The Final Days of Pompeii
In ancient Pompeii on 5th February AD 62 there was a massive earthquake (conceivably measuring between 5 and 6 on the Richter scale) that wreaked considerable damage in the cities around the Bay of Naples. The people of Pompeii were used to earth tremors. But in this instance chaos ensued, fires adding to the panic as almost every building in the city was affected. We know that anarchy reigned in those few days following the disaster. Theft and starvation was rampant.
Over the next decade reconstruction was undertaken but many buildings were still being restored seventeen years later. Then, in AD 79, Mt. Vesuvius erupted. Within a matter of weeks Pompeii was buried under 25 metres of tephra, though most of the population would have died instantly from the 250° celsius heat surges emitted from the main vent during the eruption.
Natural disasters have a habit of etching themselves into our collective consciousness. We can often recall where we were and what we were doing when momentous events unfold with a precision that can be uncanny. Yet we hardly ever pause to reflect on the loss of life and subsequent damage to physical infrastructure, and whether these could have been avoided.
Apart from the effort of emergency services organizations, we give little attention to disaster mitigation and recovery, or to public safety. Even less to the inadequacies of existing approaches to planning and managing – other than to attribute blame after the event for failures in governance and administration which, we brashly insist, should have been apparent beforehand.
Indeed almost every time a natural disaster occurs we are taken by surprise, struggle to deal with the anomalies of the situation, and then vow it will never happen again. Which of course it does. Nature is what it is –its forces beyond mere mortals to control.
Nevertheless we continue to pander to vested economic interests; exclude foresight and systems design from our planning processes; allow developers to build almost anywhere - even on fault lines or in areas prone to fires, landslides and flooding; use zoning regulations and building codes best suited to the late 20th century; and then respond to crises in ways that often prevent immediate action and requisite levels of cooperation.
Crazy as it sounds, it is as though we relish the continuous reinvention of rescue and recovery in the face of each and every catastrophe - especially if that leaves open the possibility for heroic acts or tragic blunders, both of which are leapt on by a delirious media circus. Rather than sharing and applying new knowledge that could attenuate the impact on human lives in preparation for possible, or even likely future events, we delay until disasters happen. Then we partake, mostly as passive bystanders, in the adrenalin-charged aftermath of the horror. Is it possible that alternative thinking and practices could lead to startlingly different outcomes?
Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest, most destructive, hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. In spite of the fact that between 80 – 90 per cent of New Orleans residents were evacuated before the hurricane struck almost 2,000 people died during the storm and in the subsequent floods. Roughly 3 million people were left without electricity. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of residents were left without any form of employment. Total property damage was estimated at $81 billion and at one stage 80 per cent of the city was submerged due to multiple failures of the city flood walls and levee system.
Katrina also had a profound impact on the environment for miles around, affecting the habitats and breeding grounds of sea turtles, pelicans, redhead ducks and fish, as well as redistributing over one million people from the central Gulf coast elsewhere across the United States. Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security later described the repercussions from Katrina as the worst set of catastrophes in the history of the country.
One might have hoped drastically different policies would have emerged from such statements. But in spite of a flurry of research and reports, a few concerning the use of natural capital to further aid the local economy and help protect against future storms - such as restoring acres of wetlands rather than rebuilding homes – officialdom seemed set on restoring the metropolis to that which existed before Katrina. Nothing changed in terms of the design of the human ecosystems and related physical infrastructures. In effect no lessons were learned or applied. The disaster will be repeated at some stage in the future.
Because of frequent seismic activity, New Zealand is often referred to by Australians as the Shaky Isles. In 2010 Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city, was ravaged by a series of earthquakes - the first registering 7.1 on the Richter scale – the effects of which continue to disrupt and cause anxiety among the city’s remaining inhabitants.
The most recent 6.3 magnitude quake in February 2011 killed 185 people and razed much of the city centre. Eastern suburbs took the brunt of these tremors, quickly turning streets into a sea of glutinous gunge as the alluvial soil liquified. Much of the land, including over 7,250 properties deemed unsuitable for residential occupation, is possibly beyond rehabilitation. Yet many long-term residents refuse to move and slowly Christchurch is being rebuilt.
Prior to the 2011 nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, some 30 percent of Japan's power came from nuclear production. After the disaster, the nation gradually idled its entire fleet of 50 operable reactors. To make up for the shortfall, resource-poor Japan turned to fossil fuels. In May 2012 utilities burned 22 per cent more natural gas than the year before, while petroleum consumption rose 157 per cent in the same period.
