knowledge.

IF MAYORS RULED THE WORLD

The smart city movement is focusing on the recent phenomenon that more than
50 percent of the world’s population lives in cities. Therefore mayors have
been targeted as the clients or the initiators of smart cities. Mayors are
particularly susceptible to the rhetoric of the smart city: it is very
attractive to be a smart mayor. The book If Mayors Rules the World proposes
a global parliament of mayors
<http://www.archdaily.com/553119/reinier-de-graaf-mayors-should-not-rule-the-world/>
.

This confluence of rhetoric – the “smart city”, the “creative class”, and
“innovation” – is creating a stronger and stronger argument for
consolidation. If you look in a smart city control room, like the one in Rio
de Janeiro <http://www.archdaily.com/tag/rio-de-janeiro/> by IBM, you start
to wonder about the extent of what is actually being controlled.
<http://www.archdaily.com/?attachment_id=576482>IBM’s smart city “control
centre” in Rio de Janeiro. Image Courtesy of IBM

COMFORT, SECURITY, SUSTAINABILITY

Because the smart city movement has been apolitical in its declarations, we
also have to ask about the politics behind the improvements on offer. A new
trinity is at work: traditional European values of liberty, equality, and
fraternity have been replaced in the 21st century by comfort, security, and
sustainability. They are now the dominant values of our culture, a
revolution that has barely been registered.

COURTROOM

The car is a key element in the smart city. It is now being equipped with
increasingly complex monitoring devices. On the one hand, the devices
improve the driver’s behaviour, but on the other hand they create a high
degree of surveillance. I’m not convinced that the public will welcome this
degree of monitoring. I prefer the car not to be a courtroom.

FARADAY CAGE

In the past two years we have, with the Harvard Graduate School of Design
<http://www.archdaily.com/tag/harvard-university-graduate-school-of-design/>,
looked at the architectural elements – like the wall, the floor, the door,
the ceiling, the stair – and seen how they are evolving in the current
moment. If the city is increasingly a comprehensive surveillance system,
the house is turning into an automated, responsive cell, replete with
devices like automated windows that you can open but only at certain times
of the day; floors embedded with sensors so that the change in a person’s
position from the vertical to the horizontal, for whatever reason, will be
recorded; spaces which will not be warmed in their entirety, but instead
will track their inhabitants with sensors and cloak them in heat shields.
Soon a Faraday Cage will be a necessary component of any home – a safe room
in which to retreat from digital sensing and pre-emption.
<http://www.archdaily.com/?attachment_id=576483>Grafitti in San Francisco
demonstrating the tensions between Silicon Valley workers and other
residents. Image via Affordable Housing Institute

POLITICS

The rhetoric of smart cities would be more persuasive if the environment
that the technology companies create was actually a compelling one that
offered models for what the city can be. But if you look at Silicon Valley
you see that the greatest innovators in the digital field have created a
bland suburban environment that isbecoming increasingly exclusive
<http://www.archdaily.com/540712/what-gentrification-really-is-and-how-we-can-avoid-it/>,
its tech bubbles insulated from the public sphere. There is surprise that
the digital movement is encountering opposition on its own doorstep. Smart
cities and politics have been diverging, growing in separate worlds. It is
absolutely critical that the two converge again.
Cite:Rem Koolhaas. "Rem Koolhaas Asks: Are Smart Cities Condemned to Be
Stupid?" 10 Dec 2014.*ArchDaily*. Accessed 12 Dec 2014. <
http://www.archdaily.com/?p=576480>
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