Consumerism, the root of all that is bad

Consumerism, it has existed throughout time and still exists today. As long as there are human beings on this Earth, there will be consumerism. Eventually, we will consume all and everything that there will be nothing left to consume and all that we are left with is nothing. Bauman goes into that idea and compares consumption with destruction and dismantling. An example of this is gas. As we consume more and more gas for our everyday tasks, we begin to destroy the Earth and deplete the Earth of Earth even further. We have all been effected by skyrocketing oil prices and we all know the reasoning behind it, consumerism. In malls, consumerism also plays a major role because it’s always “out with the old and in with the new.” Everybody wants to buy the newest ipod or the newest fashion trends and the old items that were originally there are thrown out and obsolete.
We realize that consumerism is bad but we don’t really react until it is too late. Global warming, oil depletion, recycling to reduce pollution, are just some of the crisis we face today and this all rooted from consumerism. Eventually we are all going to consume everything until there is nothing left but each other. Then what happens next?

Consumption: fad...?

“From the work ethic to the aesthetic of consumption” brought up some interesting points about what it means to be a consumer, what it takes to be a consumer, how we consume and the interaction between consumers. As anyone can realize from their own interactions with products, consuming is a purely personal decision. “Consumption is a thoroughly individual, solitary, and in the end lonely activity; an activity which is fulfilled by quenching and arousing, assuaging and shipping up a desire which is always a private, and not easily communicable sensation” (p.30). Choosing what you want to consume depends upon your own personal judgment of the products worth. Anyone can go and consume any product they want at any time (granted there are limitations such as price but these will be ignored). Although consumption is such a personal experience, it seems that all people consume in groups. Whether you are eating, shopping, going somewhere; you will usually do it in a group. The article talks about how, when in a group, it seems that everyone is just “copy-cating” the rest of crowd. This is what companies must realize and I’m sure they do. Although being a consumer is personal, trends are still a very popular way to base your personal judgments. Various “fads” have come and gone, and all they while each company made their fare share of the American consumer’s money. This also speaks to the attributes of consumption. People want their products fast, they want their products popular, and as soon as they consume them they want to forget and move on. The producer/consumer game is what drives our economy and what makes retail so successful. Although consumption may be singular, there are any number of subliminal factors affecting the way a consumer asses a given product.

Are we a virus?

“I'd like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species, and I realized that humans are not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. Instead you multiply, and multiply, until every resource is consumed. The only way for you to survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern... a virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer on this planet, you are a plague, and we... are the cure.”
- Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith in The Matrix


I found this quote amusing not only in reference to Zygmunt Bauman but also the other readings. When the question of consumerist society arose in all these readings and how to defined it, I personally found this reference the most valuable. It matches very nicely with what Bauman stated on page 23 of Work, Consumerism, and The New Poor From the Work Ethic to the Aesthetic of Consumption, ”to consume also means to destroy. In the course of consumption, the consumed things cease to exist, literally or spiritually. Either they are ‘used up’ physically to the point of complete annihilation, such as when things are eaten or worn out, or they are stripped of their allure, no longer arouse or attract desire, and forfeit their capacity to satisfy one’s needs and wishes.” After doing these readings, what else needs to be said? Is the computer the cure as it is in the Matrix? Hoepfully it will not go that far. I also find it amusing that in that same film series, the designer of that program is called the architect. Actor Helmut Bakaitis stated “I am the Architect. I created the Matrix. I've been waiting for you. You have many questions, and although the process has altered your consciousness, you remain irrevocably human. Ergo, some of my answers you will understand, and some of them you will not.” So as we look into the future via The Matrix, I find it amusing that we as architects will end up trying to save the world from over consumption. Is that what we are doing by taking this class? After all of our attempts as architects to alter consumerism, will we ultimately have to figure a way around it and simple take control without the mindless consumers even realizing it? How close or far from reality is this film?

building on spatial credit

It is one thing to build the shell of the building and let the occupants design/decide what goes inside. Many American architects do this, especially for skyscrapers. It was the approach taken by Cook+Fox for the One Bryant Park tower, and it is not uncommon for a firm to refer to itself as "core and shell" architects.

But it is quite a different thing to build a structure without even knowing if it is to be inhabitated, and what's more, not caring if it is to be inhabited. The Chinese are building on spatial credit, consuming now what will be needed in the future. It is a flaw in statistical strategizing that they measure economic success by amount of built space, and a flaw in governing structure that that statistic is being manipulated through forced infaltion. But it is an interesting architectural strategy to simply put up the frame of a building for someone else to fill in (or not) and inhabit (or not).

