Review: E-topia: "Urban Life, Jim, But Not As We Know It" by William J. Mitchell

Beckey D. Sukovaty

(Published by MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2000; 184 pages, including index of names.)

In this elegantly simple yet wide-ranging and humorous book, William Mitchell has persuasively placed the current computer and electronic network revolution on the continuum of human technological change, while emphasizing its uniqueness and importance. The result is a reasoned and emphatic argument for all of us to seize this unique moment in history to help create a new era of worldwide prosperity and equity–an "e-topia" that is nonetheless eminently attainable–rather than giving up in the face of what at times can seem to be an overwhelming, uncontrollable, inexorable journey into a distopian future of disparity and despair. Mitchell’s background in architecture and urban planning, as well as an obvious keen interest in the ethics of development, contribute to his exploration of the effects of the e-revolution not just on our psyches and our pocketbooks, but on our physical environment.

In E-topia, Mitchell reminds us of the "story" part of history, and how it relates to today. For example, he points out that a common gathering place for communities was the village well, where one went not just for water but also for news and social interaction, and usually nearby commerce. When water distribution systems were invented, the water taps–and thus the social and economic environment–became more decentralized, until indoor plumbing made it unnecessary for many people around the world, especially those living in urban areas, to venture outside their dwellings at all to meet their need for a fresh supply of water. At the same time, the urban area could expand much farther geographically with the distribution systems than was possible when central wells dominated. However, the need for social interaction remained, and was met by a focus on other aspects of gathering places such as public squares, cafes, and marketplaces, often at or near the sites of the old wells and taps.

Not only did this technologically driven movement from centralized to decentralized occur in the broader community context, it also happened within dwellings themselves. Before central heating and electricity for lighting, household members gathered on cold days and in the evening in one central room with a large stove or fireplace, where scarce and expensive fuel for fires and lamps or candles could be most efficiently shared. This in turn facilitated social interaction around the central hearth. Gas pipe infrastructure started to change this pattern, and now light and heat are available on demand any time of day or night in many urban areas through the electric and gas supply networks both external and internal to dwellings. Family members no longer need to come together around the hearth for physical reasons, and houses can sprawl in size wherever this infrastructure is in place as they become less constrained by scarce fuel resources. Even the "electronic hearth" of television is now available in personal form to many households, who have a separate set for most of the rooms in the home, including individual bedrooms.

Mitchell tells the story of a similar progression that has occurred with technological development of our transportation systems. The limitations of walking or even riding allowed regular connection between only a few hundred people, even if they dwelt relatively close together. Riding increased this somewhat. But development of the railroad, and even more significantly, the personal automobile, allowed thousands of people to be in regular face-to-face contact for a relatively short investment of time, even if they used to live several days away when measured in terms of walking or riding. Urban communities could sprawl over a larger physical area. With development of telephones and now digital information systems, the number of people we can theoretically stay in some kind of regular contact with is likely in the millions, and they can be almost anywhere around the globe.

Similarly, we used to have no choice but to go to a central workplace or theatre or pub, then phones and faxes allowed some activities to take place without face-to-face meetings, and finally the distribution "pipes" of the high capacity digital networks allow many of us to conduct virtually all of our business or social interactions remotely from our dwellings should we choose to do so. In an ironic twist, until the industrial revolution most activities related to economic production were originally decentralized, located at individual dwellings; generally, only the actual trading was centralized. The digital revolution is counteracting that trend.

These technological developments affect the place-based aspects of business as well. Central locations inside skyscrapers maximizing use of expensive land in dense urban cores become less necessary for business success as lower cost, more efficient transportation and communication options become available. Businesses can choose to locate in more isolated, less compactly designed "office parks" or "industrial parks" in suburban or even formerly rural locations. Not just the sprawl of dwelling size, but urban sprawl itself, becomes economically feasible and even advantageous.

Mitchell also summarizes the far from perfect, but nevertheless substantial, environmental benefits of increasing used of digital networks to replace more physical modes of transportation and communication.

Mitchell has created a very compact matrix to describe the needs and choices we now have for social and economic interaction, and the related technologies we employ in each case, comparing local vs. remote modes on the one hand, and their interaction with synchronous vs. asychronous modes on the other: When we can be in different times and different places to accomplish the interaction, we can send an asychronous, remote email at our convenience and at very low cost but we forgo the intensity and personal quality of local, synchronous interaction. Sometimes the most effective mode is to be in the same time and place to accomplish the interaction, but this synchronous and local mode is much more expensive even though it provides the most intensity and opportunity for personal interaction. In the middle are remote, synchronous technologies such as the telephone or instant on-line messaging; and local but asychronous modes such as such as leaving a note on someone else’s desk.

