World as City: City as Future
Imagining the Multicultural Futures of the City
Sohail Inayatullah
Professor, Tamkang University, Sunshine Coast University, Queensland
University of Technology
What will the cities of the future look like? Is there one clear future
for the city or are there a range of alternative futures?
First the immediate data and most forecasts point to one overwhelming
trend - the urbanization of the planet, Blade Runner writ large. This is a
long term historical trend but now reaching to a point where begin to
serious imagine Earth itself as a city. The data is such that by 2020,
half the world’s population is expected to live in an urban environment.
But why? First, there are few jobs in the farms, and the jobs there pay
comparative less than jobs in the cities. Farms all over the world are in
trouble with governments having to subsidize farming incomes. This is
because of automation but also because agricultural development does not
figure high in most nations economic plans.
But the economic rationale is not the only reason. We only have to go back
a 100 or so years to search for the mythic roots - it is of going to
London town and find streets paved with gold. While rural communities are
successfully able to provide for basic needs (at least when the harvest is
good, when nature does not play tricks), it has been unable to provide for
wealth creation. Rurality means that one lives according to the seasons -
ups and downs - one doe snot enter the long term linear secular trend of
wealth accumulation. It is in the city where this can happen, riches can
be earned. The city then becomes the dream fulfiller, where the future can
be realized.
And there are lock-ins. Once one family goes to the city, others follow
suit. Once others follow suit, economies of scale take over - along with
the factory worker, one needs the brick layer, eventually, service
industries and financial industries as well. More population and more
wealth.
But this is too simple, cities are also packed with the poor, who now live
in misery, that is, while in the farm they were poor, still poverty was
sustainable - there was a sharing of wealth. But with the city comes the
classic anomie, fragmentation, alienation.
And yet we rarely return to the farm instead of as imagined places of
peace and comfort. My own memory of the village is community, of waking up
together with other villagers, eating parata (Pakistani deep fried bread),
and sitting around gupshupping (gossiping and storytelling). Yet I rarely
go back to the village, instead preferring to find community, not through
the straitjacket of by genetic birthplace, but through intended
communities. I prefer to find community by creating it. It is the city
that best accomplishes this. Or does it?
Interlude: as I write this article at Taipei International
Airport, the model Cindy Crawford walks by - city life is now glamour
life, even economy class passengers can participate in the excitement of
stardom.
But return to the village matters little, it is a fictional memory, it
gives us a benchmark. It allows us to see our progress – we can see how
far we have progressed from rurality and at the same time, in our mind we
retain a sense of safety, we can return to the past.
Instead of paratas, village songs and chirping birds, we have chosen Blade
Runner or modern day Bangkok/LA. And as the Net spreads its tentacles,
instead of Blade Runner as our guiding image, it is the Matrix that
represents the future of the city, having forgotten the past, we now enter
a world in which we no longer can distinguish what is real and what is
illusory. But who will be the redeemer, who like Keanu Reeves, saves us,
showing us the light? So far the redeemers, those who have called for a
return to the village have only brought more death, Pol Pot being the most
famous example.
The likely future of the city then is an erasure of our million year
history, whether the Sumerians or whomever one desires to claim began the
urbanization process knew it would lead to this is doubtful. But our rural
history appears to have reached its end.
Different futures
Yet if our aspirations in any way reflect our possible, if not probable,
futures, then the Earth as City may not be ultimately occur, agency has
not been lost.
In dozens of futures visioning workshops across the world – Taiwan,
Germany, New Zealand, Malaysia, Pakistan, the USA – where participants are
asked to in detail describe their preferred futures, two images are
dominant.
The first is the globalist scenario - a jet plane for all, unrestricted
movement of capital and labour as well as ideas and news - not a utopia
but certainly a good society where feudalism, hierarchy, nationalist power
break down and humans function as autonomous fulfilled beings. The market
is primary but a globalized worlds allows endless associations -
nongovernmental organizations, religious affiliations, and other forms of
identity currently unimaginable. With scarcity less of a problem, who we
are and how we express this changing identity become far more crucial. The
city becomes a site of intention. Freedom is realized (insert painting one
– from www.futurefoundation.org).