I can't help but draw connections to the current condition of Syracuse - vacancy initiated not through choice and bureaucratic zeal but through abandonment and neglect - which is a city full of empty frames waiting to be filled up. Right now, there are many of these empty frames in Syracuse becoming re-inhabited: the Warehouse, the fabric of the near west-side, various infill buildings downtown being converted to housing, and (most famously) Armory Square. The city, having been deserted and forgotten, has turned into the coveted Tabula Rasa where any intervention is good intervention. What China is doing is constructing vacancy, simply skipping the golden age bit and skipping straight to revitalization. And this is nothing new. Historically, newly developing countries have been known for skipping a few crucial steps that their predecessors took so that they could advance faster and catch up/surpass those predecessors. Just as America's industrial machine quickly outpaced the rusting British industrial establishment, so has China's (sub)urban sprawl quickly surpassed the lazy American dream.

keeping architects busy

The developments in Dongguan are such a waste of space. These 33 cities in Dongguan that are developed, yet empty, are startling. How does this happen? It seems that just by doing, by building, the developers and planners will make money. But how and why? These developments seem to be about creating the infrastructure so that business will come. Saskia Sassen’s lecture last semester about global networks and buildings serving as platforms for other processes rings true in this situation. The developers and architects in Dongguan use architecture and design, seemingly without considering the needs of the area, as a way to make money, to attract international business, and to supposedly modernize and benefit the economy of the region. This over-building and over-development anticipates the arrival of prosperity. The people in power dream big.

These empty cities remind me of a development in my hometown in Delaware, which isn’t on such a large scale. Some developers from Baltimore have been building up parts of the riverfront in downtown Wilmington as mixed-use, and devoting much of the space for upscale housing. Although designed with good intentions and certainly with my support, because it would be amazing for more of the city to be occupied, these developments haven’t yet created a community. Perhaps, in time pace will pick up. Developers build property that investors buy up, but don’t actually use. What I find quite ironic is that these investors dodge the marketing strategies and the architect’s forecasting of the atmosphere of these developments. The cute Rhino representations of these developments aren’t realized, as the apartments and condos, although owned by individuals, remain unoccupied.

It seems that consumption, for the very rich, also occurs on a larger scale. Those who can afford to buy up the newest properties proceed to let them remain unoccupied, and hopefully sell them later for a profit. The speed of development, the knowledge that the value of the area will continue to increase, seems to be an incentive to buy property and promotes the financial success of the developers. However, long-term implications seem to take the back-burner.

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…

extended editions, director's cuts, and limited editions

The consumer society highlighted in Zygment Bauman’s, “From the Work Ethic to the Aesthetic of Consumption,” the consumer is seen as having an endless capacity to consume. The time allowed for consumption is constantly forced smaller and smaller as they are constantly introduced to new and better temptations.

Instead of being exposed to only one of a certain product over a long period of time, the consumer has a constant supply of product upgrades and improvements that are forced upon them. Looking at just one product, the DVD, evidence of this is all too prevalent. Gone are the days where a movie was released in but one format, and with the same amount of discs and content. Today the consumers desire to consume is filled with an endless possibility of purchases. The standard release arrives first, followed by an extended cut, a 2-disc release, an unrated version, and then the director’s cut, and so on. Years later a Limited Edition version is pushed upon the consumer, and the box set, which is a “must have” for any true fan of the movie. In order to fill the gaps between the consumer’s purchases, more and more products are being produced in order to create a desire to consume that had never existed.

The jump from the previous producer society, to the consumer society of today is a direct result for the increased desire to constantly keep consuming.

The next best thing

I want to concentrate my discussion towards that the Bauman article. “Boredom is one complaint the consumer world has no room for and the consumer culture set out to eradicate it.” Reading on; “to alleviate boredom one needs money” (41). This explains more about consumption than Heilbroner’s social formation, specific behavioral and attitudinal characteristics ever could. I think then paralleling this to a New York Times Magazine article I read about I-phones will help emphasize my point. That article mentions how it isn’t about what’s new but what’s next. Once the I-phone came out people cared more about what the next thing will be than the I-phone itself.

Pretty much it comes down to why do we buy something? Why do we not buy something? It is these superficial forces which determine why a shopping center, a store or a product succeeds. It is also about the next best thing. In terms of shopping malls the next big thing, in terms of I-phones the next small thing.

This has me come to the conclusion that even though to us, [sophisticated designers] the un-architectural qualities of shopping malls seem important, in reality it is not, not even close. “The aesthetics of consumption now rules where the work ethic once ruled” (Bauman 32). Consumption is about aesthetics. It’s about being seen with the products you purchased. It’s about image. This idea of image is evident on multiply scales; from the tourist image of the developing Pearl River Delta cities, to the image of an individual company. DestiNY is no exception. It’s all about image and how it will not impact the environment and how it will be great for central New York.

It’s how DestiNY will be the next best thing.

