My Sense of The Future

Much of my writing about the future synthesizes a sense of progress and a sense of doom. When I suggest something that I think would be good I do not usually add that I think it will be necessary, because I do not like necessity as much as I like a sense of choice. Necessity does not imply freedom as much as straitened circumstances, a need to batten down.

Now one could reverse all this and celebrate necessity as Nietzsche’s amor fati — loving your life, whatever it turns out to be.

All I am saying is that when I suggest what is needed for the future, I am not always assuming it is 100 percent desirable.

The other day I was driving (as a passenger) on big roads that serve the Boston area and they were almost traffic free. My friend told me, when I asked, that the economy had indeed impacted traffic. To me this is simply God’s, or the economy’s, way of nudging us toward my proposed future (it has been proposed since the 1960s) when the private car simply becomes out of reach for most, just as I believe private detached homes will be out of reach.

Now my mentor Christopher Alexander — via his book Pattern Language — likes the decline of the private car and the detached house because it creates human options. It’s a counter to reification (making us into things).

When I write about the joys of creating all manner of new vehicles for roads — vehicles that would be public and that would be driven by a new professional class of drivers — I am thinking of a best case situation. The worst case is: the same thing would happen but it would be managed so badly that it would make us long for the private car. There would be no compensation in it. No sense of progress. It would look like regression.

It is an odd truth that we can speak of the market and socialism in the same breath. Both forces are operating. The market has operated perfectly the last several months. People were not buying until things got shaken down. For wingnuts, the market is endless oil and SUVs will return, Excuse me but that is the free market. No one ever has seriously suggested that the market, which rules, is actually free. Amor fati. Love your life.

The free market fantasy is too expensive for the future and the real market is destroying it. That the fantasy also happens to be stupid environmentally is a happy coincidence. Sort of like being green is good for us whether or not there is global warming.

Whatever else it is, the future involves, I believe, a capacity to begin looking at things as a spectrum, as containing positive and negative elements, as being incremental, done in small steps, always a mix. That would be a start toward a redemptive immanence, a scaled down sense of what we actually know, a bit of humor about finitude. At which point we can read back into earlier times and understand that whatever else had happened, however much we have learned, how smart we are when we do things, we are still the same folk that wander through the pages of the Old Testament, the comedies of the Greeks and the Decameron of Bocaccio.

Uncategorized

UCLA: Tea and Coffee Cut Stroke Risk

FuturePundit is my source for salient bits of information based on actual studies, in this case UCLA.

It makes me feel batter about my daily coffee intake. I do not drink tea because it is high in oxilates, another twist in the whole dietary thing, relevant to those who have kidney stone problems.

COFFEE, TEA GOOD FOR YOU

pattern language, politics

Obama Pattern Language Primer — 5

Sadly, Huffington Post is submarining these Pattern Language offerings. They are given about a half a day on the home page and either bumped up or down into limbo.

I suspect this is because it is essentially subversive to question an economy that is built on infinite growth, and to opt for something sustainable. Also it is subversive to speak the truth about the end of oil and the demise of the private car as we know it. These are the realities behind the rhetiric and people do not wish to face them directly.

Nevertheless the insights of Christopher Alexander, supplemented by observations made thirty years after publication of his classic Pattern Language, are a suggestive starting point for persons who really want to think through what an alternative model of society might look like. So I will keep on nudging Huffington Post, which seems taken up with superficialities much of the time, because when I have been able to break the content ceiling the responses there have been helpful and intelligent.

Here’s an indication that there is at least some interest in a project of this sort.

This post continues where we left off. Click the link below for the series so far:

OBAMA PATTERN LANGUAGE PRIMER POSTS — CUMULATIVE

The source for the discussion is at the link below:

THE ONLINE PATTERN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

Today’s cluster touches on essential and subversive design themes.

Establish community and neighborhood policy to control the character of the local environment according to the following fundamental principles.