As dominant as this first future is a second. This future is far less
concerned with movement and more focused on stability. But the stability
does not come from stasis but from connection - relationship with self,
with loved one, with community and with nature. Wealth is no longer the
crucial determining factor of who we are rather it is our capacity to love
and be loved, to not live to transform the world but to live in harmony in
the world. Rurality is not tangential to this image - indeed, while this
image does not necessarily mean a return to the farm, it does mean a move
away from industrial modes of production (that is, high fat, meat based
diets and the accompanying waste disposal paradigm) and postmodern modes
of production (genetically modified foods) to an organic, recyclable mode
of eating and living.
(insert painting two here).
Technology should not be seen as a defining factor. In the former,
technologies leads to greater wealth, to multiple selves (a geneticized
self, an internet self, for example), to access to endless information. In
the latter, technologies are important insofar as they lead to greater
communication and greater employment. Technology creating new spaces for
human community is the key for the latter vision of the future.
Historically, the image of the city has gone from the city beautiful,
focused on parklands, clean streets to the city ecological. But ever since
the 1964 New York World Fair a different image of the city has become
dominant. This is the high-tech city, or what now call the smart-city. The
city that senses and thinks, that can monitor the needs of its citizens -
when trees are about to interfere with power lines, when criminals are
about to loot a store. However, a smart city, a sim city, is also about
surveillance.
Brisbane in Australia has over 100 cameras in its central business
district. These both protect yet they also change one's relationship with
power. One is always seen. But can a smart city liberate us from our fears
and allow us to become in fact more human? A smart city at the beginning
consists of smart houses but as well humans with smart bots, always on
wearable computers which amplify our senses – the wireless revolution that
has already begun with teenagers in Japan.. These bots are likely health
focused, helping us choose the right products that match our values
(ecological products or low-fat foods, or products made by corporations
that treat other cultures well, that are good corporate citizens). But
they will also help us find directions, let us know the sales going on (if
indeed, we will still shop outside the Net), and where our friends out,
becoming true knowledge navigators. While the image of the American
cartoon The Jetsons is perhaps an apt image, we can ask what is that image
missing. Yes, life will be more efficient - automation, perfect
information, however, who will be excluded? Will our behavior become
regimented, that is, with smartness be based on linear reductionist
notions of the world, or more on complexity, that is, on a paradigm that
smartness comes from difference, from learning about others.
Exclusion if often central to a planned city. Planned cities are designed
cities, rationally created with neat rows of houses, clear demarcations of
industrial areas, prostitution areas, grave sites and shopping areas. The
Pakistani capital Islamabad is one such planned city. Designed in the
1960's by Ford Foundation planners, the image that guided them was the
American city, pivotally, the vacuum cleaner. However, with cheap labour
vacuum cleaners were not a necessity. But where to put the sweepers. As it
turned out the moved to Islamabad as well, building kathchi abadis. These
temporary mudbrick houses became a sore site for planners so they built a
wall around them. This becomes the question: what are we walling?
Geneva has taken a different tack. Once a classical traditional white Euro
city, in the last thirty years, it has transformed beyond belief. The city
looks multicultural with cafes lined with African, middle-eastern,
Italian, Indian and fast food restaurants. Public life is community life
with dozens of cultures mixing. While many Swiss consider Geneva an
aberration, others have made peace with multiculturalism by moving to the
other side of the river, the traditional unicultural side.
But ultimately there will be no other side of the river. The only hope
will be a multicultural city. Inclusion.