In previous eras, lack of technological options limited most interactions to the synchronous and local. Widespread literacy and technological advances related to writing and reading allowed the emphasis to shift to the asynchronous, but a physical artifact still had to be moved to the locality of the interaction. Phone, and now digital information networks allow the progression all the way to asychronous and remote. Our information infrastructure allows many humans to choose between and regularly employ all four types of interactions.

Yet, as Mitchell emphasizes, however much the forces of technological change move toward decentralization and allow increasing physical isolation, the human need for face-to-face social interaction and to belong somewhere in physical space still remains. He argues that neither those who are excited proselytizers nor gloom-and-doom prophets of the death of place and community are correct. Like other technological advances in history, the actions of most humans who have access to new technology will be to pick and choose between all the modes that are now available, based on their costs and benefits vis-a-vis the particular circumstances of the interaction sought.

The impact on the urban environment will thus be somewhat predictable, Mitchell asserts. Humans who are relatively well off will have access to the full benefits of the e-revolution, which will continue to create increasing amounts of wealth for them. They in turn will use their wealth to demand more and more of the amenities in terms of places and services that are already well-established in many urban areas: Human scale gathering places open long hours and located near dwellings, such as the now ubiquitous neighborhood cafés and coffeebars, that allow both social interaction and also focus on a portable, globally-networked, computer-based work in an environment that is not physically isolated; access within a reasonably close area to cultural opportunities that are not available in the home, such as live sporting, drama and other arts events, movie theatres with larger screens and better sound systems than those available in-home, and the like; dwellings that echo the past in that they include areas specifically reserved for working at home; commercial buildings that are both space-efficient since many workers will not be "in the office" at any given time but are still proactively designed to promote face-to-face interaction, since that business need will be a prime motivator for going in to the office at all (i.e. Adobe in Fremont neighborhood of Seattle); and reasonably close proximity to transportation hubs that provide access for face-to-face interaction with others who dwell in physically distant places, such as airports.

However, both locally and globally, those with more limited or no access will be stuck in a downward spiral of poverty, increasingly confined to impoverished ghettos. In areas with high overall wealth, disparities could play out in the built landscape in terms of wealthy enclaves, protected by gates and security services from increasingly desperate "have-nots" of society. As other elements such as distance fall before the digital advance, walls comparable to those of medieval cities may rise again. But unlike previous times in history, with the exception of largely invisible service workers or clever criminals, those of different economic classes may be increasingly physically isolated from each other in their day-to-day lives, with profound negative implications for democratic societies predicated on some form of equality. In regions where the wealth is lower overall, the entire area and its population is in danger of becoming increasingly isolated economically and socially from other locations, left out of the new, largely digitally-based global economy, resulting in a similar downward spiral towards poverty.

But, Mitchell convincingly argues, these trends are not inevitable, and should be proactively counteracted. With an eminently attainable amount of attention and resources devoted to fair international economic development and equitable access to the local nodes of the digital economy for all members of society, an very different picture emerges. The very technological aspects of the e-revolution that could lead to increasing isolation and disparity can also make available, at reasonable cost and in equitable measure to everyone on a global basis, the very same amenities now available only to those whom Mitchell wryly terms "the digerati"–ushering in an unprecedented era of global prosperity compatible with minimizing environmental impacts and maximizing fairness. Mitchell’s e-topia is one those interested in ethics and the urban environment should actively strive to bring about at this critical juncture in the history of technology.

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*It’s finally flatlining. The city--as understood by urban theorists from Plato to Aristotle to Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs--can no longer hang together and function as it could in earlier times. It's due to bits; they've done it in. Traditional urban patterns cannot coexist with cyberspace. But long live the new, network-mediated metropolis of the digital electronic era. (3)

*The buildings, neighborhoods, towns, and cities that emerge from the unfolding digital revolution will retain much of what is familiar to us today. But superimposed on the residues and remnants of the past, like the newer neural structures over that old lizard brain of ours, will be a global constructions on high-speed telecommunications links, smart places, and increasingly indispensable software.

This latest layer will shift the functions and values of existing urban elements, and radically remade their relationships. The resulting new urban tissues will be characterized by live/work dwellings, twenty-four-hour neighborhoods, loose-knit, far-flung configurations of electronically mediated meeting places, flexible, decentralized production, marketing and distribution systems, and electronically summoned and delivered services. This will redefine the intellectual and professional agenda of architects, urban designers, and others who care about the space and places in which we spend our daily lives. (7)

*Like their pipe-and-wire predecessors, however, digital telecommunication networks will not create entirely new urban patterns from the ground up; they will begin by morphing existing ones. Generally in the past, new urban networks have started by connecting existing activity nodes that had been made possible and sustained by earlier networks. (After all, what else could there be to connect?) Then, like parasites taking over their hosts, they have transformed the functioning of the systems on which they were superimposed, redistributed activities within these systems, and eventually extended them in unprecedented ways. (15)

*These [recent technological] developments suggest a new evolutionary stage for architecture. Our buildings will become less like protozoa and more like us. We will continually interact with them, and increasingly think of them as robots for living in.