Four-Story Limit (May be part of Magic of the City, City Country Fingers, Lace of Country Streets)

Alexander is both right and wrong: “There is abundant evidence to show that high buildings make people crazy.”

The argument for a four story limit is not merely that high buildings induce alienation. The four story idea means that settlements can be planned as connected, modular elements which enable access by foot. A graded walkway or promenade rising a total of four levels is a thinkable notion for a reasonably concentrated settlement.

The current emphasis on building high in cities and sprawling single dwellings over the landscape is begging for disaster. We need an alternative understanding that places people first.

Nine Percent Parking (May be part of Local Transport Areas, Community of 7000 , Identifiable Neighbourhood )

Alexander says: “When the area devoted to parking is too great, it destroys the land.”

His solution is that no more than nine percent of any area be available for parkling. Mine is to reduce the number and need for vehicles, consigning them to the periphery of human settlements and reducing reliance of private automobiles in particular, thus gradually reducing the current slavish submission to paving paradise, to coin a phrase. This is no less realistic than Alexander’s proposal.

Parallel Roads (May be part of Local Transport Areas, Ring Roads , Subculture Boundary, Neighbourhood Boundary)

Says Alexander: :The net-like pattern of streets is obsolete. Congestion is choking cities. Cars can average 60 miles per hour on freeways but trips across town have an average speed of only 10 to 15 miles per hour.” This was thirty years ago, Now congestion has gone global.

Alexander’s solution is “parallel and alternating one-way roads to carry traffic to the ring roads gradually making major streets one-way and closing cross streets.” To which I say we already do that in Manhattan where I live. The future, IMO, needs to concentrate on moving beyond the patterns of existing cities and metro and rural areas. The only illustrations I can see of what I have in mind are models that computer folk have made based on Alexander’s work EXAMPLE ANOTHER

Sacred Sites

The link above will lead you to what Alexander has to say. I personally wish that religions would become ecumenical enough to invest in single facilities that would be shared and that might seek to emulate structures that have stood the test of time aesthetically. Such as this Corbusier Chapel.

Access to Water (May be part of Sacred Sites)

Alexander say: “When natural bodies of water occur near human settlements, treat them with great respect. Always preserve a belt of common land, immediately beside the water. And allow dense settlements to come right down to the water only at infrequent intervals along the waters edge.”

Well and good and unlikely to be implemented. I think the best clue here is to build communities that incorporate water recycling and gathering elements in their matrix. This would include massive rain gathering technology and a two fold recycling capability for drinking and other uses. You will see throughout that the movement is toward a scale that precludes the present economy and paves the way for a new economy where people are creating and paying for sustainability as a dominant value. This is where the likes of Rachel Maddow is a pedagogical disaster, reassuring us that all an economy needs is to get people buying stuff. This assurance is breathtaking.

The stuff we buy now we do not want to buy forever — most of it has to do with seeking to prop up a growth economy in which consumers are the ultimate victims. An economy based on cars and detached dwellings.

Life Cycle (May be part of Community of 7000, Identifiable Neighbourhood)

Alexander wants the “full cycle of life … represented and balanced in each community.” In other words, a mix of ages and stages. Fine. How will we do this if we do not move beyond the reifying diad of today — cars and detached dwellings?

Men and Women (May be part of Community of 7000, Identifiable Neighbourhood , Life Cycle )

“The world of a town in the 1970’s is split along sexual lines. Suburbs are for women, workplaces for men; kindergartens are for women, professional schools for men; supermarkets are for women, hardware stores for men.” This is already breaking down.

What is changing is the assumptions underlying these choices. Ideal would be communities of up to 10,000 where all ages, genders, races and so forth would be able to life side by side and enjoy a life that is centered on human fulfillment rather than the achievement of goals which are set by a society built on privilege and inequality.

Obama Pattern Language Primer — 4

Welcome to this sequential introduction to Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language. I am following the online pattern language summary which can be accessed by clicking the link immediately below.

