courses :: mas 963   the virtual society :: judith donath   the metaphor of the city "In that Empire the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a Single Province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point." 'Of Exactitude in Science' - Jorge Luis Borges from A Universal History of Infamy All of the readings stress the importance of considering the city not just as a concentrated accumulation of buildings, but rather as a social institution - "a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an institutional process, a theater of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity."[Lewis Mumford] An integral part of this social institution is the notion of public space, where citizens from all economic, political and social spheres can come together and discuss the pertinent issues of the day. Kitto's article focuses on perhaps the most famous or idealized instantiation of a public space - the Greek Polis. He describes the Polis as meaning "either the citadel or the whole people which, as it were, "used" this citadel." In understanding the term "polis", equal weight is given here to both the physical location where activity took place, and to the citizens participating, a fact which has not always been considered in the planning and construction of modern cities today. Jacobs and Appleyard describe the pitfalls of perceiving cities as simply spaces that buildings can be placed in as opposed to spaces that public life takes place in, in "Toward an Urban Design Manifesto." They highlight some of the major problems associated with contemporary urban design, namely giantism, large-scale privatization, loss of public life and placelessness. According to them, city dwellers feel both alienated from their surroundings and ineffectual in engaging with decision-making within the 'community'. In order to combat these problems, they propose that urban planners adhere to certain goals and consider certain value structures when designing cities: Identity and Control: "people should feel that some part of the environment belongs to them, individually and collectively, some part for which they care and are responsible, whether they own it or not." Access to Opportunity, Imagination and Joy: "people should find the city a place where they can break from traditional molds, extend their experience, meet new people, learn other viewpoints, have fun." Authenticity and Meaning: "people should be able to understand their city(or other people's cities), its basic layout, public functions, and institutions; they should be aware of its opportunities." Community and Public Life: "The public environment, unlike the neighborhood, by definition should be open to all members of the community. It is where people of different kinds meet. No one should be excluded unless they threaten the balance of that life." All of these goals are indeed admirable, but perhaps it is naïve to consider them simply as solutions to urban planning 'mistakes'. Mike Davis in "Fortress L.A.", illustrates the ills of contemporary city design, not as planning errors, but rather as a carefully constructed attempt to "merge urban design, architecture and the police apparatus into a single, comprehensive security effort", the major consequence of which is the "destruction of accessible public space." Davis draws attention to the fact that current urban theory, whilst concerned with "debating the role of electronic technologies in precipitating postmodern space, or discussing the dispersion of urban functions across poly-centered metropolitan galaxies", seems strangely hesitant to address some of the very real problems existing in the not-so-virtual world. He further comments on the relationship between electronic space and the real world, when he draws parallels between the privatization of information(subscription cable services, pay-access 'information orders') occurring in the former, and the privatization of space happening in the latter. The destruction of public space as imagined by Fredrick Olmsted and described here by Davis as "the emollient of class struggle, if not the bedrock of the American polis", has resulted in the creation of separatist urban enclaves of an entirely homogenous nature. The movement of citizens/interlopers from one area to another is treated as a transgression of clearly defined boundaries between areas of the have's and havenot's, where the have's are cozily protected from even seeing the barrios/slums of their havenot counterparts, who in turn cannot ever enter the heavily fortified luxury environment of the more privileged citizens. Davis' argument is at times overstated and perhaps overtly pessimistic, but the underlying truth of his thesis cannot be underestimated, and is indeed useful to bear in mind when we consider the application of the city as a metaphor for describing the online world. Considering the minute sample of the world's population who have access to the Internet, are we already merely dealing with an elite group of people(white, middle-class, well-educated males) who have succeeded in replicating the spatial apartheid evident in the physical world in the virtual one also? Is the likelihood of the creation of a more democratic and ethnically diverse online world lessened in light of who the vast majority of the current participants are? Before we can even begin to answer these questions, let us first examine the entire notion of the city as a metaphor for describing the online world. We can identify three separate iterations of the city metaphor that concentrate specifically on a direct correlation with the physical dimensions of an urban space. 1) City terminology is used to describe categories/lists/structure of a website - Geocities, Amsterdam Digital City (Post Office = Mail, Town Hall = Discussion Board) 2) 2D flat map of the city is used to represent the layout and structure of a website -Virtual Bologna 3) 3D VR space that allows you to directly navigate within a space, either in recognizable cities(L.A., Sydney) or cities of the future. - Planet9 These instantiations of the metaphor succeed on a very basic level. If one knows where one wants to go on the map, then it is a straightforward one-click teleport to that location. However, in a real city - the possibility of being lost, of being unsure and having a vague idea of the general direction, of following someone who looks as if they might be going to the same concert, of following someone because they look interesting, of aimlessly wandering down random streets in an interesting and unexplored part of town - these events are what make city life exciting, fun and spontaneous. This social side to navigation(asking someone for directions etc.) is lacking in the first two models described above, and to some degree in the latter, where 3D spaces can often consist of lots of nicely rendered trees but very little "people" to converse with. The possibility of following someone because of how they look is another interesting situation when we consider it in the online sense. In the first two cases above, the user has no real visual presence, apart from leaving textual evidence such as email or bulletin board messages. In the case of 3D worlds, participants are often represented using standard 3D avatars that have a few customizable features, but it is rare that you come across something entirely novel. People also tend to use the same avatar repeatedly regardless of the environmental context. This issue of personal presentation is of paramount importance in the real world. For example, a couple of years ago I visited the city of Seville. I had been told in advance that the residents of this city were extremely well-dressed and I should modify my standard student back-pack outfit accordingly, if I wanted to feel fully comfortable. I was extremely glad that I heeded this advice, as on a sultry Tuesday afternoon, everyone I saw seemed as if they were part of an extraordinarily stylish wedding party. Berlin however, merited a very different response as my primary focus here was to go to lots of techno clubs and so an entirely different fashion sensibility was called upon. At the same time I was also interested in visiting museums and exhibitions relating to the Berlin Wall/World War 2, and so, given the somber mood of these installations, I toned down the little raver look during the day. This day/night, business/pleasure dichotomy, which is a crucial component of the changing mood of a real city, is difficult to reflect in the online world, where participants are often in radically different timezones. At a more fundamental "mood creating" level, it is the very presence of fellow citizens/tourists/people milling around that give you a real sense of the vibrancy of a city and color your lasting impression of it. I think that many of the problems identified as existing in today's modern cities are accurately, though not intentionally, reflected in many online representations purporting to use the city as a navigational or structural metaphor. The "public space" only allows the privileged to speak - similar to the Greek polis which excluded women, slaves and foreigners from participating in discussion. Many of those using the Internet and the public spaces provided in online cities already have access to other modes/venues of communication where their point of view can be put across. Community networks or free-nets have attempted to address these problems, but funding for these projects is difficult to sustain. The potentialities of the city metaphor could be stretched much further, as currently, it only seems to have been applied in a very direct one-to-one mapping concentrated on physical buildings. Applying the city metaphor using its social institution reading as discussed earlier, could allow for a much richer experience, particularly in today's 3D environments. This week's readings include several very short pieces from the collection The City Reader, edited by LeGory and Gates: H.D.F. Kitto, "The Polis" Mike Davis, "Fortress LA" Jacobs and Appleyard, "Toward an Urban Design Manifesto" Lewis Mumford, "What is a City" Louis Wirth, "Urbanism as a Way of Life" Stanley Milgram, "Psychological Maps of Paris" (optional)William Mitchell, City of Bits (optional) Andreas Dieberger, Navigation in Textual Virtual Environments using a City Metphor   back