Society that is shaped by, and dependent on networked systems These are everywhere and part of all aspects of life Though often hidden from view, repressed even This explains that some of their social and environmental impacts are not always obvious to us Thus, what we have done here in the course is trying to open our eyes to these systems

1. Urban technical networks and
sustainability
Contemporary and future dynamics
of the networked society
Concluding remarks

2. • Time for some concluding remarks on the
course
• The next two sessions will be for your oral
presentations & group work
• My remarks will be around the future of
networks, in relation to matters of
sustainability/resilience--- the future of the
city

3. Our networked society
• Society that is shaped by, and dependent on
networked systems
• These are everywhere and part of all aspects of
life
• Though often hidden from view, repressed even
• This explains that some of their social and
environmental impacts are not always obvious to
us
• Thus, what we have done here in the course is
trying to open our eyes to these systems

4. UTN as gateway to wider questions
• UTN are an entry point into a wide range of
questions about the constitution and
functioning of societies, and their relations to
science, technology and the environment
• They are the basis for questions about what
society is and how it functions today

5. Shaping the way we are in society
• Networks shape physical and mental maps of the
world we live in by laying down pathways that it
is hard to avoid or deviate from: roads, telecom
networks, transport systems etc.
• determine to a certain degree our ways of
circulating in the world
• Indeed, people who wish to live without
networks, or cannot afford the services, are
quickly called eccentric or marginal—the use of
networks has become a social standard

6. Off-grid, out of society?

7. Dumpster living
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKr5Ku7
9doo&feature=youtu.be
• The dumpster project, by Professor Jeff
Wilson, a radical experiment in sustainability
• “The average American has 12 pairs of shoes
and the average American house is 2480-
square-feet,” he said. “We can happily live
with much less than that.”
• Dumpster is 1% size of average US home…

9. Shipping container housing too…

10. STS studies
• Science, technology and society studies (STS)
offer a theoretical gateway into studying the
interactions between tech, nature, society
• Approaches such as ANT, urban political
ecology…
• They all discuss our relationships to
technologies, science, the material world,
nature.
• At the junction of sociology, anthropology and
history of science/tech

11. Challenging the ‘unnaturalness’ of
cities
• Cities are where we live, our habitat
• In that sense, why are they less ‘natural’ than
an anthill or termites’ nest?
• Many other species build, and transform the
‘natural’ into something else
• Can you mention some, and what they do?

15. Challenging the naturalness of ‘nature’
• A good place to start is the Scottish
countryside
• The hills and mountains were once covered in
forest, however they are now more or less
barren
• This is due to human activity and
transformation over millennia
• Yet, we see these places as ‘nature’ and often
include them in ‘natural reserves’, as
something to be ‘protected’

16. Natural?

17. Artificial?

18. How UTNs transform ‘natural’ into
‘social’, and vice-versa
• UTNs ,an interface between ‘nature’ and
‘society’
• These systems transform natural resources
into the built environment
• Also create social relations (of domination,
control, customer/provider etc.)
• These socio-political relations are naturalised,
solidified (reified) through the links created by
networks

19. Example: water
• Key resource as it is essential to life
• Seen as ‘free’ as it ‘falls from the sky’ but it’s actually a
highly transformed product
• It needs to be collected, stored, treated, distributed,
and then wastewater needs to be evacuated, with
sometimes stringent environmental/health regulations
• In this sense, water as we know it in our cities is as
much a socio-technical construct as it is ‘natural’!
• wastewater contains a myriad of chemicals from
chlorine, to antibiotics, contraceptives and other
elements
• there is no ‘purity’ here, but, again, an entanglement
of natural, social, technological

20. Not just the physical aspect
• These transformations are not only on the
material level, a whole range of political and
social relations are also created and transformed:
• One is the customer/provider relationship: how
do we govern, regulate this? Fairness or profit?
• Another is the labour relations in the various
water companies, regulators’ offices etc.
• Yet another are the political issues stemming
from the control of resources, and these can be
extremely tricky and fraught, culminating in
international conflict

