MegaCities - Interview

Interview with William J. Mitchell

How is electronic technology causing cities to change?

Mitchell: Cities and buildings are acquiring electronic nervous systems. Pre-industrial buildings were basically shelter—skeleton and skin. During the industrial revolution, sophisticated mechanical physiologies were built into them, water and electrical systems, sewage systems, air-conditioning and transportation. In the post World War II years the third phase, the computer revolution, began. Now intelligence is embedded everywhere, and buildings and cities are becoming organisms that are aware of what’s going on within them and respond intelligently.

How are these nervous systems being used?

Mitchell: In the classroom, for example, my students use wireless laptops to send notes to each other. Whenever I mention a new subject somebody googles and pulls-down information that is relevant to the discussion. Hence, the classroom functions differently because of electronic connections. In offices, demand for formalized workspace—a cubicle with a desktop computer and telephone—is diminishing while demand for flexible, semi-public spaces where one can hang out with a laptop, is increasing.

Will the power of the Internet also lead to virtual city governments?

Mitchell: There are enormous economic benefits to be gained by the digital delivery of government services, and unquestionably we are going down that path. Some concrete measures are already emerging, such as the ability to renew drivers’ licenses on-line, and even vote on-line, though, I have to admit, this remains highly controversial.

Will e-commerce have an impact on traffic?

Mitchell: There will not be a miraculous reduction of traffic, though traffic patterns are changing. Purchasing a book at a bookstore means a trip to the store. If you buy a book online, it also generates a trip, but by a courier service to your front door.

How will location-based services change our lives?

Mitchell: Consider something as simple as a stop sign, which is now part of the fixed infrastructure. If automobiles are locationally aware, the sign can be moved to the dashboard via a heads-up display. You approach an intersection and a stop sign pops up. Eventually, the system will be able to detect if a car is coming the other way. If not, the stop sign won’t show up. Some of my students used GPS even to develop a pothole location system. They installed an accelerometer in a car that can tell whenever it hits a pothole. A GPS grabs the location and notifies the pothole database of the city.

Could these technologies impact privacy?

Mitchell: Sometimes we want to be private; sometimes we want to put ourselves on display. If you sit in a bar all dressed up, you are there to be seen. If you are in danger, you want your location to be known. What’s really required are sophisticated systems that are able to control the level of public visibility you have at any given moment.

Do you expect online habits to affect urban population growth?

Mitchell: Cities will remain magnets for people not only because economic, social, and cultural opportunities are greater, but because people like to interact with each other. But there will be changes in the places where that happens. For example, many two career families now go grocery shopping online, so the supermarket becomes less of an attraction. However, high end wine and cheese stores and fancy coffee places that offer something unique are thriving. People use their scarce leisure time to go to those places.

In what ways might technology change social interactions in cities?

Mitchell: Face-to-face communication is scarce and expensive, so we save it for things that are most important to us, whereas e-mail is inexpensive and convenient, so it's good for other kinds of things. When people are asked about their most common use of e-mail, it is to arrange face-to-face meetings. Consider Italian piazzas. Traditionally, in the early evening people would stroll the piazza and bump into each other. Now in Italy everybody has a cell phone. If you want to get together with somebody you call them and arrange to meet at the piazza. So new technological capabilities have changed how and when people arrange to spend time, but people don’t change a whole lot. Being able to sit in a cafe is a basic human pleasure; such things will remain pretty constant.

How will the ability to access entertainment electronically affect cities?

Mitchell: If you think of the music industry, what’s happened is not a replacement of live performances by recordings, but precisely the opposite. Recordings generate demand for live performance, and live performance generates demand for recordings. I also don’t see Broadway going away. People are still going to spend their precious face-to-face time going to theaters and concert halls.

It seems as though technology will not change cities as much as it will alter the way people interact with them.

Mitchell: That’s right. There will be subtle changes in cities, but we’re seeing radical changes in the way people take advantage of what cities have to offer. That goes along with the fact that cities and buildings have a tremendous amount of inertia. European cities have been around for thousands of years and change very slowly in their overall physical character. Patterns of use, on the other hand, can change rapidly.

What is your vision of the digitized city 50 years from now?

Mitchell: In a paradox, the city of the 21st century is not going to look as high-tech as the city of the 20th century. That goes against the preconceptions that people have, that cities are going to be dominated by technology and look like something out of Buck Rogers. It’s going to be exactly the opposite. Now that technology is getting smaller and more robust, it is disappearing into your pocket, and into the woodwork, enabling the use of space to become more flexible. A telephone used to be part of the architecture, attached to the wall. Now that the phone is in your pocket, you know who will answer, but you don't know where they are. Computers used to be big ugly things that occupied a lot of space in a fixed location; now they are portable. This means that spaces no longer have to be built around the requirements of technology. That frees up architects to go back to designing spaces around very fundamental human requirements—sociability, light, air, view—the basic needs and pleasures of life.

Interview conducted by Victor Chase