Urban technical networks and sustainability

Urban technical networks and
sustainability
Contemporary and future dynamics
of the networked society
Concluding remarks

• Time for some concluding remarks on the
course
• The next two sessions will be for your oral
presentations & group work
• My remarks will be around the future of
networks, in relation to matters of
sustainability/resilience--- the future of the
city

Our networked society
• Society that is shaped by, and dependent on
networked systems
• These are everywhere and part of all aspects of
life
• Though often hidden from view, repressed even
• This explains that some of their social and
environmental impacts are not always obvious to
us
• Thus, what we have done here in the course is
trying to open our eyes to these systems

UTN as gateway to wider questions
• UTN are an entry point into a wide range of
questions about the constitution and
functioning of societies, and their relations to
science, technology and the environment
• They are the basis for questions about what
society is and how it functions today

Shaping the way we are in society
• Networks shape physical and mental maps of the
world we live in by laying down pathways that it
is hard to avoid or deviate from: roads, telecom
networks, transport systems etc.
• determine to a certain degree our ways of
circulating in the world
• Indeed, people who wish to live without
networks, or cannot afford the services, are
quickly called eccentric or marginal—the use of
networks has become a social standard

Dumpster living
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKr5Ku7
9doo&feature=youtu.be
• The dumpster project, by Professor Jeff
Wilson, a radical experiment in sustainability
• “The average American has 12 pairs of shoes
and the average American house is 2480-
square-feet,” he said. “We can happily live
with much less than that.”
• Dumpster is 1% size of average US home…

Shipping container housing too…

STS studies
• Science, technology and society studies (STS)
offer a theoretical gateway into studying the
interactions between tech, nature, society
• Approaches such as ANT, urban political
ecology…
• They all discuss our relationships to
technologies, science, the material world,
nature.
• At the junction of sociology, anthropology and
history of science/tech

Challenging the ‘unnaturalness’ of
cities
• Cities are where we live, our habitat
• In that sense, why are they less ‘natural’ than
an anthill or termites’ nest?
• Many other species build, and transform the
‘natural’ into something else
• Can you mention some, and what they do?

Challenging the naturalness of ‘nature’
• A good place to start is the Scottish
countryside
• The hills and mountains were once covered in
forest, however they are now more or less
barren
• This is due to human activity and
transformation over millennia
• Yet, we see these places as ‘nature’ and often
include them in ‘natural reserves’, as
something to be ‘protected’

How UTNs transform ‘natural’ into
‘social’, and vice-versa
• UTNs ,an interface between ‘nature’ and
‘society’
• These systems transform natural resources
into the built environment
• Also create social relations (of domination,
control, customer/provider etc.)
• These socio-political relations are naturalised,
solidified (reified) through the links created by
networks

Example: water
• Key resource as it is essential to life
• Seen as ‘free’ as it ‘falls from the sky’ but it’s actually a
highly transformed product
• It needs to be collected, stored, treated, distributed,
and then wastewater needs to be evacuated, with
sometimes stringent environmental/health regulations
• In this sense, water as we know it in our cities is as
much a socio-technical construct as it is ‘natural’!
• wastewater contains a myriad of chemicals from
chlorine, to antibiotics, contraceptives and other
elements
• there is no ‘purity’ here, but, again, an entanglement
of natural, social, technological

Not just the physical aspect
• These transformations are not only on the
material level, a whole range of political and
social relations are also created and transformed:
• One is the customer/provider relationship: how
do we govern, regulate this? Fairness or profit?
• Another is the labour relations in the various
water companies, regulators’ offices etc.
• Yet another are the political issues stemming
from the control of resources, and these can be
extremely tricky and fraught, culminating in
international conflict

Southern California water system
(reminder)
• Water brought in from hundreds of miles away
• Some water is desalinated, from the ocean, and
therefore highly processed
• Tens and tens of water agencies, from the
local/municipal level, to county, state, federal
• Thus, the water system is an extremely complex
combination of natural, social, technological,
admin, political etc.
• It is a set of relations between people and the
natural/built environments

Open to change?
• Such systems can become very hard to reform
or transform in the face of challenges, such as
sustainability and resilience, or social change
• Notion of path dependency
• An interesting example is that of networks and
their operation/governance in
shrinking/decaying cities

• Former East German cities
• Detroit and other rustbelt cities in USA
• http://michiganradio.org/post/detroits-
infrastructure-crumbling-while-city-has-
trouble-collecting-cash#stream/0

• Shrinking/decaying cities are now a big topic
in planning
• Economic shocks, such as recent 2008 crisis
• Slow death of old industries
• Ageing populations
• Throughout history, cities have grown and
shrunk, have been born and died…
• How do we deal with this process in new
ways?

• How do shrinking, declining cities adapt their
networked systems to the new reality?
• Do we abandon, destroy, or reconvert existing
infrastructure?
• Is old infrastructure destined to become just
waste, or can it form part of cities’ future in
creative ways?
• Can it be an opportunity to build a more
sustainable future on the ruins of the MII?

What to do with abandoned
networked systems?

