Urbanism, connectivity and accidental interactions

The artificial city makes many victims in its passage: the most disadvantaged social layers that are thrown into the inhospitable and aggressive suburbs, the natural ecosystems and the historic centers and their small housing centers

In the history of great disruptive innovations this is the 4th revolution. The 1st disruptive innovation had to do with the steam engine, mechanics and the railway that led us to the 1st industrial revolution. The 2nd disruptive innovation had to do with electricity and industrial mass production. The 3rd disruptive innovation had to do with electronics, computers and the internet.

The 4th disruptive innovation has to do with connectivity, artificial intelligence and cognitive computing. This last disruptive innovation is that of hyperspeed, maximum interdependence, fortuitous and accidental interactions, with a gigantic impact on the architecture, mobility and public space of the cities of the future.

 

Connectivity of the cities of the future

The cities of the future, by virtue of the network paradigm, will adopt a structure of highly variable geometry. In some cases, the city will be a metropolitan area with a more radial structure, in others, a more polycentric city, in still others, a city-region administered by a dedicated network-actor.

In all cases, the city of the future will be composed of very varied intelligent communities and it is the quality of its connection, mediated or not by an actor-network, that will tell us if it is a destination community or, instead, of a simple collection of individuals inhabiting a common space without any purpose or future horizon.

These intelligent communities will multiply, many of them promoted by fresh start-ups, highlighting what will be one of the main challenges of the immediate future, namely, widespread digital education.

Here, by way of example, some areas that will be the object of these digital networks: soft mobility and micro mobility, shared and distance service platforms, local renewable energy communities, public and private security communities, communities of shared care with senior society, active aging and outpatient services, urban agriculture communities, the great collaborative area of ​​entertainment and culture, among others.

Everything will change in the face of the city of the future when these smart communities are up and running and fully connected.

It will change urban architecture and the design of public space, the morphology of workplaces and places of sociability, modes of travel and the use of communication routes, some of them converted into ecological infrastructure and green corridors, but also the urban landscape art and the ethics of care, that is, the way to treat the most vulnerable groups of the city's population.

The cities of the future will be all those whose model of social organization will respect the culture of nature and the nature of culture and which will give back to the citizen the pleasure of time, the reason for being and the meaning of life.

 

The biophysical operators of urbanism

Another aspect of connectivity concerns the biophysical operators of urbanism. In the urban ecology of the city of the future, ecological infrastructure and green corridors will have a prominent place in urban planning, prevention and therapy.

These ecological infrastructures, which we designate here as the “biophysical operators of the networked city” will be essential in the territorial projection of the city, as they will be able to function as the hubs of the green corridors, their networks and as new central places of the city.

Let us remember, for example: sustainable housing and climate bioregulation, local energy communities, promotion of the circular economy, public spaces and community agriculture, urban and multifunctional forest, bio-purifying lakes and urban composting, parks peri-urban agriculture for local food supply, experimentation in urban vertical agriculture and the construction of recreational and therapeutic amenities.

We also know that disordered growth causes the fragmentation of natural ecosystems and conditions the circular metabolism of cities, modifying, above all, watercourses and the morphology of the landscape.

Nineteenth-century green belts were built to contain the disorderly growth of American cities, river pollution, floods and flooding, but also to guard against aesthetic and social issues.

More recently, in the 60s of the XNUMXth century, the linear parks of the XNUMXth century were moved to green and ecological corridors for the protection of biodiversity and ecosystems, with emphasis on the aspects of ecological carrying capacity of spatial structures that aimed to reconcile the environmental preservation and urban and rural expansion.

Today, the concept of global landscape corresponds to a contemporary vision of postmodern urbanism, a more complete and complex vision of city-countryside relations, far beyond the parks and gardens of the industrial city.

In this comprehensive and organic system of communicating vessels, the green plan is an essential instrument in the conception of the city's outdoor spaces, whose design autonomy is required by its own biophysical and cultural background and by the practice of the arts that have long served the construction of the living landscape (Telles, 2003).

This will be the case if, through biophysical planning and landscape architecture, we are able to take advantage of the topography and morphology of the space and adapt the city's project to the local community.

 

Fortuitous interactions and accidental discoveries

The intensity of postmodern urbanism results directly from its high connectivity and interactivity. When interdependence is maximum among all intelligent communities, unforeseen fortuitous interactions and so many surprising accidental discoveries will emerge.

We are talking about emergent properties as a result of a universe of fusion between material and immaterial reality, for example:

– Hyperspeed will make time almost unreal and our lives, at times, almost surreal, where what seems is not;

– Hypertext will take us to the edge of the abyss, in an almost permanent state of anxiety and with difficulty in communicating;
– We will need to suspect to know, that is, we will have to reinvent the Cartesian principle of methodical or systematic doubt;

– Our faculties will be moving out of the biological habitat, that is, the human body is installed in transhuman and post-human technological devices;

– We will need specific training to deal with chance interactions, ie we need to develop special skills to understand the relationships between unforeseen incidents and accidental discoveries;

– We will need special attention to systemic risk and surveillance, that is, at any time we can be accomplices in the most diverse occurrences and, therefore, we must not abuse the fate of the illegal passenger;

– The abundance of information on social networks will weaken our attention, that is, we will fall into a whirlwind of information whose ultimate purpose is to induce our distraction/manipulation;

– Our privacy will constantly be in question, that is, we must demand a very demanding regulatory framework that protects us from the immersive, intrusive and invasive nature of information and communication technologies.

 

Final Notes

The typological city of the urban-industrial world is dominated by large urban densities, whose mass and volume overlay the morphology and cultural values ​​of the territory.

This artificial city makes many victims in its passage, from the outset, the most disadvantaged social strata who are thrown into the inhospitable and aggressive suburbs, then the natural ecosystems, increasingly polluted, fragmented and degraded and, finally, the centers historic buildings and their small housing nuclei, bastard children of mismatched heritages and absent public policies, where only a few public services and the most significant monumental elements are located.

These urban-industrial cities widen their areas of influence, become vertical, successively penetrating the territory in successive rings that extend from the suburban and periurban to the rural and remote rural areas.

In a strategy to restore the city-country connection, a new biophysical and landscape architecture is essential, in which ecological infrastructure, green corridors and ecosystem services play a fundamental role.

These Green Corridors (CV) and, for the most part, the Green Corridor Networks (RCV) perform important functions:

– Firstly, ecological functions: maintenance of biodiversity, natural spaces and habitats, links between habitats for the circulation of species, materials and energy, natural filter for water and atmosphere pollution, dust fixation, protection of winds and regulation of breezes , regulation of thermal amplitudes and atmospheric humidity, rainwater circulation and infiltration;

– Secondly, social and economic functions: spaces for recreation and leisure, fresh food supply, improvement of environmental quality, preservation of historical and cultural heritage, enhancement of the aesthetic quality of landscapes and control of risk factors.

And so, in this multifunctionality, the new urbanism of the city of the future is fulfilled.

 

Author António Covas is a retired Full Professor at the University of Algarve

 

 



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