Thus, along with the smart city as a guiding image of the futures, comes
the multicultural city. But what is the multicultural city. First it means
city spaces are not segregated by race or gender, one should not be able
to identify an ethnic area, or at least not see in a negative way. Second,
citizens should feel they are part of the city, that they are not
discriminated against, especially by those in authority. The actions of
public officials and employees are crucial here. The Net of course helps
greatly by hiding our gender, accent and colour. But a multicultural city
is also about incorporates others ways of knowing, of creating a complex
and chaotic model of space such that the city does not necessarily match
the values of only one culture - mosques with temples with banks. City
design not only done by trained city planners but as well by feng shui
experts, searching for the energy lines, decoding which areas are best for
banking, what for play, what for education - essentially designing and
building for beauty that helps achieve particular functions broadly
defined.
Writes Starhawk in her The Fifth Sacred Thing:
The vision of the future is centred in the city; it’s a vision where
people have lots of different religions, cultures and subcultures but they
can all come together and work together. It starts with a woman climbing a
hill for a ritual and visiting all the different shrines of these
different religions and cultures that are up on the sacred mountain. To me
that is what I’d like to see. Culture is like a sacred mountain that’s big
enough for many, many different approaches to spirit.1
Interlude: I am now in Pakistan at the Islamabad Club. A western
style golf club complete with swimming pools, fancy waiters and tennis
courts. We are about to have tea when the Ahzan – call to prayer begins.
My all the tables is a carpet. Seven people leave their tea, bend down and
begin their prayer. No one is bothered that the elitist secularism of the
Club has been broken with prayer, indeed, they merge together. After
prayer, dinner starts.
Future-Orientation:
A multicultural city is not just concerned about the present but it is
future oriented, concerned with all our tomorrows. City planning meeting
should for example attempt to keep on chair open. This empty chair could
represent future generations, their silent voices represented
symbolically. Each political and administrative decision needs to factor
in the impact on future generations. Most immediately - five to twenty
years - for Western cities, this means the rise of the aged. While the
gloss is of happy ageing people, the data currently is that most elderly
will live miserable lives, healthy enough to live, not sick enough to die.
They will search for community, their children having moved away (unless
the Net leads to the return to the home, the place of birth), for meaning
and for ease of movement. A smart city will do a great deal in creating
such a reality. But smartness will have to be with compassion especially
has many of the aged will be mentally ill.
Net living will not make the city any less important. Indeed, home offices
make communities far more important. Every move towards efficiency
accentuates the need for connection. Working from home highlights the need
for social contact outside of the office space. Work has not just been
about making money but about falling in love with office mates, gossiping,
going shopping at lunch, making new friends - about living. Telecommuting,
while saving money for any organization, raises new issues for workers.
Their relationship with their husband or wife changes. Children are no
longer far away at school, they are home in the afternoon. For men,
housework cannot be exported to their wives since now home the pressure to
share in house activities increases.
Anticipating the future of the city as well means asking residents what
type of city they want in the future. While most individuals are content
with avoiding big-picture national politics, many do care about their
local environment - pollutants, level of development, types of parks,
quality of schools. However, most city planning exercises are problem
based, asking citizens to list the main problems with politicians running
on platforms that will solve such problems. However, anticipation means
helping residents consider the alternative futures of the city. This means
an interactive process wherein residents suggest visions of the future
which then are developed into scenarios by planners which are then fed
back to citizens. These visions must be based on their preferred futures,
their nightmare scenarios and the likely scenario if nothing is done, if
historical trends continue. This process both empowers citizen and leader
alike, it also makes it possible to not such plan the ideal city but
envision the ideal city.
The interactive process must include expert information on current trends,
using mapping technologies to show how the city is currently divided by
income, religion and other factors. These maps are already available in
many OECD nations. These maps can then be projected outwards with citizens
imagining different visualization of the future. Data with vision with
conversation with leadership can create a powerful mix of creating cities
we truly want. While the current process of benchmarking – choosing best
practice cities and discerning how one’s own city is different from them –
is useful and has led to marked improvement in Asian cities, our
imagination of what can be is not unleashed. City space is of course about
access to water, hospital, safe streets, efficient garbage collection and
jobs. But it is also about our imagination of who we can be.
