WPI: The Hidden Order of the Brave New World

(On April 1, I hosted a political salon with Yale architect and “Extrastatecraft” author Keller Easterling at the World Policy Institute in New York. The recap below originally appeared on WPI’s Website.

By Libby Leyden-Sussler

In a recent political salon, “Extrastatecraft: The Hidden Order of the Brave New World,” World Policy Institute hosted a roundtable conversation on how infrastructure is not only the systems of pipes and wires running through our cities, but also the hidden rules for structuring the spaces all around us.

Leading the political salon was Keller Easterling and Greg Lindsay. Easterling is an American architect, urbanist, author, and professor at the Architecture School at Yale University. Lindsay is a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute and director of the Emergent Cities Project. In attendance were experts from the UN-Habitat, Time Equities, Inc., Ernst & Young, and Living Cities to name a few.

The event discussed the challenges, opportunities, and recent developments in infrastructure, urban planning, and the ways in which humans organize themselves. The event focused in on several poignant discussions, including how cities should operate like software, the notion of broadband urbanism, and the outlook of some promising urban centers.

An Operating System for Organizing the System

A city, Keller explains, is information of the medium of architecture. It should be viewed as a “software system,” organizing routines and protocols. The radical changes occurring in the global world is in the language of this urban software. She describes this software system as a secret weapon. The “defacto” forms of policy, city grids, free-trade zones, and power systems are being built faster than bodies of government can pass in congress or legislation. And the people who are “coding” this software are the young finance personnel.

Keller raised the question of, “might we be good at hacking this operating system?” Some of the most interesting and innovative people in the social sciences, she explains, are the ones questioning the assumptions of their science. Experts from a variety of backgrounds are positioned to influence the interesting subject of how humans organize themselves. By beginning to recognize that the world is not a rational place, but instead one run largely by fictions we self-impose, new actors find themselves at liberty to participate in the exciting field. The world has become addicted to urbanism.

Broadband Urbanism

The million-dollar skyline, Keller points out, has now become this “object of desire” for countries around the world. This appearance-driven forwar-obsessed community has spread around the world. It’s this partly irrational desire that proves the mythology, the consumerism behind some urbanism. Keller asks, how do you design urban spaces be more of a software and less like a thing? Her answer is that one can design is interdependence—linking different forces to work together.

Joan Clos turned the conversation next onto the future of commercial success. How should success be defined? Audience members suggested that a successful city would define success broadly, with models that include limiting climate change, supporting fair labor laws, and decreasing social segregation (i.e. poor people live in one place, the rich in another). Clos calls for a renewed sense of urbanization.

Lindsay posed the question, “Who governs these places; who is the culprit for places as expensive and intricate as Dubai, etc?” Clos replied that cities need to be built for the majority of the people that will populate them. There are good intentions being taken; everyone is quite proud of the evolution of the urban zone, which can be seen in the overuse of the word “Cyber City”. Now cities are being built as if it will solve all the problems, the assumption being: if you build a city you will be “free and happy” which of course is just not the case, Clos concluded.

A Spotlight on Kenya

Urban development has to be seen like another product—in its final version. Instant urbanism is not sustainable. To return the work of labor to law from economic free trade zones to government control is a must. Otherwise, as Easterling explained, economic forces violate basic social and political principles like that of a fair or at least a minimum wage.

The city is the rule of law, how it is organized and conducted dictates how people interact, the economy, and many legal issues. Keller and Lindsay say Nairobi, poised for innovation but aware of the potential for exploitation, is the place to look toward. The city is a prime example of increasing technological and infrastructural improvements, saving forests and contracting communities to help in the city’s economy. Currently, Kenya has a fair amount of what experts call “broadband”—a high-capacity transmission technique that uses a wide range of frequencies, enabling a large number of messages to be communicated simultaneously. Nairobi, like much of Kenya, is well placed to use some of its broadband to leverage the state.

World Policy’s political salon, “Extrastatecraft: The Hidden Order of the Brave New World” was as optimistic as it was cautionary about the future of infrastructure and human organization. But as input from our speakers and contributions from the audience revealed, the world is at a crucial time in the history of global organization. By leveraging creativity, intellect, and even some fictional, wishful thinking - actors can create truly sustainable and cutting edge places to inhabit.

*****

Libby Leyden-Sussler is an editorial assistant at World Policy Journal.

[Photos courtsey of Michael Renner, WPJ, and Flickr]