A while ago I wrote about Jane Jacobs’ insight that cities
were complex systems[i]. The stone that she dropped in the urban pond
in 1961 has rippled widely, and the ideas of cities as complex adaptive
systems, with emergent properties, good and bad resilience, and non-linear
dynamics now guide much cutting edge urban research.
Of course, when Jacobs used the word problem, she meant an
intellectual problem to be solved, and her answer suggested complex systems
theory as an approach to understanding cities.
But the word “problem” also calls to mind an antonym. To every problem there might be considered to
be a solution. In this spirit, with
apologies to Jane Jacobs, I ask what kind of a solution a city is.
To get to my answer, I do have to admit that some urbanists
have interpreted cities as literal problems, in the negative sense. For example, members of the Chicago School of
Urban Sociology in the 1920s emphasized urban pathologies. They contrasted the issues that existed in
cities with the ideal of village and rural life as they experienced it in turn
of the 20th century America.
They studied such things as competition among immigrant communities and the
distribution and behavior of gangs. Of
course, there are real negatives associated with cities, including pollution,
disease contagion, crowding and stress, for example. Recent research by Bettencourt and West
(2010) has pointed out several negative factors, such as crime, that increase
at greater than linear rates with city size.
The Lure of the City
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| A design for urban farming in vacant lands in West Baltimore. From an urban design studio supervised by Brian McGrath and Victoria Marshall. |
In spite of the negatives of urban living, cities continue to draw humanity to them. Urban areas
are seen as a solution by societies, governments, individuals, and households
who vote with their feet or with their policies. Edward Glaeser (2011) has discussed at length
the draws that urban areas clearly hold for people and institutions. For instance, cities in the broadest sense,
are a prime locus of innovation. The
serendipitous interactions of knowledge workers in cafes, bars, restaurants,
and informal gatherings are important sources of new ideas and approaches. Interestingly, the well known power of social
media, which can theoretically operate at a global scale in service of
creativity, have not replaced the sparks of face-to-face interaction among diverse
people. Institutions such as businesses
and universities clearly recognize the power of the city as a source of
creative interaction.
But individuals also yearn for the city for their own
reasons. People seek access to health
care, education, jobs, consumer goods, and excitement. In particular, some urban migrants seek
release from the strictures of tradition, the anonymity to pursue a lifestyle
not sanctioned in a less urban setting, or to replace a livelihood taken away
by industrial agriculture or resource exhaustion in the countryside. These lures, presented briefly in narrative
form can be considered the services or opportunities provided by urban areas.
Economies of scale are another way to address the lures of
the city. Again, Bettencourt and West
(2010) provide statistical meat on the narrative bones. They show over a range of city sizes a clear
savings in terms of per capita infrastructure, resource use, creative products,
and so on. There is roughly a 15%
savings in many areas of urban structure and process compared to urban
population size. In a sense, cities and
larger urban areas exist to provide these solutions, these lures.
The Contexts for Solutions: Four Dimensions
“The” city is not just one kind of solution, however. McHale and colleagues (submitted) identify
four dimensions of contemporary urbanization: Diversity, Complexity, Diffuseness,
and Connectivity. These four
characteristics are intertwined and interacting. Together they describe what is new and
exciting about cities for an urban ecologist.
The conceptual space identifies the realms in which new solutions for
sustainability and resilience can be sought in urban social-ecological systems.
Diversity. Looking at
urbanization and urban change around the world reveals a vast diversity of
forms. The wealthy urban cores of Europe
surrounded by less well off or segregated suburbs; the Post-World War II sprawl
of the United States with thinning and sometimes even shrinking cores; the
megacities or Asia; the metropolises of India and Latin America dotted with
favelas and shantytowns; the urbanizing former rural “homelands” of South
Africa are a part of the great global diversity of urban settlements. No single simple model describes all the
urban systems around the world, or even in a single country any more.
Complexity. The early
history of cities was marked by compactness and often clear differentiation of
districts of cosmological significance, trade, residence, and so on. Cities have always been characterized by
heterogeneity of social groups and social standing. Today, urban areas are marked by great
heterogeneity within their perceptual or legal boundaries. Neighborhoods occupied by different ethnic
groups are cheek by jowl, formal and informal institutions divide up the space
of service or influence, networks of transportation span walking, public
modalities, private vehicles, and opportunistic sharing. Such networks are layered and changing, and
intersect with the patchiness of economic, social, biological, political, and
governance features. Urbanists continue
to remark on the stark heterogeneity of urban areas – cities, suburbs, and
exurbs – even as the grain size and patch configuration shift with time and
use.