21. Southern California water system
(reminder)
• Water brought in from hundreds of miles away
• Some water is desalinated, from the ocean, and
therefore highly processed
• Tens and tens of water agencies, from the
local/municipal level, to county, state, federal
• Thus, the water system is an extremely complex
combination of natural, social, technological,
admin, political etc.
• It is a set of relations between people and the
natural/built environments

22. Open to change?
• Such systems can become very hard to reform
or transform in the face of challenges, such as
sustainability and resilience, or social change
• Notion of path dependency
• An interesting example is that of networks and
their operation/governance in
shrinking/decaying cities

23. • Former East German cities
• Detroit and other rustbelt cities in USA
• http://michiganradio.org/post/detroits-
infrastructure-crumbling-while-city-has-
trouble-collecting-cash#stream/0

24. • Shrinking/decaying cities are now a big topic
in planning
• Economic shocks, such as recent 2008 crisis
• Slow death of old industries
• Ageing populations
• Throughout history, cities have grown and
shrunk, have been born and died…
• How do we deal with this process in new
ways?

25. • How do shrinking, declining cities adapt their
networked systems to the new reality?
• Do we abandon, destroy, or reconvert existing
infrastructure?
• Is old infrastructure destined to become just
waste, or can it form part of cities’ future in
creative ways?
• Can it be an opportunity to build a more
sustainable future on the ruins of the MII?

29. What to do with abandoned
networked systems?

30. Abandoned cooling tower

31. Urbex
• Urban explorers find the beauty in abandoned
spaces and infrastructure
• It is one way of engaging creatively with
decline, of accepting the death of cities and
their ever-changing nature
• Many websites are devoted to this
• http://www.ukurbex.com/
•

32. Reconversion of infrastructure
• Into new, green infrastructure, which many of
our cities are lacking in
• E.G. Recent Glasgow plans
• http://www.theguardian.com/uk-
news/scotland-blog/2015/nov/16/glasgow-
could-get-greener-by-reclaiming-its-
motorways
• https://vimeo.com/138758190

33. From rustbelt to greenbelt?
• http://www.buzzworthy.com/how-detroit-is-
working-to-be-an-innovator-in-green-
infrastructure/

36. Not just green, but blue
• Blue infrastructure is often neglected, but has
similar benefits than green infra in climate,
beauty and wellbeing terms
• Managing urban water in new ways that work
with the natural environment
• http://www.grabs-eu.org/casestudies.php

37. Adaptive infrastructure
• Shrinking cities need to adapt their
infrastructure to the new demographic and
economic realities
• Otherwise, this infrastructure can become a
liability, such as fostering criminality in
abandoned homes and streets
• Potential liabilities need to be turned into
opportunities for new models of urban living

38. The future?

39. Changing relationships
• Over the last 3 decades or so, new modes of
governance, new technologies
• Neoliberalism, privatisations, unbundling etc.
• Increasingly commodified and commercialised
systems
• https://youtu.be/HwuZtjcPOeA

40. Links with urban dynamics
• City growth
• City form
• Integration/fragmentation
• All are linked to networks and their
governance

41. And also with questions of
sustainability, resilience etc.
• UTNs are directly linked to our cities’ metabolisms,
they allow us to tap into natural resources on a scale
which is impossible without them
• They are therefore connected to our societies’ high
resource consumption patterns—they embed these
into our daily lives, create path dependency and habits,
daily routines of high resource use
• This also produces a certain rigidity in living and
production patterns, undermining cities’ resilience, for
instance in the case of catastrophic events that knock
out the networks

42. What is ‘sustainability’ anyway?
• A very brief history of the concept
• To sustain: to keep going, to maintain
• Originated in forestry management in 1500s
Germany
• Progressive era in USA in late 19C
• Silent Spring (1962)
• 1972: UN Habitat Conference
• Bruntland report (1983)
• Rio 1992—Agenda 21—cascaded to
national/local levels charged with implementing

43. 3 pillars
• Economy, society, environment
• Harmonising the three, must grow together
• Development today that doesn’t preclude
development tomorrow
• Notion of intergenerational and interspecies
solidarity/responsibility

