The ‘Bootable’ City

This week’s readings highlight for me the temporal qualities of human production, from store-bought products, to violently large cities—and their changing roles in an era where rapid prototyping is breaching all scales. Bauman creates an excellent frame to analyze Smith’s ‘diary’ through, as he essentially equates the act of consumption with destruction. Thus we consider the act of consuming on a small scale, where in an effort to increase the capacity of consumption, consumers must never be allowed to rest and are constantly exposed to new temptations, thereby convincing them to throw out their old product and buy the latest version.

So what are the consequences of that mentality? Well if that mentality was present in the 1850’s (as it was to a degree), it might mean buying a pretty new chair and throwing out your old one. Or maybe you give that old chair away. Or maybe you break the wood apart and use the raw materials to create something new: perhaps a desk. Now though, in an age of heavy and specialized electronic, what happens when you buy a new computer to replace your 6 year old one? Do you give it away? …Who really wants it? Can you use the parts to build something new? …No, they’re all completely obsolete. So what can you do but throw it out? And goodness knows there’s a hell of a lot more embodied energy in that conglomeration of microchips than there could be in any chair, wooden or otherwise. When you get a chance, you should watch the Story of Stuff to see a simplified but accurate explanation of where your stuff goes when you throw it out.

Now, take that temporality up another level to not only a product, but a place, like Dongguan. A place where architects spend not years or months, but days designing new buildings, where the developer needs that construction plan yesterday, where companies with twenty year contracts have the potential to make more money building new factories in new cheap places than continuing to use their old ones. Thus we find ourselves with enormous investments in physical matter and spatial constructions being completely abandoned. And it’s beyond that, even to the point where the new constructions in the Beautiful City are “vacant most of the time”. Yet money is still being made! Thinking of Destiny, I laugh at such propositions as a hotel that would comfortably hold the population of Syracuse, or ten Broadway-Style Theaters when it costs Syracuse Stage roughly four million dollars a year to stay in business. Yet despite the ‘vacancy’ such a project would inevitably find itself housing, I have no doubt it could still turn a profit. The problems simply remains that there’s an enormous waste of resources taking place.

So what’s the solution?

Bauman also discussing the importance of instant satisfaction to a consumer. Ironically, on the small scale, this trend is actually moving us towards a less ‘physically’ wasteful society, as now people are more likely to download songs instead of buying the CD, downloading applications instead of buying them, and soon we’re even reaching a point where e-books may be more often sold than real books. The advantage? They’re infinitely reproducible and use only as many resources as it takes to download the file. So how does that transfer to the city?

Well...

Maybe the future is living in your little house or apartment but working in a virtual ‘SimCity’-like environment, where the ENTIRE CITY is actually digital. No need for developers to construct a real city and make people come there for jobs. Instead of getting a job in noisy, busy, three-hour-commute Boston, you get offered a job in Chiptown, an eight second commute located at www.SimulatedWorld.com/Chiptown/Architectural_Firms/Timo&Pock/Cubicle0068.html.

Conferences, collaboration, and client meetings could all be done online. No need to leave the comfort of your own home, no need to get dressed below what your webcam will show, no need for gas, no worries about traffic, no excuse to be late, no need to EVER SPEAK TO ANYONE IN PERSON EVER AGAIN.

Chew on that for a while, and tell me what kind of funky aftertaste it leaves in your mouth…