In October 2010, Nature published a collection of news stories and comments on cities. Some of these may be useful for Ruin.
http://www.nature.com/news/specials/cities/index.htmlOn the latest GDW podcast (iirc) Ross said his focus on architectural horror was to invert an idea of architecture, namely that instead of humans shaping buildings to work optimally for their lifestyles; what if buildings shaped humans to function optimally for theirs?
So I skimmed a couple articles that peaked my interest with an eye for ideas that would fit Ross's theme.
Both of these articles are two pages.
A Unified Theory of Urban Living Link:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7318/full/467912a.htmlUploaded pdf:
http://www.docdroid.net/voa9/unified-theory-of-urban-living-comment.pdf.htmlOverall, Bettencourt and West suggest that cities have measurable universal features; and according to their mathematical model, cities are approximately scaled models of each other. Also, they claim that. income, crime and patents (as a metric for novel ideas) scale the same way with population size.
Now starting with the title "A unified theory of urban living", I immediately thought of the Delta Green scenario The Last Equation. What if there was a unified mathematical theory for the development of a "perfect" city. Would the equation drive the architect mad? Or could literal knowledge of the equation be a metaphysical gate into the Ur-City (Carcosa, naturally) which would suck the players into that nightmare realm if they were around the discoverer at the time of revelation? Or say the discoverer is insane, but his knowledge of the Perfect City equation allows him to teleport around a city or even around the world committing ritualistic crimes. Or instead of an architect who discovers this, maybe a mathematician who tries to optimize traffic discovers it.
But cities supply solutions as well as
problems, as they are the world’s centres of
creativity, power and wealth. So the need is
urgent for an integrated, quantitative, predictive,
science-based understanding of the
dynamics, growth and organization of cities.
To combat the multiple threats facing
humanity, a ‘grand unified theory of sustainability’
with cities and urbanization at its core must be
developed. Such an ambitious
programme requires major international
commitment and dedicated transdisciplinary
collaboration across science, economics
and technology, including business leaders
and practitioners, such as planners and
designers. Developing a predictive framework
applicable to cities around the world
is a daunting task, given their extraordinary
complexity and diversity. However, we
are strongly encouraged that this might
be possible.
There's the members of your "perfect city" cult right there.
Universal features
Cities manifest remarkably universal, quantifiable
features. This is shown by new analyses
of large urban data sets, spanning several
decades and hundreds of urban centres in
regions and countries around the world
from the United States and Europe to China
and Brazil4,5. Surprisingly, size is the major
determinant of most characteristics of a city;
history, geography and design have secondary
roles4,6.
Three main characteristics vary systematically
with population. One, the space
required per capita shrinks, thanks to
denser settlement and a more intense use
of infrastructure. Two, the pace of all socioeconomic
activity accelerates, leading to
higher productivity. And three, economic
and social activities diversify and become
more interdependent, resulting in new
forms of economic specialization and cultural
expression.
We have recently shown that these general
trends can be expressed as simple mathematical
‘laws’. For example, doubling the
population of any city requires only about
an 85% increase in infrastructure, whether
that be total road surface, length of electrical
cables, water pipes or number of petrol stations4.
This systematic 15% savings happens
because, in general, creating and operating
the same infrastructure at higher densities
is more efficient, more economically viable,
and often leads to higher-quality services
and solutions that are impossible in smaller
places. Interestingly, there are similar savings
in carbon footprints7,8 — most large, developed
cities are ‘greener’ than their national
average in terms of per capita carbon emissions.
It is as yet unclear whether this is also
true for cities undergoing extremely rapid
development, as in China or India, where
data are poor or lacking.
Similar economies of scale are found in
organisms and communities like anthills
and beehives, where the savings are closer
to 20%. Such regularities originate in the
mathematical properties of the multiple
networks that sustain life, from the cardiovascular
to the intracellular9. This suggests
that similar network dynamics underlie
economies of scale in cities.
Cities, however, are much more than giant
organisms or anthills: they rely on longrange,
complex exchanges of people, goods
and knowledge. They are invariably magnets
for creative and innovative individuals, and
stimulants for economic growth, wealth
production and new ideas — none of which
have analogues in biology.
Naturally this brings to mind sentient cities that convert humans partially into fleshy biomass to fuel their growth, or converting humans into insect like drones. Something very similar to the July Park scenario.
The bigger the city, the more the average
citizen owns, produces and consumes,
whether goods, resources or ideas4. On average,
as city size increases, per capita
socio-economic quantities such as
wages, GDP, number of patents produced
and number of educational
and research institutions all increase
by approximately 15% more than the
expected linear growth4. There is,
however, a dark side: negative metrics
including crime, traffic congestion
and incidence of certain diseases
all increase following the same 15%
rule4. The good, the bad and the ugly
come as an integrated, predictable,
package.
Our work shows that, despite
appearances, cities are approximately
scaled versions of one another (see
graph): New York and Tokyo are, to
a surprising and predictable degree,
nonlinearly scaled-up versions of San Francisco
in California or Nagoya in Japan. These
extraordinary regularities open a window on
underlying mechanism, dynamics and structure
common to all cities.
Taking these ideas and the figure in the paper, what if there was a philanthropic cult that wanted to promote the growth of their city to the next level, and the linear relationship between crime, income and patents could actually
drive the population growth of the city supernaturally if they increased? So the cult goes around by day promoting business growth and funding start ups and awarding culture (ideas) but at night they have to drive up the crime as well (literally murder rate was used as a metric for crime in the figure) so they engage directly or have catspaws that carry out ritual murder? Of course this brings to mind the mythology surrounding Jack the Ripper and the graphic novel From Hell.