In the distant past, they [buildings] were little more than skeleton and skin. Following the industrial revolution, they acquired elaborate mechanical physiologies–heating-ventilation-air conditioning (HVAC) systems, water supply and waste removal, electrical power and other energy systems, mechanical circulation systems, and a wide variety of safety and security systems; pretty soon, these evolved to the point where they were responsible for the bulk of the building’s construction and operating costs. Today, in the wake of the digital revolution, they are getting artificial nervous systems, sensors, displays, and computer-controlled appliances; the structure becomes a chassis for the sophisticated electronic systems that play a rapidly growing role in responding to the requirements of the inhabitants. (59)

*This proliferation of nested smart places will eventually produce a new type of urban tissue, and in the end it will radically reshape our cities.

To an excellent first approximation, the places that a city contains, the activities that those place support, and the tissues that result derive their characters from the affordances of the supply networks that serve them. By putting in sophisticated water supply and sewer networks, for example, ancient Roman engineers succeeded in creating densely packed systems of (relatively) sanitary places. When the industrial revolution brought gas and electric networks, cities everywhere became collections of illuminated places and could extend their activities around the clock–liberating themselves from the ancient bondage of the diurnal cycle. Furnaces, pipes for hot water and steam, and ducts for air enabled creation of centrally warmed places, and made urban life far more comfortable in cold climates. By contrast, air conditioners plugged into the power grid allowed cities like Phoenix to develop as far-flung constructions of cooled places, among which people shuttle in their chilled vehicles. And Alexander Graham Bell opened the way to a world of connected places.

Civilization has its discontents, and each of these transformations had its downsides. Furthermore, the short-term effects have usually been to increase the gaps between the privileged and the not-so; you can be sure the rich and powerful were always the first to get piped water supply and sanitation, electric light, efficient heating and air conditioning, and telephones. But the longer-term effects of these environmental improvements have been life-enhancing and few of us–even the most hardened technoskeptics–would want to turn the clock back.

Digital networks continue this story. We will characterize cities of the twenty-first century as systems of interlinked, interacting, silicon- and software-saturated smart, attentive, and responsive places…(67-68)

*In other words, the standard land use planning strategies of the industrial city must be inverted. At an urban scale, workplaces and homes no longer need to be kept apart in separate zones. Their inter-mixture should, in fact, be encouraged. But within the live/work dwelling itself, the need for separation reemerges. (74)

*In an ironic turnabout, some residential colleges and universities will recognize that their ancient patterns of live/work spaces clustered around communal facilities such as laboratories and classrooms are not anachronisms, but appealing templates for the future. These institutions will not fragment into scattered distance-learning enterprises as some have suggested, but instead will differentiate themselves and compete for the best talent by emphasizing intense face-to-face community n congenial surroundings, combined with efficient electronic linkage to a wider world. These silicon towers will be simultaneously both more concentrated and more connected than campuses of the past. (79)

*Furthermore, as many commentators have pointed out, the very possibility of urban public life has depended on opportunities for serendipitous formation of secondary relationships across sociocultural boundaries. If you don’t have these, you are living in an interest group or an institution, not a city. (79-80)

*Under the most optimistic scenario, these new patterns will recreate what was best about old-style small towns and urban neighborhoods--the qualities that were celebrated by Jane Jacobs in *The Death and Life of Great American Cities, that have been so determinedly sought in a neotraditional vein by the New Urbanists, and that have been pursued by sustainability-oriented modernists such as Richard Rogers. (80)

*In particular, there is an obvious and serious danger that this reconfiguration of urban patterns will further cluster the affluent while leaving the poor in places with few good jobs and services. Today, for example, high-flying Silicon Valley professionals can commute in their air-conditioned cars from gated residential communities to campus workplaces with guards at the entries, scarcely noticing they are passing through marginalized, crime-ridden areas like East Palo Alto. When they do notice, they probably lock their doors.

Urban areas could well continue to congeal into introverted, affluent, gated communities intermixed with "black holes" of disinvestment, neglect, and poverty–particularly if, as the unrestrained logic of the market seems to suggest, low-income communities turn out to be the last to get digital telecommunications infrastructure and the skills to use it effectively. As Manuel Castells has vividly warned, we could end up with dual cities–urban systems that are "spatially and socially polarized between high value-making groups and functions on the one hand and devalued social groups and downgraded spaces on the other hand." Dwindling opportunities for contact across the borders of more and more discrete units could certainly cause public life to atrophy, and we could eventually face the explosive combination of decayed and derelict urban areas ringed by the territories of psychopathic survivalists barricaded in their isolated electronic forts.