Nine years later and the situation at Fukushima remains very dangerous. The spent fuel pools alone contain an amount of Cesium-137 that by some accounts is more than 85 times greater than at Chernobyl. Removing an estimated 900 tons of melted debris from three reactors is a daunting task expected to take decades, and officials have not been able to describe exactly when or how it may end. Recently perilously high levels of radioactive contamination at two of the three reactors were detected, adding to concerns about decommissioning.
In spite of that the pressure on government from stressed industries is leading to a possible restart of the nuclear fleet. The infrastructure is still in place and dismantling it would take decades, all of which makes nuclear power a more plausible long term alternative than importing liquefied natural gas.
Any number of hazardous incidents, including a steam explosion, a resumption of the chain reaction in some reactors, or a zirconium fire, could still have consequences for the entire Fukushima Dai-ichi area. Indeed if the Cesium-137 in Reactor 4 was to be released it would cause most of Japan to become an evacuation zone. The strong radiation would affect East Asia and North America, and the radioactive fallout would remain for several hundred years.
To make matters worse, it is probable many Japanese politicians are unaware of the potential global cataclysm that could be unleashed by a further earthquake because they are probably not being given full and accurate intelligence by TEPCO – the single source of their information in this matter. Even if they were aware it is highly unlikely they would act. As we know it is virtually impossible to convince politicians to take action in the face of uncertainty - in this case a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions - that they cannot conceive of in terms of the next election.
As most of my readers know I live in Thailand. During the 2011 monsoon season severe flooding swept through the provinces of Northern, Northeastern and Central Thailand along the Mekong and Chao Phraya river basins. In October floodwaters reached the mouth of the Chao Phraya and inundated parts of the capital. Flooding persisted in some areas until mid-January 2012, resulting in 815 deaths. In total 13.6 million people were affected by the floods. Sixty-five of Thailand's 77 provinces were declared flood disaster zones, and over 20,000 square kilometres of farmland was spoiled.
Economic damage and loss was estimated to be around $ 45.7 billion by the World Bank. Most of this was borne by the manufacturing industry, as seven major industrial estates were inundated by as much 3 meters during the floods. Disruptions to supply chains affected regional automobile production and caused a global shortage of hard disk drives, which lasted throughout 2012. The World Bank's estimate for this disaster means it ranks as the world's fourth costliest disaster, surpassed only by the tsunami and earthquake in Fukushima, the Kobe earthquake, and Hurricane Katrina.
This is not the first time Thailand has suffered from catastrophic flooding but in the past most floods have hit rural areas. This time it was different. Instead of paddy fields, it was Thailand's key industrial districts to the north of Bangkok that were inundated.
Several months later, life for most of Bangkok's 10 million residents had returned to normal. The water had drained away. On many buildings only a dirty scud mark remained as a reminder of the drenching. The immediate crisis over, thoughts turned to how the capital can better protect itself in future. Billions of dollars were promised by the authorities and plans were being hastily drawn up for huge walls, vast tunnels and even the diversion of the Chao Phraya river that flows through Bangkok.
The long term goal was to improve the flood management system in an integrated and sustainable manner. Plans rushed through at the time should have seen trees being planted along the Chao Phraya river and the building of several new reservoirs and dams. More ambitiously, huge artificial waterways are being considered north of Bangkok to divert water to the east and west of the city. There were also plans for a new water management body to be put in place to better coordinate the response.
And since then? Nothing. None of the ambitious, costly plans have been implemented. Instead, the government recently announced a new space program at a cost of THB 3 billion, which is just what this country of subsistence rice farmers needs of course...
What lessons can we learn from these various case studies that can then be applied to our thinking about the future of cities and their planning? Are there critical patterns we can discern in these few examples? Why is urban planning a task given to bureaucrats when choreographers know how people move, musicians can design soundscapes, anthropologists understand social needs, and entrepreneurs are adept at modelling experiences more effectively?
In order to provide answers to these questions we must first examine the relationships between a few critical factors in three separate yet interconnected disciplines: complex systems design, strategic foresight, and the behavioural and social sciences.
Complex Systems Design:
A key tenet of complexity science is that a system will only produce what it is designed to produce. A train can only take you in a predetermined direction because the weight and construction tether it to rigid tracks. Likewise, an airplane can divert to a variety of destinations precisely because it is not subject to the same constraints! In both cases, if something different is required then we had better redesign the components that will cause the system to deliver that difference.