In biology, the network principles underlying
economies of scale have two profound
consequences. They constrain both the pace
of life (big mammals live longer, evolve slower,
and have slower heart rates, all to the same
degree9), and the limits of growth (animals
generally reach a stable size at maturity10). In
contrast, cities are driven by social interactions
whose feedback mechanisms lead to
the opposite behaviour. The pace of urban life
systematically increases with each expansion
of population size: diseases spread faster,
businesses are born and die more often and
people even walk faster in larger cities, all by
approximately the same 15% rule4. Moreover,
this social network dynamic allows the
growth of cities to be unbounded: continuous
adaptation, not equilibrium, is the rule.
So who is influencing who here really.
Our research shows that cities are remarkably
robust: success, once achieved, is sustained
for several decades or longer6, thereby
setting a city on a long run of creativity and
prosperity. A great example of success is
metropolitan San Jose, home to the Silicon
Valley, which has been consistently overperforming
relative to expectations for its size
for at least 50 years, well before the advent of
modern hi-tech industry.
This could be straight from the manifesto of a city cultist.
Bettencourt and West have collaborated on a number of other interesting city papers:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Bettencourt+WestSynthetic Biology: Living QuartersLink:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7318/full/467916a.htmlUploaded pdf:
http://www.docdroid.net/voj3/synthetic-biology-buildings.pdf.htmlSince Carcosa may feature buildings of the future (or alternate futures?) this article may be of some use.
"Synthetic Biology" has a variety of definitions depending on the field that is using the term. In this paper, "Synthetic Biology" covers the canonical definition of highly bioengineered organisms, chemical synthesis of biological products, and self assembling materials which in other contexts is referred to as "nanotechnology".
Architects have long drawn inspiration from the forms and functions of natural systems. Yet biological cells and organisms have requirements — such as nutrition and growth-support structures — that limit their use in construction. Synthetic biology offers new ways to combine the advantages of living systems with the robustness of traditional materials to produce genuinely sustainable and environmentally responsive architecture.
...
Strategies will be required to achieve 'carbon negative' buildings, including innovative retrofitting, energy harvesting, recycling of materials and the use of elements that interact with and respond directly to the environment. Chemically active interfaces could alter microclimates around surfaces and act as 'environmental pharmaceuticals'. For example, coatings could absorb carbon dioxide on building surfaces, adsorb pollutants or trap dust particles electrostatically.
...
Researchers are developing promising examples of biological systems that can fulfil architectural functions. Bacteria commonly found in the environment — such as Micrococcus, Staphylococcus, Bacillus and Pseudomonas species that also linger in air — may be adapted for use as biosensors. A new centre at the University of Oregon in Eugene plans to coordinate research that links architecture and microorganisms, both existing and designed. The university's Biology and the Built Environment (BioBE) Center, awarded funding this summer from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in New York, will investigate the 'microbiome of the built environment' — the complex bacterial ecosystems that occur within buildings and their interactions with humans and the environment. Such relationships are important, for example, for maintaining indoor air quality.
Species of another airborne bacterium, Brevundimonas, show promise as an indicator of indoor pollutants: some can metabolize toxins such as arsenic, and could be genetically modified to change colour in the presence of a range of heavy metals. Other types of bacteria might be grown decoratively on walls or roofs to signal levels of harmful pollutants in cities. For example, undergraduates from the University of Cambridge, UK, engineered the bacterium Escherichia coli to change hue in the presence of an inducer, a system that could be adapted to detect heavy metals. This was just one of many pioneering entries in the 2009 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) synthetic-biology competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
...
Innovative forms of lighting that use bioluminescent bacteria are being investigated by microbiologist Simon Park at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK. In 2009, with artist Anne Brodie, he demonstrated a photographic booth that takes portraits using the ethereal light generated by Photobacterium phosphoreum. A glowing Christmas tree produced in 2007 by biologist Edward Quinto of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, using bioluminescent Vibrio fischeri bacteria from the guts of squid, raises the possibility of using luminous trees for street lighting.
Biological structures can inspire entirely new construction methods and materials. Terreform One, an interdisciplinary architectural design practice in New York, has envisaged growing a leathery skin for covering buildings, dubbed 'Meat House'. By transforming pig cells and using large-scale three-dimensional printing techniques to establish the structural framework, the skin would be grown to the required shape and size and then fixed with preservatives. Its biodegradable nature would avoid the need for later demolition. The technique is prohibitively expensive — around US$1,000 for three square centimetres of skin — but it demonstrates the alternative approaches offered by synthetic-biology techniques.
As a note "Meat House" predates Eclipse Phase's Meat Hab by at least a couple of years
.
The pressing environmental problems of Venice are amenable to some synthetic-biology solutions. Our installation entitled Hylozoic Ground, displayed at the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2010 and created with architect Philip Beesley from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, showcased the recycling of carbon dioxide exhaled by visitors into solid carbonate using protocell technology. Similar deposits could stabilize the city's foundations by growing an artificial limestone reef beneath it.
Ideas galore here. All sorts of nasty thoughts and body horror opportunities arise when thinking about sentient buildings that convert humans for biosensor use. The images of hell in Barlowe's
Infernowould be very appropriate.
http://www.amazon.com/Barlowes-Inferno-Wayne-Barlowe/dp/1883398363Hope this has stirred some ideas!