For planners and politicians, steering us away from the dual city is a matter of finding policies that generate an acceptable level of social equity. For architects and urban designers, the complementary task is to create urban fabric that provides opportunities for social groups to intersect and overlap rather than remain isolated by distance or defended walls--the laptop at that piazza cafe table instead of being forced to choose the PC in the gated condo...Ultimately it comes down to a basic social and political choice. What will we use the multifaceted and sometimes contradictory affordances of digital technology *for*? Will we employ them--as seems possible--to help revitalize small-scale neighborhoods and strengthen interconnections and social interactions? Or will they become a means for the affluent elites to flee the problems of the cities and create isolated, privileged enclaves while leaving the less fortunate to their fates? Though our options certainly are not unconstrained, the outcome isn't technologically pre-determined. Nor is it categorically given by existing geographic patterns and legacies of history. (81-82)

*They picture us all huddled at home in our underwear, typing email messages to one another. Under this neo-Durkheimian scenario, anomie rules as never before.

But this reasoning depends on the questionable assumption that our capacities for social interaction are fixed, and thus set up zero-sum games for us; if you devote your attention to certain social opportunities, you must correspondingly decrease your attention to others. There is growing evidence, however, that electronic telecommunication both increases our overall capacity for social interaction and changes the structure of the game in complex ways. The consequences are far from straightforward.

It seems, for example, that so-called "virtual communities" work best when they are allied with the possibility of occasional face-to-face encounters, and that online interaction actually stimulates demand for more familiar sorts of meetings and meeting places... (90)

*Where opportunities for connectivity are abundant, the locations of these opportunities may still be socially significant. If a university simply wires dormitory rooms, for example, they will almost certainly encourage students to stay in their rooms working on their computers, reduce general social interaction, and raise the incidence of conflicts among roommates. But if it goes for laptops rather than desktop devices, provides lots of connection points and power outlets in social spaces and library reading rooms, and implements a dynamic addressing scheme that allows plug-and-play work anywhere, it will promote mobility among different hangouts, chance encounters, and informal grouping. (92-93)

*At the extreme, electronic management of face-to-face meetings can render some members of society literally invisible to others. If you don’t want to encounter other races, classes, or genders, electronic interaction can effectively make sure that you never have to. You can begin to think that everyone is just like you. This effect is not entirely new–the Greek agora excluded and occluded large parts of the populace too–but, the available means to that potential end are now more powerful than ever before. (95)

*In the digital era, an increasing number of cities (Palo Alto, California, is one striking example, and India’s Bangalore is another) will find that they can succeed in yet another way [besides traditional exploitation of local natural resources or strategic locations as trading centers]–by exploiting their unusual human resources to attract and retain economic activities that could, in principle, be located just about anywhere. To win at this game in the long run, they will need the right sorts of local attractions to retain talent–in particular, pleasant and stimulating local environments, high-quality educational and medical services, and sufficiently flexible transportation infrastructures and building stocks to accommodate rapidly reconfiguring patterns of activity.

But all this clearly depends upon effective strategies for sustaining social investment under the condition that geographic communities and economic communities are no longer coextensive in either space or time...(111)

*…[W]e should not expect a wholesale replacement of face-to-face interaction by electronic telecommunication, as technoromantics sometimes suggest and traditionalists often fear. Instead, we are likely to discover that different people, in different contexts, responding to different demands, subject to different constraints and with different resources at their disposal, will choose to conduct their interactions in widely varying fashions. They will set their priorities, make their tradeoffs, and ultimately arrive at different balances of materiality and virtuality, and of telecommunication and transportation. (143)

*The path from what we have now to what we need in the future need not be one of cataclysmic change; we can follow the road of subtle, incremental, nondestructive transformation. (155)

*In the twenty-first century, then, we can ground the condition of civilized urbanity less upon the accumulation of things and more upon the flow of information, less upon geographic centrality and more upon electronic connectivity, less upon expanding consumption of scarce resources and more upon intelligent management. Increasingly, we will discover that we can adapt existing places to new needs by rewiring hardware, replacing software, and reorganizing network connections rather than demolishing physical structures and building new ones.

But the power of place will still prevail. As traditional locational imperatives weaken, we will gravitate to settings that offer particular cultural, scenic and climatic attractions--those unique qualities that cannot be pumped through a wire--together with those face-to-face interactions we care most about.

Physical settings and virtual venues will function interdependently, and will mostly complement each other within transformed pattern of urban life rather than substitute within existing ones. Sometimes we will use networks to avoid going places. But sometimes, still, we will go places to network. (155)