THE ONLINE PATTERN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

Each of these posts takes a cluster of patterns and seeks briefly to offer a context for these in terms of a situation that has changed since the initial book was created in the 1970s. All of the posts in this series are reachable from the link below.

OBAMA PATTERN LANGUAGE PRIMER POSTS — CUMULATIVE

Connect communities to one another by encouraging the growth of networks.

Web of Public Transportation

Ring Roads

Network of Learning

Web of Shopping

Mini-Buses

Web of Public Transportation (May be part of City Country Fingers, Local Transport Areas)

Alexander notes the melange of ill-connected public tranit, each run by different agencies. His sensible proposal is to treat interchanges as the first priority and transportation lines as secondary. This would end up linking all transport lines. He believes this can be achieved by a form of local control that would give contracts only to transporters who would serve their interchanges. I am tempted to say, dream on. There is no area of design more dependent on a hierarchy of power which has, for a century, been dominated by the private automobile and the need to build highways and interstates that have no interest whatsoever in any sort of human community,

What I am seeking to propose, building on the salient work of Alexander, is a cell or node or town unit of human settlement, as yet not built, nonexistent. This unit of possible 5-10,000 persons would have no private cars within its center and its center would include its perimeter. It would be units in a circle or oval or rectangle or square or other pattern where any private vehicles would be accessible only on leaving the space. Over time the transit between such communities would be achieved by such means as the underground trains that we associate with the US senate. Or via pneumatic devices. Or by bike or light rail or mini-buses or vehicles as yet uninvented.

In effect the transit issue would be removed from the immediate area where people live and work and have their being, because the explicit rule would be that this is a post-automobile culture.

Ring Roads (May be part of Local Transport Areas, Interchange, Web of Public Transportation)

Alexander says, “It is not possible to avoid the need for high speed roads in modern society; but it is essential to place them and build them in such a way that they do not destroy communities or countryside.”

Yes and no. It is possible to limit the dominance of high speed roads by first accepting the basic idea that new human settlements should be largely pedestrian. And secondly that they should eventually be linked by means other than highways.

In essence highways would become less and less the thorougfares needed to move people and goods about. Their rights of ways, however, belong to us. And this means that we could develop all manner of uses for this space, including transport uses based on advanced technology, new vehicles and so forth.

Network of Learning

Here you can see Alexander struggling with the issue of schooling or learning. He says: “Instead of the lock-step of compulsory schooling in a fixed place, work in piecemeal ways to decentralise the process of learning and enrich it through contact with many places and people…” In essence my proposed cell, town, human settlement plan would make this likely by establishing small areas where students could walk from home to the areas and have one to one contact both with a live adult and with a massive range of Web enabled educational resources. The entire settlement would contain the educational diversity Alexander calls for.

(Note, always read the original at the links above to see exactly where I am departing from Alexander and the full text of what Alexander is suggesting.)

Web of Shopping (May be part of Mosaic of Subcultures, Subculture Boundary , Scattered Work, Local Transport Areas)

Says Alexander: “Shops rarely place themselves in those positions which best serve the people’s needs, and also guarantee their own stability.” The best way to accomplish viable commerce within communities is to have areas where clusters of shops and services meet people’s needs without competing directly. Since there would be several such clusters in a community of 5-10,000 to ensure choices among estatlishments in the same category. There would also be a radical increase in Web access to products and services that could be delivered. Many shops could be essentially ordering spots where one would be assisted in finding and securing the best products. As settlements multiplied there would be a plethora of shopping options integrated into the fabric of residence, culture, sports, cafes and so forth.

Mini-Buses (May be part of Web of Public Transportation, Local Transport Areas)

Alexander: “Public transportation must be able to take people from any point to any other point with the metropolitan area.

“Establish a system of small taxi-like buses, carrying up to six people each, radio-controlled, on call by telephone, able to provide point-to-point service according to the passengers’ needs, and supplemented by a computer system which guarantees minimum detours and minimum wait times. Make bus stops for the mini-buses every 600 feet in each direction and equip these bus stops with a phone for dialling a bus.”

