The second aspect I was chasing was the tapestry of rural “African stores” and who owns them. I was looking at this as an example of “hidden champions”. I did find a lot of these–a chap who has established a computer and electronics company in his village without ever having trained in computers at all and is now the point man in the wireless mobile technology revolution unfolding there, giving a whole new meaning to the “remote”; villagers that have established grocery stores within the village and capitalize on kinship networks and “the community” as market; and Indian traders that buy up or lease all the grocery stores locally to kill competition, and then charge whatever prices they can, while bringing crappy second-hand goods sold in the wholesales of downtown Johannesuburg, themselves imported from China and the Middle East.

And finally, an emerging “town” in the countryside, one whose origins are quite interesting: a polygamist who had about 30 wives, who had a lot of children with each. At each homestead, in the spirit of his people’s rules of “peaceful and happy polygamy” that what you do unto one wife you do unto all, the chap built one rondavel hut (the traditional round house under thatch that is the signature of a woman’s power) and a bedroom (for the few nights he “visits” each wife, and a quarters for his children with each wife. This basic infrastructure pretty much determined subsequent technological innovations (both originated locally or imported)–grid lines of electricity; municipal water supply; fixed telephone lines; and now subscription to wireless networks.

As our project evolves, I am hoping to get in-depth, more videographic, and get some photos and interviews.

During the 20th century material infrastructures got out of the black box and became visible, multiplying themselves endlessly following the motto “more and bigger” and becoming a representation of administration’s power merged with the urban landscape. However, it has become necessary to find other types of infrastructures that are able to manage the existing conditions, to reconstitute how “traditional” infrastructures operate (Graham and Marvin 2001), are less expensive, and can redefine a different organization of power, such as pervasive sensor networks and monitoring systems.

Their usability is not necessarily related to production/consumption processes, but making visible the existence and behavior of other actors, integrating other agents like ecology or non-humans in the urban ecosystem. As constructors of the “urban unconscious” they have an important role to play in regulating social response to difference (Amin 2010), but at the same time as instruments capable of measuring difference they may be more capable to regulate it.

These systems are data management processes, which include production of data, optimization, contrast and comparison of those data and visualization and presentation methods. They have different properties, as they are flexible, adaptable and give feedback, working generally as distributed networks. Their goal is to build knowledge, strategy or policy, and to become an instrument to re-design the processes they measure. Their representation shifts from the object to its performance, and what is designed is actions and interfaces, structures of information and communication devices.

However these systems have existed already for quite some time, but it seems that their largest potential lies on their capacity on becoming public infrastructures, moving away from scientific or administrative contexts an becoming not only used, but also managed and produced by citizens. Research on these systems is these days being made mostly at university labs, covering up topics that range from large scale environmental sensing systems and terrestrial ecological observatories (Center for Embedded Network Sensing. University of California), to wireless sensor networking systems applied to real cities and hardware research (Harvard Sensor Networks Lab.Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences). There is also research on the identification of new parameters or indicators that can provide new data and visualization tools (SENSEable City Lab, MIT), and in the production of urban visualization devices (Living Architecture Lab, Columbia University). Research on political implications and social participation is being made at xDesign Environmental Health Clinic at NYU.

The state of the projects is in general at a prototype level, slowly becoming adapted to large scale contexts, so there is very little information on results or effects. This makes difficult to build up an evaluation process and to understand their implications and their scope. However, there are shared questions that arise in many of their texts and projects that could be taken as a starting point of research for our group:

Who is asking the questions? Who is participating? The origin of the data, their type or format, their management and their use becomes a political issue. Transparency, publicness and ownership are implicit in it.

What are we looking at? Is one system enough to provide useful information, or an overlap of levels of information is needed? How does information get back to users? Is the consideration of different user groups useful ?

Which protocols do maps need to follow in order to have an impact in social behavior? Which devices permit interaction with the data? Can maps become infrastructures in themselves?

Can/should there be bottom-up non linear producers and consumers of information? Could it become an empowerment tool? How we develop the concept of “sensing people”( Jeremijenko and Bratton 2008)?

Has the structure of the research team need to be redefined? Are artists “the missing experts”? Are nonexperts capable of intervening?

Sensing. Sense-making, image-making. Which are the implications in the perception of the city? How does the image become an image-instrument?