Diffuseness. Hand in
hand with complexity is diffuseness. The
boundaries within urban areas are often porous and functionally indistinct in
contemporary urban mosaics. Commuters
move great distances, and the direction of travel is often not in a peripheral
to central direction. Many places that
had been considered peripheral under older conceptions of single metropolitan
cores are now destinations for travel that avoids such cores. Diffuseness also extends to governance and
institutional arrangements. The issues
and solutions for environmental and social problems are managed by collections
of governments, non-governmental organizations that operate at various scales,
and linked civil society activities.
Likewise investments and disinvestment span neighborhoods, districts,
municipalities, and different kinds of lands in extensive urban-rural agglomerations.
Connectivity. Closely
linked to diffuseness is connectivity.
The porosity of official and vernacular boundaries within urban regions
means that connections between the different areas and included ecosystem types
can be extensive. But this connectivity
now goes well and commonly beyond any particular urban node or region. Global connections of finance, resources,
wastes, cultural influences, talent, and livelihood are rife. Consequently, teleconnections or connections
at a distance are now contribute much to the form and functioning of urban
regional landscapes. These connections
affect farms, rangelands, forest lands, marine and coastal fisheries, for
example, as well as more obviously urban places.
Implications for City as Solutions
 |
| A typology of water management designs based on how they use vegetated and non-vegetated components. Figure by Brian McGrath, Urban Interface. |
The global and regional “facts on the ground” of diversity
of type, spatial complexity of mosaics, diffuseness of various boundaries in
urban territories, and the connectivity at local, regional, and global scales,
must be accounted for in solving urban problems. Indeed, how to exploit these facts is an open
question for improving urban sustainability.
The diversity of urban forms means that there is the
opportunity for trying different solutions in different kinds and contexts of
urban systems. It also means that
solutions must be locally tuned and evaluated.
Complexity means that solutions are likely to be
heterogeneous even in a single urban region.
Adaptive approaches to governance, including that by formal and by informal
institutions, are likely to be required across complex urban regions.
Diffuseness means that solutions – and problems – will sometimes
not respect formal boundaries. Highly
localized control and decision making cannot succeed without at least
accounting for the positive and negative effects on adjoining patches or
ecosystem types, neighborhoods and districts. In fact, governance in both its formal and
informal manifestations can take advantage of positive outcomes of diffuseness
of solutions.
Finally, connectedness means that problems and processes at
great distances may have profound effects on any given urban ecosystem. The accessibility of global markets to global
factories and the length of global supply chains means that cities are at the
whim of corporate decisions and lifestyle changes in countries and continents
distant from their local control.
Solutions must be sensitive to such global connectivity. Chasing investment that may itself be ephemeral
in its geographic focus is a significant challenge. Environmentally sensitive attempts to buffer
a system from capricious decisions elsewhere are certainly called for, but
planning for adaptive resilience rather than relying only on the rigidity of
hard buffers is a major opportunity.
The Inclusive Sustainability of the Urban
A final opportunity for solution exists. As the world population becomes increasingly urban,
there may be a tendency to forget about the needs, wellbeing, and influences of
those who still live in areas designated as rural. Some nation’s policies are intensely urban
focused, such as in China. Other
countries, such as those in Africa, face projected increases in populations
such that the urban tide cannot help but rise.
Rural invisibility is a danger in such situations. Not only must new and existing urban
residents be protected from the vulnerabilities of rapid or ill-placed urban
development, and exclusion from decision making processes about social and
environmental services, but rural residents are at risk as well in this
transition. The connectivity of the
urban and the rural in rapidly urbanizing countries is extraordinary. In Asia and in Africa, for example, “circular
migration” for work and in cities and the resultant disruptions of social
capital in both city and countryside are existing or emerging issues. In China, for example, the problem is
recognized in policies of “urban-rural integration” which aim to narrow the gap
in wealth and services between village and city residents.
The diversity, complexity, diffuseness, and connectivity of urban
settlements and rural and wild lands around the world, in specific municipalities,
and in urban megaregions means that sustainability itself becomes a spatially
and conceptually complicated set of goals and trajectories. The kind of solution a city is likewise becomes
a multi-dimensional, spatially extensive approach to sustainability.
Bibliography
Bettencourt, L. and G. West. 2010. A unified theory of urban
living. Nature 467:912-913.
Glaeser, E. 2011. Triumph of the city: how our greatest
invention makes us richer, smarter, greener, healthier, and happier. Penguin
Press, New York.
McHale, Melissa R., STA Pickett, Olga Barbosa, David N Bunn,
Mary L Cadenasso, Dan L Childers, Meredith Gartin, George Hess, David M Iwaniec, Timon McPhearson, M Nils Peterson,
Alexandria K Poole, Louie Rivers III,
Shade T Shutters, and Weiqi Zhou. A New
Global Urban Realm: Complex, Connected,
Diffuse, and Diverse Socio-Ecological Systems. Sustainability, submitted.
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