In my plan these would be located outside the perimeter of the settlement. It is also possible that people-movers would function between adjacent settlements and essentially link all such settlements. We are talking about eliminating much of the time presently taken up with commuting and diminishing the present clogging of arteries aka roads.

Obama Pattern Language Primer — 3

If you are discovering this for the first time, this is a series of posts in progress aimed at having a conversation with an excellent online summary of Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language, which is a set of considered,. nested design principles that are literally a universal template for creating a world that serves people more than things, human culture more than consumer culture. It is in my view essential reading for the Obama team as it faces the need to hypothesize a sustainable world out of the detritus of a system that loses value as we speak. I refer to the declining real value, never to be restored, of automobiles and detached houses.

THE ONLINE PATTERN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

OBAMA PATTERN LANGUAGE PRIMER POSTS — CUMULATIVE

Build up these larger city patterns from the grass roots, through action essentially controled by two levels of self-governing communities, which exist as physically identifiable places.

Community of 7000

Subculture Boundary

Identifiable Neighbourhood

Neighbourhood Boundary

Community of 7000 (May be part of Mosaic of Subcultures)

Alexander proposes decentralizing “city governments in a way that gives local control to communities of 5000 to 10,000 persons. As nearly as possible, use natural geographic and historical boundaries to mark these communities. Give each community the power to initiate, decide, and execute the affairs that concern it closely; land use, housing, maintenance, streets, parks, police, schooling, welfare, neighbourhood services.”

We can amend this to say that communities of this size need the superstructure needed to ensure that they can deliver essential services and amenities within a given, sustainable ecostructure.

Subculture Boundary (May be part of Mosaic of Subcultures, Community of 7000, Identifiable Neighbourhood )

Alexander opts for a separation of subcultures into divided sections of a space. I think the answer lies in creating a matrix that will accommodate communities of 5-10,000 and slanting these in different ways as to design, appearance and, yes, cultural differences. However I believe this should aim at a mix when a mix would advance culture beyond nativism.

Alexander does however add: “Along the seam between two subcultures, build meeting places, shared functions, touching each community.”

What I assume, which he does not, is a matrix that is car free which in itself incorporated all aspects of a pattern language, in large part as Alexander delivers them. What I see that he does not is the absence of the automobile within living areas of up to 5-10,000 and the absence of detached dwellings of conventional apartments in new residences which would be modular and highly standardized in form while exceptionally customized as well. I would call this pattern everyone having their own (replicable) room.

Identifiable Neighbourhood (May be part of Mosaic of Subcultures, Community of 7000)

Alexander says: “People need an identifiable spatial unit to belong to.” Agreed.

I would apply this to my matrix notion as a sensible way of dispersing dwellings within the entire schema. Residential nodes with “no more than 400 or 500 inhabitants” where these are separated by the other elements — services, cafes, educational and health nodes, etc.

Alexander says: “Keep major roads outside these neighbourhoods.” I would say keep all roads out. This is the radical option. How will this matrix get built? Some entrepreneur will build it. The rest of the world will replicate and imitate it. It is not that hard to do. The vision precedes the doing.

Neighbourhood Boundary May be part of Community of 7000 , Subculture Boundary, Identifiable Neighbourhood)

This is reasonably simple. The matrix would have its own exterior boundary that would separate a community of up to 10,000 from another community. Both inside and out there would be spatial divisions separating groups of various sizes. Inevitably there would be draws from one community to another and ultimately transit between matrix communities would be public and most likely of the people moving variety.

Stephen Curtiss Rose

A universal way of life for the 2000s

Tag Archives: future

My Sense of The Future

UCLA: Tea and Coffee Cut Stroke Risk

Obama Pattern Language Primer — 5

Obama Pattern Language Primer — 4

Obama Pattern Language Primer — 3