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Graham and Marvin. Splintering Urbanism. Routledge. 2001
Ash Amin , Cities and the Ethic of Care among Strangers. 2010
Jeremijenko and Bratton. Situated Advocacy. Situated technologies Pamphlet 3. 2008

fusione no. 3, Giacomo Costa (2007)

a vision statement

Aristotle begins his Politics with a definition of the city: ”It is clear that all partnerships aim at some good, and that the partnership that is most authoritative of all and embraces all the others does so particularly, and aims at the most authoritative good of all. This is what is called the city or the political partnership.” A shift in meaning is easily detected when comparing this account with a typical contemporary definition, in this case an entry from the Encyclopaedia Britannica: A city is a “relatively permanent and highly organized centre of population, of greater size or importance than a town or village. The name city is given to certain urban communities by virtue of some legal or conventional distinction that can vary between regions or nations.” While Aristotle focuses on human partnership with the aim of bringing out the best in each member of the community, the modern definition stresses the physical layout of the city with the mutual human relationships playing only a secondary role.

A story about scientific method is hidden beneath these different attempts at capturing the essence of a city. As is well known, Aristotle distinguished four types of causes. He prominently included final causes which explain by referring to the intended function. By analogy, concepts may be defined by referring to a purpose, as Aristotle defines the city as an organization of people that brings out the best in all. Final causes and functional definitions have been largely discredited since. Accounts of causality in modern science can be characterized by an almost exclusive use of efficient causes which explain by moving principles like the laws of motion. Also, concepts are usually defined by referring to physical properties. With mechanical physics providing the paradigm for this development, the criteria for valid explanations and adequate definitions have changed in other sciences as well, including the social and behavioural sciences. The most extreme manifestations in this respect are to be found in 19th-century social physics as propagated by Auguste Comte and Adolphe Quetelet or in its modern successor econophysics.

Methodological background assumptions are not easily recognized by the researchers working in a field since they are often learned and applied unconsciously. Nevertheless, they can completely change the way we perceive things. I see my primary interest in such methodological issues pertaining to the study of cities. Here lies my main ability how to contribute to the overall project. I have recently started collaboration with the faculty of architecture at Technical University Munich, which will result in a number of lectures on methodology this fall. Exemplary questions of interest that could also enlighten the group’s approach to cities are: relation between research and design, different types of research (interpretive-historical, qualitative, correlational, experimental, simulations and modelling, case studies), metaphysical assumptions encoded in a general world-view and their impact on research (e.g. social-constructivist vs. realist), science vs. myth, etc.[1]

In the example above, the methodological meta-view enables to detect our modern-day emphasis on the physical and allows raising the question if this perspective is still adequate. It seems not. Modern-day communication nets and extremely effective transportation systems lead to an ever increasing irrelevance of physical distances in the daily lives of citizens. Certainly, physical boundary conditions are still reflected in much of the legal and political framework that pertains to modern cities. However, the inadequacy of these systems to deal with modern communication networks like the internet is largely recognized. In a way, Aristotle’s definition seems to grasp the essence of modern cities much better than the reference to the physical. Eventually, we might come to include as citizens not only those that are cramped together in a single physical space.

Accordingly, in the infrastructure working group of the Poiesis research community my interests concern mainly the non-physical aspects of infrastructure, which constitutes a shared interest with most of the other members. There are various ways in which non-physical aspects of infrastructure become relevant. First, every physical piece of infrastructure is linked with a non-physical counterpart that is essential for its functioning, e.g. the laws, rules and conventions that determine the usage. Second, modern infrastructure increasingly serves the purpose of exchanging non-physical information rather than of transporting physical goods.

It might be worthwhile to approach meaning and role of infrastructure from a rationalistic approach, starting with whatever we hold the purpose of a city to be in our times. As a second step, one might consider the ontology of cities, i.e. the different entities a city is made of. Well-known distinctions from philosophy in the study of ontology might help in such an endeavour: substantial vs. relational, essential vs. accidental, abstract vs. concrete, universal vs. particular, dynamical vs. static. Such a study might eventually lead to a model of a city and thereby allow locating the role and function of infrastructure without falling prey to old prejudices.

