4 ms·

But we are not living in 2000 BC anymore. Public matters can be solved in distributed ways since the 1990s via public websites. What is happening right now is a

But we are not living in 2000 BC anymore. Public matters can be solved in distributed ways since the 1990s via public websites. What is happening right now is a much more fundamental change in the way cities operate. 1. The third social space (restaurants, cafe's, etc) becomes more and more irrelevant due to delivery services. So you can enjoy restaurant food within the comfort of your home. As a result urban space used for restaurants will likely decrease. 2. Retail is dying for a long while. Currently 10.3% of urban retail space in Singapore (where I live) is not used. Tendency increasing. The only thing working against the trend are co-working spaces, accelerators and incubators. We have to come to terms that instead of building cities for cars we need to build cities for mobile humans with a cellphone.

saywatnow 9y ago
> The third social space (restaurants, cafe's, etc) becomes more and more irrelevant due to delivery services. Did you really mean to write that? :-) To be fair, delivery services aren't really responsible for undermining the "third space" nature of these places: we've been treating them increasingly as retail conveniences for a very long time, failing to acknowledge their social and psychological role. But it is true that the rise in delivery makes the resulting isolation even more stark.
tibu 9y ago
> Public matters can be solved in distributed ways since the 1990s via public websites. I don't think so. Public websites and Web based social networks are useful but final decisions are not made there. Really good relationships are only born during personal interactions. I don't say remote relationships are impossible but they usually cover only one side of your life - professional, entertainment etc. Personal relationships are much more diverse. The fact that you touch, feel, smell somebody, see the whole body makes a personal relationship much more complex than just a digital relationship. That's why people who can afford move out to suburban areas where you have time for such interactions. I think this is the only way to go. Some decentralized smart devices can help our lives but without personal interactions it won't be better.
- zerostar07 9y ago
  > move out to suburban areas I thought the entire point was to avoid other people.
  - jamiek88 9y ago
    I don’t think it’s the point but it is often the outcome. I was surprised by that when I moved to the burbs. Way easier to meet people in the city. I had his I guess sitcom vision of cook outs and July 4th type stuff (am Brit) and that happens but norm really amongst neighbors just nuclear and extended families. We moved thinking we’d have kids by now but turns out we can’t have children - kids seem to be the only ‘in’ to the social scene here and we don’t have that. I’m agitating for a move back to the city but not sure my wife is ready to admit that’s our life now and give up then ‘normal’ path. 2500 Sqf, 3 beds and 3 baths for 2 people and two puppies does not make good economic or ecological sense.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
b0rsuk 9y ago
Maybe it works like that in Singapore. Personally, I think it's a pity. Ancient Greece was far from an utopia - even "enlighted" Athens used slave labor in nearby silver mines and regularly voted to declare wars on other peoples. But some solutions were thought-provoking. By moving public matters to a website you move them out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind. People think less of common good, and how the city should work. Public matters become distant, abstract and impersonal. Many people value restaurant not exclusively for the food - which can be a bit stale or cold if it's delivered to you - but also for the service, pleasant atmosphere and sometimes to meet interesting people. And to show off. I don't know how it works in Singapore, but in a traditional shop you can examine goods you'd like to purchase, try them on, ask questions, or even negotiate a little bit. In my country it's rare that a shop's website has accurate and complete descriptions for all items, or even photos from all sides. A shop may have a contact form or a person answering questions through instant messages, but you can't know if he/she is active and not on a coffee break. To make a perfect shop website you have to make special cases to emulate many kinds of service that you take for granted entering a physical shop. Delivery works well for easily defined items like books that don't have many variants, such as books, and even then if you know precisely which book do you want. A recommendation system might or might not give you valuable suggestions. In a shop or library, you can browse a book or ask the librarian or clerk. In some ways, delivery shops and shops in general are very inefficient. For example if you buy physical books, everyone must have their own book, whereas in a library one copy can be used by many people. In some ways it's much more efficient. Digital books are even more efficient, but publishers fight very hard to create artificial scarcity and disallow copying, which is next to free in cost. But a digital version of a soldering iron, a hammer or climbing equipment won't suffice, and this could be handled similar to a library, even for a fee. These items are only needed occasionally in most homes - if you run your own workshop, it's another story.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Maybe it works like that in Singapore. Personally, I think it's a pity. Ancient Greece was far from an utopia - even "enlighted" Athens used slave labor in nearby silver mines Considering that the US didn't allow poor people to vote until the mid 19th century (which ancient Athens allowed), didn't allow blacks to vote until much later, and women to vote until 1920s, and it still had slavery until 1860s -- that is, 2 and a half millennia after those ancient Athenians, I'd say they were quite ahead of the time in their democracy.
someonewhocar3s 9y ago
You are testifying that it is great to live in an isolated cell, without any means of honest person-to-person communication. If you'd prefer to communicate exclusively through Bill's system, you go for it. Just be very aware that you are surrendering anything you might have fought for. You become the most expensive and irrational gear in Bill's machine. I'd much prefer if smart cities were smart about community, about coming together, about meeting likeminded people in fun social settings (such as cafe's). There is a fundamental invalidity to digital communication. It lacks most the interaction, simply doesn't have the bandwidth. We're humans emulating intelligence, not intelligence itself. The difference can be subtle, and I suspect most smart city designers will have trouble wrapping their ratio's around what it means. It is beautiful that if a lot of people are upset, the city seems upset. These smart cities will seem perfectly calm concrete. Your best move is to stay perfectly calm. Proceed into your autotransport. Proceed into your ideally suited job. Love is dangerous - you let a person into your safest space. Remember to telefuck at least 2 years before you engage in hugging.
coldtea 9y ago
>But we are not living in 2000 BC anymore. That's not really relevant. The idea of public space remains important. >Public matters can be solved in distributed ways since the 1990s via public websites. Seeing the other in a physical space is a whole different culture (and leads to whole other discussions and interactions) than merely exchanging messages in some forum.