If today’s cities are not what we desire, lack human scale, or are simply too polluted or congested to deliver even the most essential of services to citizens, what are we going to do about it? More of the same is not an option. Design makes the difference. But who is best placed to undertake such design?
If we are to reconceptualise urban planning in terms of complex systems we must ditch most standard engineering approaches by first attending to philosophical, social and cultural aspects of city life. In other words the relationships and patterns between the elements that generate unique properties - such as intimacy of scale, 'look and feel' of key environs, the topology of pathways and bike tracks, transportation grids, access to amenities, and the aesthetics of the city; social interaction - through public spaces and entertainment venues; as well as how we intend the whole system to interact and form vibrant relationships with its setting - such as harmonizing with the environment in any strategies determining boundaries, sanctuaries, parks and precincts, for example.
The golden rule of complex systems design is to start with the intention in mind. What is our purpose? What is the city for? How will it differ from other cities? What ecological constraints should we take into account? How will the urban cityscape and its aesthetic complement the natural environment? What features must be taken into account when designing the physical infrastructure? And so on….
Strategic Foresight:
Few aspects of the future can be truly known beforehand. But that does not mean we should simply ignore the possible in favour of the probable. To dream and to envision better alternatives to those that already exist is perhaps the most exhilarating of human capabilities. Incorporating future options into the design of large dynamic systems like cities is especially crucial. It allows us to be purposefully inventive, rather than always being on the back foot - struggling to accommodate factors we had thought irrelevant at the time, or pandering to developers with money and political connections. But this demands stepping into new epistemologies - something not well understood.
In terms of strategic foresight we know that, while much of the future remains uncertain and certain events will continue to take us by surprise, some things can be anticipated, occasionally with pinpoint accuracy. This is because (i) they have previously occurred in fairly regular cycles – like periods of financial prosperity and depression; (ii) they are nested in procedures defined by a quantifiable degree of predictability, like the time it takes to discover and bring a new drug to market; or (iii) a number of weak signals start forming a pattern that signifies some form of impending change - extreme weather events warning us of an imminent tipping point in the Earth’s climate, for example.
In terms of city design the potential offered by digitalization and green technologies will enhance the speed of transactions and ease of mobility with living spaces melded into nature. The recent conjunction of robotics, biotechnology and nanotechnology, as well as the complementary convergence of cloud computing with 6G mobile networks and the 'internet of things' gives us the potential to radically alter so much that we take for granted, including almost every aspect of city life. In particular these technologies will open up cleaner options related to housing, energy, autonomous vehicles, growth and consumption of food, law and order, entertainment, learning, healthcare, social pursuits and work, to name just a few.
If we begin to incorporate strategic foresight into our planning we can accelerate the morphing of urban habitats in ways that are functionally, ethically, aesthetically, and culturally desirable. It is highly likely that alternative design and construction options, never before seriously contemplated, will rapidly emerge and be considered routine within a couple of decades rather than centuries.
Behavioural & Social Sciences:
If we study the reasoning, decision processes, communications strategies and habits of all those involved in the planning and continuity of contemporary urban life - including the many links between politicians, bureaucrats, and people responsible for legislating and administering civic functionality, caring for the cityscape, and reacting to sudden events through the provision of information, relief and recovery services - as well as the social ecosystems in which these various agents operate, a fascinating set of archetypal patterns emerge. Unfortunately these patterns evoke a shared set of assumptions that are hard to justify in today’s complex world.
Firstly, they are contingent upon discrete siloed management hierarchies - including the roles and obligations assumed by that hierarchy - but generally lack any explicitly shared unity of purpose, or leadership, one might normally expect in such a complex system as a city.
Secondly, they most commonly manifest as sequences of closed loops in which past experiences are recycled, and thus past mistakes repeated, and where fresh insights leading to reform or reinvention are typically ignored and new knowledge glossed over.
Additionally a third pattern commonly surfaces where pressures from the community or the media cause positions to be vigorously defended, decisions rationalized and flaws denied. Another unfortunate feature of this particular pattern concerns the use of scapegoats. This is meant to give the impression that changes can now occur since the culprits have been found but, in reality, merely preserves the status quo.