Get Rich or Die Trying

The city of Dongguan is configured as a series of satellite towns adapted from the Garden City model, which all surround a historic sector, “but each village is also…given an asset” (Smith,291). The notion of dispersing a city into fragments which all seem to revolve around a central historic core, yet each individual fragment receives an ‘asset’, becomes a fascinating way to promote wealth into an entire city. This closely relates to Bauman’s views on the aesthetic of consumption as he notes, “they [consumers] need to constantly be exposed to new temptations in order to be kept in a state of constantly seething, never wilting excitation and, indeed, in a state of suspicion and disaffection” (Bauman, 26). It becomes apparent that Dongguan uses the satellite, Garden City model, to not only disperse inhabitants of the city, but more importantly to keep the whole city economically active by not secluding certain areas, and seemingly making no one place more important than the next. Through this condition, every satellite is capable of ‘enticing’ consumers, which according to Bauman becomes the most important aspect of a consumer market. After realizing the continuity in the work of both Bauman and Smith, it becomes hard to ignore the effect Destiny USA will have on New York State, and America as whole. Could Destiny serve as a model for malls [cities] to come, or is Destiny just another ‘enticement’ in which consumers are supposed to be tempted for some time and then move on to the next? It is interesting to put Destiny on the level of Dongguan, because it not only becomes just another ‘asset’ to upstate New York, but internally creates a city of its own where a whole new level of temptations reveal themselves.

mega-o-sorous

The reading gives us an architectural look into the developing city of Dongguan. The reading also shows us how lavish the people there are. Our tour guide takes us through the developing city and introduces us to the ‘men in charge. These men whom also happen to control the real estate seem to own the city as well. The era of economic hardship that once plagued the entire country is now experiencing an economic revolution that is bringing the region into the modern age. The city?s many new developments seem to be pushing Dongguan?s prosperity. Mr. Zhang, an architect and urban designer is portrayed as a man who seeks power through his built works. He tells us his plans for a new development called the Beautiful City Project. This enormous production of eye candy reminds us of Congel?s own Destiny USA. These mega-developers are conjuring up mega-productions to see mega-revenue. These characters have reinvented the way we think about urban design and master planning. It seems that pushing the envelope has come to mean bigger- and- bigger- and- bigger is better in architecture. But is this trend better, what happen to the time when less was more? Take for example, Louis Kahn and his minimalist approach to architecture. How would some of the modern architects react to today?s meg-o-sorous structures? The developers seem to think this is what we want. But when we hear that a plan for a shrine to the architect?s family is going to be apart of the agenda it makes me skeptical of the architect?s intentions. It seems more like these are the kinds of buildings they want. It is nice to push the envelope but not at the expense of good architecture. Is this Beautiful City Project in Dongguan a parallel of Destiny USA or is it a true example of the economic prosperity in China and is this really the direction architecture is headed?

What Happens in Dongguan, Stays in Dongguan

“If you can make 1 dollar in Hong Kong, you can make 2 dollars in Dongguan.” In China’s globalized economy, any location is a good location for a factory or hotel, so long as land is cheap and competition can be minimized. An economy of speculation, which fuels Dongguan and Shenzhen’s roaring fires, makes use of land as a resource – outside the SEZ, with some land-owners holding only a 20-year lease, it makes sense to relocate every time this lease expires. Knowing that the value of the land will likely increase (and therefore, cost more money to re-lease), there is little incentive to build the necessary infrastructure to maintain and enhance development beyond a subsistence level. This tactic of economic slash and burn, followed by fields left fallow, makes a wasteland of cities. With no time for development, Dongguan and Shenzhen seem to be regions lacking centers – strangely, even a Google Earth search for these areas, which usually zooms to the city center or to a prominent building, in the case of Dongguan and Shenzhen centers on vacant lots or unfinished towers.

However, the potential for reassignment of program, or an evolution from user-driven design to program-driven design seems great. The almost viral quality of transitory habitation in these cities makes them perfect targets for reclamation, and the speculative economy of the Chinese “boom-town” guarantees that these cities will see a second life. Perhaps “spatial money” is a too loose a system to ensure lasting development of a city.

Rich vs Poor / Desire vs Need

It is almost obvious that the most affluent countries of the modern world are made of a variety of consumers. The heart of a nation’s wealth is its ability to produce and accommodate an adequate amount of consumerism. What we are forgetting is that at the same time, the citizens of that nation must also produce a good or service in order to have money to consume. Our nation is beginning to slip away from the exporting side of the market and we are becoming a community of strict consumerism. We are slowly starting to rely on outside sources as our providers and we are beginning to lose control of the amount of money we need to spend to supply such an extreme amount of consumption. It is interesting to take the construction of malls as a case study for this market shift in which I am referring to. Countries such as Japan and China have become super powers in the global market. They have managed to take many jobs away from American citizens and they have become leaders in exportation while maintaining very little importation. So we could agree that countries such as these have primarily shifted towards producer side of the market. However, through our research of Asian shopping malls, we have found that cities such as Beijing and Hong Kong are one of the leading locations for mega malls and very large networks of consumer based real estate. By some means, they have managed to not only increase their production power, but they have also dramatically increased they consumption power and there fore have launched their economies into a new level of success. How is this possible? Why does the US seem to struggle in this aspect of economic balance? As Bauman speaks about in the later half of his essay, it all boils down to social classes and jobs. Many of the Asian countries we have mentions have a very large population base to work with. And more importantly, they have a very large gap between the upper class (consumers) and lower class (producers), allowing for this balance to remain intact.