saywatnow 9y ago

> The third social space (restaurants, cafe's, etc) becomes more and more irrelevant due to delivery services. Did you really mean to write that? :-) To be fair, delivery services aren't really responsible for undermining the "third space" nature of these places: we've been treating them increasingly as retail conveniences for a very long time, failing to acknowledge their social and psychological role. But it is true that the rise in delivery makes the resulting isolation even more stark.

tibu 9y ago

> Public matters can be solved in distributed ways since the 1990s via public websites. I don't think so. Public websites and Web based social networks are useful but final decisions are not made there. Really good relationships are only born during personal interactions. I don't say remote relationships are impossible but they usually cover only one side of your life - professional, entertainment etc. Personal relationships are much more diverse. The fact that you touch, feel, smell somebody, see the whole body makes a personal relationship much more complex than just a digital relationship. That's why people who can afford move out to suburban areas where you have time for such interactions. I think this is the only way to go. Some decentralized smart devices can help our lives but without personal interactions it won't be better.

zerostar07 9y ago
> move out to suburban areas I thought the entire point was to avoid other people.
- jamiek88 9y ago
  I don’t think it’s the point but it is often the outcome. I was surprised by that when I moved to the burbs. Way easier to meet people in the city. I had his I guess sitcom vision of cook outs and July 4th type stuff (am Brit) and that happens but norm really amongst neighbors just nuclear and extended families. We moved thinking we’d have kids by now but turns out we can’t have children - kids seem to be the only ‘in’ to the social scene here and we don’t have that. I’m agitating for a move back to the city but not sure my wife is ready to admit that’s our life now and give up then ‘normal’ path. 2500 Sqf, 3 beds and 3 baths for 2 people and two puppies does not make good economic or ecological sense.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

b0rsuk 9y ago

Maybe it works like that in Singapore. Personally, I think it's a pity. Ancient Greece was far from an utopia - even "enlighted" Athens used slave labor in nearby silver mines and regularly voted to declare wars on other peoples. But some solutions were thought-provoking. By moving public matters to a website you move them out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind. People think less of common good, and how the city should work. Public matters become distant, abstract and impersonal. Many people value restaurant not exclusively for the food - which can be a bit stale or cold if it's delivered to you - but also for the service, pleasant atmosphere and sometimes to meet interesting people. And to show off. I don't know how it works in Singapore, but in a traditional shop you can examine goods you'd like to purchase, try them on, ask questions, or even negotiate a little bit. In my country it's rare that a shop's website has accurate and complete descriptions for all items, or even photos from all sides. A shop may have a contact form or a person answering questions through instant messages, but you can't know if he/she is active and not on a coffee break. To make a perfect shop website you have to make special cases to emulate many kinds of service that you take for granted entering a physical shop. Delivery works well for easily defined items like books that don't have many variants, such as books, and even then if you know precisely which book do you want. A recommendation system might or might not give you valuable suggestions. In a shop or library, you can browse a book or ask the librarian or clerk. In some ways, delivery shops and shops in general are very inefficient. For example if you buy physical books, everyone must have their own book, whereas in a library one copy can be used by many people. In some ways it's much more efficient. Digital books are even more efficient, but publishers fight very hard to create artificial scarcity and disallow copying, which is next to free in cost. But a digital version of a soldering iron, a hammer or climbing equipment won't suffice, and this could be handled similar to a library, even for a fee. These items are only needed occasionally in most homes - if you run your own workshop, it's another story.

coldtea 9y ago
>Maybe it works like that in Singapore. Personally, I think it's a pity. Ancient Greece was far from an utopia - even "enlighted" Athens used slave labor in nearby silver mines Considering that the US didn't allow poor people to vote until the mid 19th century (which ancient Athens allowed), didn't allow blacks to vote until much later, and women to vote until 1920s, and it still had slavery until 1860s -- that is, 2 and a half millennia after those ancient Athenians, I'd say they were quite ahead of the time in their democracy.

someonewhocar3s 9y ago

You are testifying that it is great to live in an isolated cell, without any means of honest person-to-person communication. If you'd prefer to communicate exclusively through Bill's system, you go for it. Just be very aware that you are surrendering anything you might have fought for. You become the most expensive and irrational gear in Bill's machine. I'd much prefer if smart cities were smart about community, about coming together, about meeting likeminded people in fun social settings (such as cafe's). There is a fundamental invalidity to digital communication. It lacks most the interaction, simply doesn't have the bandwidth. We're humans emulating intelligence, not intelligence itself. The difference can be subtle, and I suspect most smart city designers will have trouble wrapping their ratio's around what it means. It is beautiful that if a lot of people are upset, the city seems upset. These smart cities will seem perfectly calm concrete. Your best move is to stay perfectly calm. Proceed into your autotransport. Proceed into your ideally suited job. Love is dangerous - you let a person into your safest space. Remember to telefuck at least 2 years before you engage in hugging.

coldtea 9y ago

>But we are not living in 2000 BC anymore. That's not really relevant. The idea of public space remains important. >Public matters can be solved in distributed ways since the 1990s via public websites. Seeing the other in a physical space is a whole different culture (and leads to whole other discussions and interactions) than merely exchanging messages in some forum.