These three patterns pervade most modern approaches to urban development. Let me give you a relevant example from the birthplace of the modern metropolis. In place of strategic foresight, most city planners in the US rely on linear demographic forecasts to guide their policies. Part of that blindspot is a naïve acceptance that the 20th century skyscraper and road system should continue to dominate both the skyline and terrain.
Projects proving the veracity of personal electronic transporters, for example, are too far off-the-grid to receive serious attention from planners. Segways that could radically improve people mobility in city centres are considered little more than toys, or have become politically intolerable owing to the power exercised by the oil-industry lobby.
And so we witness the inhospitable starkness of autocentric design in almost every large American city. Each part of the urban infrastructure here is built on a scale that dwarfs any sense of humanity. The legacy of sacrifices made to accommodate the internal combustion engine is thus an environment of signal-clogged boulevards and buildings adrift in vast oceans of parking lots. In the process US citizens have become subordinate to their cars and offices.
This model of the city as machine is being naïvely copied all over the world is spite of its inherent risks. Take a relatively simple need like parking. Parking requirements subsidize oil-guzzling cars, distort transportation choices, warp urban form, increase housing costs, burden low-income households, debase urban design, damage the economy and degrade the environment. But autocentric policies also create a vicious planning cycle. In order to pay homage to all those cars, we have to build everything on a superhuman scale, which in turn uses more land, which then lowers density and creates urban sprawl.
Once density gets down to the level of the average suburb, it becomes impossible to walk anywhere anymore. Children cannot walk to school, and parents cannot walk to work or to the shopping center, because everything is spread so far apart. The result is that we are increasingly beholden to our cars to go anywhere at all. This phenomenon, known as technological lock-in, also illustrates what I mean by the term closed loop.
It is most heartening to see recent developments in European cities like Stockholm, for example, where a tiny twist in street design is resulting in hyper-localized spaces and places. In this experiment, residents worked with designers to reinvisage the urban space with a new vision of a 'one-minute city.' This closely emulates the 15-minute city, a concept being implemented in Paris, so that people in one neighborhood can obtain all of their daily needs, from grocery shopping to work or school, within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. This does mean that everything they need is on one block. But it demonstrates how streets might transform within neighbourhoods where walking and cycling are prioritized over driving.
Corollaries:
If we now bring all of the above themes into some kind of harmony in an attempt to create more meaningful understanding about the interface between societies, human behaviours and nature, including how we may involuntarily make the damage done by natural disasters far worse than it might otherwise be, and what might accordingly need to change before natural disasters strike, we can provisionally conclude that:
1. Orthodox approaches to the location, design and development of towns and cities, historically based upon a questionable mix of natural beauty, geographical expediency and commercial benefits - but frequently ignoring any emphasis on social cohesion, human scale architectures and community well-being - are unsustainable in a context that is continuously shifting and where the laws of nature are persistently overlooked or regarded as an irritating trifle that can simply be put to one side. Design principles of this ilk need to be reconceived.
We are part of, rather than separate from, nature. One would not know that from the way we plan our cities where nature is often consigned to contrived green belts or to the very fringes of the urban sprawl. The average conurbation has become nothing less than a utilitarian machine shoehorned between massive concrete freeways that scar the landscape and trap us into the continued use of petrol-fuelled cars and trucks, thus increasing toxicity and industrial inefficiencies. People and communities are an afterthought at best.
Today there is absolutely no reason to continue using this model. Extraordinary advances in knowledge, architecture, engineering, tough composite materials, and information technology, give us the ability to locate urban spaces almost anywhere, design them as interconnected hubs, and centre them around social and community needs - rather than by simply according continued status to the automobile, the factory, and the office.
2. Foresight-in-Design and its application is absent from orthodox urban planning. By foresight-in-design I mean:
The ability to bring past, present and future elements into an integral charette where human aspirations, creativity and intentions emerge with greater clarity, pragmatism is infused with playful imagination, the vitality of social spaces and relationships is rejuvenated, and the scale of the built environment does not overwhelm but corresponds with our fundamental need for sunshine, space, quiet, rivers, clean air, grass, trees, flowers – and each other.
Fresh insights, new language, strategically-relevant values, and innovative learning are used generatively in ways that enrich local communities and that void or transcend old problems, dilemmas and compromises.
Toxic patterns in life-critical systems are discerned early enough to feed into collaborative decision-making processes that can ultimately prevent undesirable impacts, and thus avoid unnecessary costs.