A future-oriented city is thus a democratic city in the sense of deep
participation about the future. It can be multicultural in the sense of
better representation, of including others' voices as well as their
cultural frameworks. It is smart in the sense of using technology to
measure how well we are doing, to provide benchmarks with reference to our
ideal city.
Interlude: I remember a conversation in Brisbane, Australia a few years
ago with recent refugees arrivals. They said on the drive from the
airport, they thought that either the entire population had gone to a
football match or their had been a neutron bomb. Eventually after a week
they realized that unlike traditional societies or walkable cities,
suburban cities are people-absent after work. Everyone goes home to create
community through the mediation of television. The only people walking the
streets were southern europeans and asians, who walked nightly and were
used to greater populations. In the drive to modernity, community had been
lost. Standardized television community had been gained. The cost: a
lonely, fragmented population.
The great fear in creating the smart city is that we will become more
socially isolated, meaning that we will die of silent heart attacks in our
homes. Of course, the smart house will relay to the smart hospital that
someone has died in house number 4 on Main Street. An ambulance will be
dispatched and the body quickly whisked away. Eventually, this will not be
even necessary. The smart house will take care of the body, disposing it,
arranging a cyber burial and finding a cyber plot. Birth to death will be
automated.
But in the background will be our mythic longing for the village.
Can we create then a global village? So far we have shown the capacity to
create the global city. Perhaps one day the entire Earth will be a city.
It will look stunning from the Moon and Mars. But McLuhan’s vision will
always remains with us. Unrealized. Calling us.
Leadership and the multicultural challenge
The multicultural image challenges us to accept difference, to see the
entire planet as a global neighborhood. It means then being responsible
for one’s street, virtual or real. The multicultural city also challenges
us to develop our capacities for tolerance, for dealing with sounds and
smells of others. There have been periods in history when different
cultures and civilizations have been in profound contact, where there have
been paradigms of pluralism. And yes marauders and local politicians have
invaded these sacred spaces, creating a politics of exclusion instead of
an ethics of inclusion.
The 20th century will be remembered for both tendencies – exclusion and
inclusion
Interlude: Novi Sad, Serbia - even as Serbian refugees from
Croatia and Kosovo stream in changing the demographics of the city and as
poverty continues to rise (with no end in sight of Milosevic or sanctions)
- is a livable city, and remains a multicultural one as well, a beautiful
city. Everything is in walkable distance, plays, street theater continue,
and citizens present a noble face even as their nation dies. Albanians are
still safe even though the war in Kosovo has strained community relations.
In contrast was Srebrenica a few years ago, where 7500 men and youth
Bosnian Muslims were murdered by the Bosnian Serbs, or Saravejo which was
pummeled bySerb sniper fire. I feel sadness for Novi Sad's citizens seeing
their dreams of socialist utopia degenerate into fascist nationalism.
Bridges destroyed. But most of all for their diminished power in creating
the eclectic inclusive future many there desire.
Multiculturalism has to have a broader context, either a deep internal
ethics or a broader ideology of inclusion. However, the context pivots on
leadership. Where leadership has used difference to rise in local and
national power, the visions and histories of others has been the first
causality, and ultimately ignorance has returned to destroy culture
itself, the host and others. Where leadership has focused not on ethnic
differences but empowered individuals to transcend their petty differences
and create a better society for all, civilization has flourished.
.Gene therapy and germ line engineering are likely to create even more
disharmonies between cultures, where access to genetic advantage will
become as important as access to wealth, education and technology. New
forms are species are likely to challenge the limits of our tolerance,
and, if humans become a minority in the artificial future, we are likely
to challenge their tolerance of imperfection. And while bodies can perhaps
be perfected, love and tolerance can only be learned in two ways: trauma
leading to fear leading to collapse leading (and the unending hell of
revenge) or through transcendence. Moving to a higher plane of
consciousness.
Without an image of transcendence we die as a civilization. A
multicultural city creates spaces for difference, but for it to unify the
polarity of village/city, it will have to transcend difference, seize upon
an image of the future which enables and ennobles us to go beyond
limitations.