Excursions into Happiness (VG Project)

Current trends in the commodification of urban infrastructure and the commercially orientated decisions being made which affect the quality of our urban environment suggests potential future scenarios where human experience and sensibilities are left behind in the quest for ever increasing densities and gross to net ratios. The project contemplates this scenario and offers neither a resolved building proposal nor attempts to envisage the image of a city model but explores the possibility of a future reorientation of values in urban planning. The presentation presents a process by which we arrive at our conclusion. Having identified a potential future scenario the project begins by exploring how the application of information technology might enable an urban design tool which focuses on qualities of spaces and of human activity. Those intangible aspects traditionally viewed as precluding the use of technology. A series of experiments was conducted which explored the application of cellular automata, developing ideas and elaborating initial models with respect to their application to architectural and urban design problems. The project is set in a retrospective future Manchester, speculating upon potential future scenario as trends of the early millennium head ever closer to their logical conclusions. The project is concerned with the relationship between city & inhabitants, spatial urban qualities, character & identity, not with visual image. It explores removing the dictatorship of individual human preference & obsession with physical appearance on the city’s morphology.

OBJECTIVES

- An intelligent networked cityscape is required.

- A planning tool for analysis and design, it monitors local human activities and behaviours, assessing qualitative feedback data on the standard of living and quality of urban communities, developing connections and links between complimentary activities.

- The city as phenomenon collective inhabitation. - In the information age, developing, future technology presents the possibility for objective, impartial, non-deterministic, quantitative data analysis in the consideration of qualitative issues in contemporary urbanism.

- Technology integrated with human creativity and sensitivity, liberates us from the limits of imagination and subjectivity.

- There is a need to re-orientate urban objectives from enforced masterplanned regeneration to a bottom-up, ‘naturally’ evolving process where human life is the generator and not capital gains.

CONCEPT

Following the development experiments, an understanding of both the nature of the city and of the potential application of information technology was gained.

The city was redefined into scales or levels of activity and emergent effect which allows a model to be constructed capable of analysis by the planning algorithm.

CELL - People are the medium through which ‘city’ evolves, the personalities, characters and traits of individuals form the basis upon which all else depends.

NODE - The human response to micro scale contextual conditions conspires to form distinct locales or nodes

NEIGHBOURHOOD - Interconnected and interdependent nodes within an extensive urban network or fabric.

REGION - From the dependencies and interactions between connected city nodes emerge cohesive regions of particular and specific character and culture.

CITY - the emergent phenomenon. Not ‘built environment’ but a dynamic and differentiated socio-cultural infra-structure. The identity of the city emerges from both broad contextual and local incidental conditions, responsive to unique personalilties and of sensitive to creative inhabitation.

METHOD

-The city ‘datascape’ is modeled as a network of ‘nodes’ for analysis and monitoring. Each node comprises data parameters which define it; financial, demographic, expertise, labour force, quality of living, trends in activity, employment, creativity...

- The data is analysed and the node is assessed in relation to the nodes in the immediately surrounding ‘neighbourhood’.

- The node depends upon the contribution of the traits of its neighbours for the overall ‘strength’ of its own character.

- The system monitors all nodes across the city constructing new links and connections between them in order to maintain their success and that of its neighbourhood.

- Nodes and neighbourhoods have natural lifespans and as local conditions change, nodes are able to adjust and relocate to sustain themselves. Consequently the city at the macro scale is able to respond and survive.

- ‘Natural’ clustering and development of distinct regions of character will emerge, constructing differentiated urban textures, regions of the city.

The notion of the city changes from fixed, built environment to a reflexive morphology, responsive to social and cultural changes and needs. Reconfiguration of the city fabric is enabled at a micro urban scale. From here, meso scale city ‘form’ is emergent.

IMPLICATIONS

There is a shift on the perception of the built environment and its ownership. The city is collectively owned by its inhabitants, those who construct it through their inhabitation and activation of its spaces. Communities are transient. They no longer consider place in relation to a location in the physical realm, but more a relative position with respect to community and activity.

‘Home’ refers to social connections not physical structures, the ability to undertake one’s contribution to society and the community, none of these are now predicated by physical proximity.

Should the healthy state of a community be in jeopardy then inhabitants would move to a more conducive location, contributing to a more successful urban configuration in the interest of both the self, the community and the city. The city ‘responds’ to local conditions.

There are incidental and marked differences and gradients, inbetween spaces which have blurred urbanity, the community ‘fringes’, peripheral zones which can harbour essential but commonly percieved negative regions of the city. The aim is not to eliminate undesirable, darker regions, but to respect their presence and avoid sanitising and ‘monotonising’ the city.

EVALUATIONS

The process has involved building on our previous knowledge and positions. This has been further developed through discussion, experimentation, evaluation and refinement of our concepts.

The testing of the experiment illustrated our hopes that based on the model under testing, surprising forms of the city emerged which we had not dictated. We had identified a level differentiation as one of the factors for a successful city and this emerged yet with an exact form we had not predicted.

In our experiment we succeeded in modeling a scenario where the traditional ‘global’ rule of visual masterplanning has been removed in favour of a bottom-up process focussed on people rather than profits.

The possibilities for further development of ideas raised during the process would be to further explore the incorporation of computer data analysis techniques and evolutionary concepts as part of generative design methodologies.

Our contribution to these types of methodologies would be extending the concept to the dynamic, city-wide scale. It would not only generate design solutions which respond to context but would generate city scale urban interventions which continue to be responsive and interactive through out their life spans, enabling the city to become a true reflection of the people who define it.