If we were to embed foresight-in-design thinking into our planning praxis, we would initiate and grow social and industrial ecologies - rather than just direct our attention to physical outputs - highways, car parks and office buildings - enabling us to squeeze in even greater numbers of vehicles and offices. On the contrary the genetic impulse for planning would begin with our collective purpose. only then would it move on to apply communications and social infrastructures, and thence to the security and adequate supply of nutritious foods, clean water, sanitation, public safety and education. The physical reality of the city would evolve from that thinking rather than the other way around.
We would automatically safeguard the well-being of our youth and future generations by ensuring that those organizations providing essential services, such as schools and hospitals, were accessible to every citizen. We would even consider the individual and collective spiritual, psychological and emotional needs of the community as being far more important than the erection of gigantic concrete structures, advertising totems, monuments and roadways that alienate us, urge us to buy more and more stuff we do not need, cast shadows over our homes, divide neighbourhoods, curtail the natural environment and impede sociality.
3. Expert knowledge, arising from the long-held tendency for compartmentalization, analysis, along with giving special status to certain subjects, although still essential in so many respects, has largely failed us in grappling with the overwhelmingly complex nature of the modern world. It is high time we restored the importance of analysis and synthesis, systems and processes, and ecologies before economies.
We must also open up and democratize conversational design processes by inviting alternative voices into the debates concerning urbanization, alienation, terrorism and materialism. Admittedly with new communications technologies and mobile apps now encouraging unprecedented volumes of peer-2-peer dialogue, instant connectivity and open source design, this is easier today than it has been in the past. But the status we still accord experts and expertise still remains a psychological barrier we have yet to overcome.
4. The centralized social systems and organizations we accept unflinchingly, and which we use to plan for permanence and to get us out of trouble when things go wrong, are deeply flawed and corruptible - especially by those who can profit in some way and therefore have self-interest as their primary motive, those who stand to gain from an enhanced celebrity status, and those who see themselves constantly in competition for scarce resources and attention. Built for efficiency rather than for speed such unwieldy processes are often overwhelmed by the immediacy and scale of natural disasters, but also the inherently dynamic nature of the metropolis.
An associated issue is the culture of blame which has burgeoned recently and is now used as a tool to deliberately isolate one group from another and to justify imprudent decisions. Both are driven by outmoded notions of competition and scarcity, rather than by cooperation and abundance.
In moving to an ethos of abundance and by deploying smaller networks of distributed systems we can build resilience into our cities, ensure a capacity for regeneration, and lift spirits, while also attending to those things that firmly unite us. This has far greater potency for change and could potentially spawn entirely new ways of avoiding natural and human-instigated disasters, or at least mitigating their potentially devastating impact on local communities.
If all these principles were to be incorporated into an expansive ecological design ethos, comprising autopoietic processes and real-time mechanisms for adaptive planning, organizing and managing our cities and urban spaces, we could potentially avoid many of the traps into which we still so foolishly yet recklessly stride.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the coincidence of circumstances at Fukushima would have cautioned us that politicians will bend in the wind rather than legislate to keep nuclear reactors away from terrain noted for seismic activity. We might even conclude that generating energy through nuclear fission is not a viable energy source at this time.
Perhaps the seismic activity in Christchurch could have opened up alternative ways for fabricating the most fragile components of a city by using flexible materials and new construction methods in the layout of pathways, tunnels, roads and buildings.
Hurricane Katrina and the memorable floods in Bangkok could have underscored the importance of relevant and sustainable design criteria and the unique defense needs of cities located on the edge of estuaries as we adapt to rising ocean levels.
All things considered I believe we need a new panarchical science integrating urban and ecological design, one that converges at the interface between nature and society yet attends to the viability of both. The intent of such a science would be to find new ways of enabling people to live safe, secure, productive, healthy and meaningful lives in aesthetically-desirable neighbourhoods, all the time recognizing and adapting to the physical limits imposed by nature.
I venture to suggest, as a final aside, that urban planning is as dead as the bleak sprawl it continues to fashion - as buried as the ruins in Pompeii. Human needs, social justice, security and privacy have all been sacrificed on the altar of industrial economism by this reductionist approach.
The future of urban spaces - their purpose, design, use and performance, as well as their elisions with natural landscapes, must surely become much more integrally pure. Their design must fashion a mythology and praxis at once capable of finding enduring solutions to the issues associated with human shelter, the provisioning for escalating numbers of inhabitants, access to nourishing places and spaces, and personal security and wellbeing.