Urbex
• Urban explorers find the beauty in abandoned
spaces and infrastructure
• It is one way of engaging creatively with
decline, of accepting the death of cities and
their ever-changing nature
• Many websites are devoted to this
• http://www.ukurbex.com/
•

Reconversion of infrastructure
• Into new, green infrastructure, which many of
our cities are lacking in
• E.G. Recent Glasgow plans
• http://www.theguardian.com/uk-
news/scotland-blog/2015/nov/16/glasgow-
could-get-greener-by-reclaiming-its-
motorways
• https://vimeo.com/138758190

From rustbelt to greenbelt?
• http://www.buzzworthy.com/how-detroit-is-
working-to-be-an-innovator-in-green-
infrastructure/

Not just green, but blue
• Blue infrastructure is often neglected, but has
similar benefits than green infra in climate,
beauty and wellbeing terms
• Managing urban water in new ways that work
with the natural environment
• http://www.grabs-eu.org/casestudies.php

Adaptive infrastructure
• Shrinking cities need to adapt their
infrastructure to the new demographic and
economic realities
• Otherwise, this infrastructure can become a
liability, such as fostering criminality in
abandoned homes and streets
• Potential liabilities need to be turned into
opportunities for new models of urban living

Changing relationships
• Over the last 3 decades or so, new modes of
governance, new technologies
• Neoliberalism, privatisations, unbundling etc.
• Increasingly commodified and commercialised
systems
• https://youtu.be/HwuZtjcPOeA

Links with urban dynamics
• City growth
• City form
• Integration/fragmentation
• All are linked to networks and their
governance

And also with questions of
sustainability, resilience etc.
• UTNs are directly linked to our cities’ metabolisms,
they allow us to tap into natural resources on a scale
which is impossible without them
• They are therefore connected to our societies’ high
resource consumption patterns—they embed these
into our daily lives, create path dependency and habits,
daily routines of high resource use
• This also produces a certain rigidity in living and
production patterns, undermining cities’ resilience, for
instance in the case of catastrophic events that knock
out the networks

What is ‘sustainability’ anyway?
• A very brief history of the concept
• To sustain: to keep going, to maintain
• Originated in forestry management in 1500s
Germany
• Progressive era in USA in late 19C
• Silent Spring (1962)
• 1972: UN Habitat Conference
• Bruntland report (1983)
• Rio 1992—Agenda 21—cascaded to
national/local levels charged with implementing

3 pillars
• Economy, society, environment
• Harmonising the three, must grow together
• Development today that doesn’t preclude
development tomorrow
• Notion of intergenerational and interspecies
solidarity/responsibility

Critiquing the notion
• Exactly what is being sustained, by whom and for
whom?
• Too often blind to race, gender and other issues;
environmental realities need to be replaced in
their socio-spatial and historical context
• E.g. Apartheid South Africa: very ‘sustainable’ for
those dominating society
• Today, domination of the 1% seems very
sustainable to them…and could go on indefinitely

• The notion is showing some fatigue
• It has been coopted by politicians and
industry, and is becoming empty of meaning
rapidly
• It has become a parody of itself, to a degree
• E.g. ecological modernization and related
currents of thought
• The craziness of some ‘sustainable’ projects
that don’t take into account wider socio-
spatial realities, e.g. Chinese ‘eco-villages’ or
Masdar City in Abu Dhabi

The turn to ‘resilience’
• The last 10-15 years roughly
• The capacity to bounce back; flexible, does
not break
• Takes into account the reality of risks, shocks
and catastrophes that affect cities
• How can they best deal with this state of
affairs? Maybe even turn shocks into
opportunities?

So how do we harness UTNs for
greater sustainability/resilience?
• As we have seen technology is not neutral, but
neither is it deterministic
• Technologies can be harnessed in different ways
to produce different outcomes
• What are the options to reconfigure urban tech
networks so they are less resource intensive, less
waste generating, more flexible and resilient?
• Could they also accomplish socio-political goals,
such as fairness and equity?

Make the network a component of
sustainability
• E.g. green and blue spaces: both networks and
places of beauty, enjoyment, providing
support for other species
• Re-use of obsolete networks in creative ways

De-centralised systems
• Wind, solar, biomass etc. are forms of energy
production that are de-centralised
• Greater resilience in case of catastrophe
• Use of modern technologies, such as
smart/connected homes to optimise energy
use

Each house, a self-sufficient power plant?

‘re-wired’ houses
• Dual plumbing systems in houses to optimise
water use and save high quality potable water
• Smart meters, smart appliances etc.
• New energy technologies, such as Tesla home
batteries
• These allow to imagine more consumer insight
into energy use, and less dependence on
networked systems, for instance in case of
catastrophe

Smart meters: much more information

Not just technological changes
• Remember, tech is never ‘neutral’ or ‘just a
tool’
• It fits within socio-political systems that it also
shapes, and is shaped by
• Therefore, tech changes require, and will lead
to, social and political changes

Community involvement/management
• The Fordist, networked society is an inherently
hierarchical and centralised one
• The engineer is a god in this system, and is
flanked by the bureaucrat (and then the
architect)
• People are expected to shut up and do what’s
‘good for them’

• Community involvement in responding to
social and individual needs, instead of relying
on networked systems and ‘the system’ more
generally
• Permaculture/ urban gardens
• (Local) loops rather than (centralised) linear
metabolism

Making the landscape edible and
sustainable

Patrick Blanc and vertical gardens

• All surfaces can be greened and made useful for
food production, storm water collection, animal
habitat…
• Buildings become part of a continuous green
infrastructure
• At the same time, they reduce the dependence
on traditional networked systems, as food,
energy can be locally dealt with
• Likewise, waste can be minimised at the point of
production, reducing the dependence on sewage
systems and water reprocessing systems
• All these elements, cumulatively, increase the
sustainability and resilience of the city

SUDS: sustainable urban drainage
systems

This is real, and part of planning now

A move towards a post-network
society?
• With a combination of technological, social
and political changes, we can imagine less
dependence on the centralised networks that
we are familiar with
• This can help boost sustainability and
resilience, and reconnect us with the local

Your thoughts
• Take a few minutes and reflect on the course
and your readings
• What paths are possible to make the
networked society more sustainable/
resilient?
• Think of the environmental, but also economic
and social dimensions of sustainability (cf.
Bruntland)
• Are we moving towards a post-network
society? Or are changes just marginal?

Urban technical networks and sustainability

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