My overall vision for the project is that we will change the way cities are perceived, that we bring to the fore some of the inherent contradictions between the common understanding of cities and the boundary conditions of modernity. I am much in favour of the plan to organize an exhibition, which should try to communicate our findings with the general public. The idea voiced by several of the members of the infrastructure group to concentrate on an object that captures our imagination is excellent: a shrinking city might be a good candidate in this respect, the spectacular failure of some infrastructure might be another. I also suggest the organization of workshops on themes related to our project, e.g. on “cities, infrastructure, and risk”. At the end of the day, our main goal should be a humanistic one: by understanding the way modern cities work, we should aim at making life better for its citizens. A concrete suggestion has come up in the conversation of our infrastructure group – develop ideas how to use the ‘waste’ infrastructure in shrinking cities.

a vision statement

At the Munich workshop, the question was asked: “What would give your work impact?” This was a helpful reminder that impact is one of the key goals of research in general and of this fellowship in particular. The need for impactful urban research has also been reinforced by current events. Even though the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not the most obvious urban issue, it remains linked to habits of mobility and consumption that in turn influence settlement patterns, civic organization, and urban form. Even if the spill is only examined from the perspective of energy and ecology, it is clear that once this crisis has passed, another is surely imminent. It seems that larger shifts in collective values and individual behaviors must be brought about in order to address such patterns. Not an easy thing to achieve! However, this fellowship provides a forum to raise such concerns, to search for ways to address them and, hopefully to develop proposals that could resonate both within the various disciplines represented and at a broader public level. In pursuit of this, a project-oriented approach to research could be developed that will seek to understand possibilities for collective engagement and develop ideas for new forms of citizenship.

In discussions coming out of the April workshop, infrastructure, broadly construed, emerged as a promising site for this investigation because of its role as a shared resource. If cultivating common values and instigating shifts in behavior is one of the primary challenges facing cities, then infrastructure presents significant research opportunities and could in turn yield a number of applications. Regardless of the form this takes, the notion that it could find some traction in a larger context and with a broader audience is an attractive one. This could be enabled by possible collaborations with a range of state and non-state actors who might not normally be part of such conversations. In fact, if the question has to do with the “making” of the city, then it is crucial to engage the various mechanisms that are actively shaping urban conditions, even if their pedigree is suspect or their methods objectionable. To continue with the example of infrastructure, even though it has been a popular topic in recent years with designers and urbanists, it has also proven particularly difficult to engage. Somehow infrastructure seems to resist design. However, somewhere, a set of decisions are being made and the research work conducted here could be used to better understand that process and to make it available to a wider range of contributors and stakeholders. Enlisting and / or contributing to government agencies and projects could further expand this effort. For example, even though the Recovery Act window has closed, there is still a good deal of government interest and grant money available for infrastructure projects and, even though the GSA’s Office of Design Excellence concentrates primarily on buildings, their interests also include infrastructure. Likewise, the recently created Office of Urban Affairs has declared “regionalism” to be one of its priorities and is gathering examples of best practices by actively seeking “ideas and innovations.” Such an invitation seems well suited for the goals of these research efforts and would offer possibilities to engage the active shaping of cities at a high level. Similar efforts to involve organizations could be made at the non-state level including developer organizations like the Urban Land Institute, trade organizations like the International Council for Shopping Centers, or even private corporations like Walmart.

One of the key challenges in formulating a research agenda for addressing the future of urbanity is to figure out what is meant by the term. Indeed, the definition of the city has transformed radically and one significant avenue of urban research would attempt to identify new possibilities for citizenship and collective space in 21stcentury urban forms. In the preliminary discussions with the “infrastructure” working group, already several different types of urbanity were circulated including traditional dense and concentric cities, diffuse metropolitan regions of American suburbs, declining centers of the Rust Belt, etc. In this regard, Ash Amin’s working definition of the “good city” as “an expanding habit of solidarity, and as a practical achievement, constantly building on experiments through which difference and multiplicity can be mobilized for common purpose” is particularly helpful. Each one of these cases brings its own set of research questions related to, for example, real estate practices and the consumption of territory, new forms of collectivity, potential of novel media formats, possibilities of logistics-oriented design approaches, and even questions of design pedagogy and the development of form.

The world we inhabit is shaped and reshaped by the process of active making. An international, interdisciplinary initiative based at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University in partnership with the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt and the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Poiesis Fellowship seeks to understand this process as well as the products that come out of it.

Current Poiesis Fellows

Nerea Calvillo
C+ Arquitectos

Naresh Fernandes
Time out India

Orit Halpern
New School for Social Research

Haiyan Huang
Xi’an University of Technology

Monika Krause
University of Kent

Jesse LeCavalier
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

Clapperton Mavhunga
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Michael McQuarrie
University of California – Davis

Wolfgang Pietsch
Technical University of Munich

Cassim Shepard
Urban Omnibus