44. Critiquing the notion
• Exactly what is being sustained, by whom and for
whom?
• Too often blind to race, gender and other issues;
environmental realities need to be replaced in
their socio-spatial and historical context
• E.g. Apartheid South Africa: very ‘sustainable’ for
those dominating society
• Today, domination of the 1% seems very
sustainable to them…and could go on indefinitely

45. • The notion is showing some fatigue
• It has been coopted by politicians and
industry, and is becoming empty of meaning
rapidly
• It has become a parody of itself, to a degree
• E.g. ecological modernization and related
currents of thought
• The craziness of some ‘sustainable’ projects
that don’t take into account wider socio-
spatial realities, e.g. Chinese ‘eco-villages’ or
Masdar City in Abu Dhabi

50. The turn to ‘resilience’
• The last 10-15 years roughly
• The capacity to bounce back; flexible, does
not break
• Takes into account the reality of risks, shocks
and catastrophes that affect cities
• How can they best deal with this state of
affairs? Maybe even turn shocks into
opportunities?

51. So how do we harness UTNs for
greater sustainability/resilience?
• As we have seen technology is not neutral, but
neither is it deterministic
• Technologies can be harnessed in different ways
to produce different outcomes
• What are the options to reconfigure urban tech
networks so they are less resource intensive, less
waste generating, more flexible and resilient?
• Could they also accomplish socio-political goals,
such as fairness and equity?

52. Make the network a component of
sustainability
• E.g. green and blue spaces: both networks and
places of beauty, enjoyment, providing
support for other species
• Re-use of obsolete networks in creative ways

53. De-centralised systems
• Wind, solar, biomass etc. are forms of energy
production that are de-centralised
• Greater resilience in case of catastrophe
• Use of modern technologies, such as
smart/connected homes to optimise energy
use

55. Each house, a self-sufficient power plant?

56. ‘re-wired’ houses
• Dual plumbing systems in houses to optimise
water use and save high quality potable water
• Smart meters, smart appliances etc.
• New energy technologies, such as Tesla home
batteries
• These allow to imagine more consumer insight
into energy use, and less dependence on
networked systems, for instance in case of
catastrophe

57. Smart meters: much more information

58. Smart homes

59. Tesla PowerWall

61. Not just technological changes
• Remember, tech is never ‘neutral’ or ‘just a
tool’
• It fits within socio-political systems that it also
shapes, and is shaped by
• Therefore, tech changes require, and will lead
to, social and political changes

62. Community involvement/management
• The Fordist, networked society is an inherently
hierarchical and centralised one
• The engineer is a god in this system, and is
flanked by the bureaucrat (and then the
architect)
• People are expected to shut up and do what’s
‘good for them’

63. • Community involvement in responding to
social and individual needs, instead of relying
on networked systems and ‘the system’ more
generally
• Permaculture/ urban gardens
• (Local) loops rather than (centralised) linear
metabolism

64. Making the landscape edible and
sustainable

65. Patrick Blanc and vertical gardens

66. • All surfaces can be greened and made useful for
food production, storm water collection, animal
habitat…
• Buildings become part of a continuous green
infrastructure
• At the same time, they reduce the dependence
on traditional networked systems, as food,
energy can be locally dealt with
• Likewise, waste can be minimised at the point of
production, reducing the dependence on sewage
systems and water reprocessing systems
• All these elements, cumulatively, increase the
sustainability and resilience of the city

67. SUDS: sustainable urban drainage
systems

68. This is real, and part of planning now

69. A move towards a post-network
society?
• With a combination of technological, social
and political changes, we can imagine less
dependence on the centralised networks that
we are familiar with
• This can help boost sustainability and
resilience, and reconnect us with the local

70. Your thoughts
• Take a few minutes and reflect on the course
and your readings
• What paths are possible to make the
networked society more sustainable/
resilient?
• Think of the environmental, but also economic
and social dimensions of sustainability (cf.
Bruntland)
• Are we moving towards a post-network
society? Or are changes just marginal?