Interplace

Hello Interactors,

We’re officially in the summer season here in the northern hemisphere, and that means we transition to physical geography. Much attention has been given to the staggering heat in the U.S. lately, so I thought I’d start there.

Please give me like, if you like. And share if you dare!

Now let’s go…

On June 19, 1889, Vincent van Gogh wrote in a letter to his brother,

"Finally, I have a landscape with olive trees and also a new study of a starry sky."

It is largely believed van Gogh was referring to his now famous painting, ‘The Starry Night.’

The date of this painting closely corresponds to the month and day of the recent heatwave across much of the United States. It serves as a poignant reminder of the passage of time and the centuries of human-induced climatic change that separate us. Astronomers have confirmed the date of that painting by noting Venus would have been visible in the night sky, which appears as the brightest moon in the painting.

On June 20th, 2023, meteorologist Jeff Beradelli out of Tampa Florida tweeted:

“When I look at this jet stream the word insane comes to mind. It's even more astonishing when you consider it's mid June! This configuration, likely enhanced by climate heating, is fueling a record heat dome so extreme that even experts are astonished!”

Which prompted Pennsylvania State University's climate scientist, Michael Mann, to respond.

“I'm honestly at a loss to even characterize the current large-scale planetary wave pattern. Frankly, it looks like a Van Gogh”

Mann poetically likened the image of jet stream configurations to the vivid brushstrokes of van Gogh's masterpiece. This analogy underscores the significance climate scientists attach to understanding atmospheric intricacies. The behavior of the jet stream, a sinuous belt of air encircling the Northern Hemisphere, has become enigmatic, eluding conventional expectations, and impacting extreme weather events.

The jet stream's undulating pattern exerts considerable control over climatic conditions in North America. However, recent deviations from its usual behavior have led to enduring heatwaves and other extreme weather events, affecting millions of people. Scientists attribute these phenomena to the influence of climate change, which distorts the flow of the jet stream, trapping regions in prolonged periods of extreme heat. This raises concerns about the frequency and intensity of future extreme climatic episodes.

Amidst the exploration of the jet stream and its effects, questions arise about our representation and understanding of the Earth. Satellites have revolutionized data capture and analysis, offering invaluable tools for various applications. However, feminist geographers and critical remote sensing scholars argue that these technologies should go beyond mere data capture and prediction. They propose using satellite imagery and data to explore different perspectives and imagine alternative worlds, challenging traditional views of representation.

Researchers Sophie Dyer and Sasha Engelmann call for a polyperspectival image of Earth, characterized by a single Earth depicted from multiple perspectives. This notion, linked to fractals, emphasizes the complexity and interconnectedness of the Earth's systems.

They echo environmental humanities scholar Thomas Lekan, who offers a visual grammar of "fractal topographies" that accounts for the complexity unfolding at different scales of analysis. This view challenges the desire to homogenize by merging local data, complete with climatic and meteorological effects, into a more detached, abstracted, and aggregated image resulting from global satellite feeds. Conventional imagery thinks globally but does little to cause us to act locally. New approaches call for inter-mediations between Earth sensing processes, massive digital datasets, and the visual products and perceptions they can produce.

These researchers also recall the work of Wilson Harris, a Guyanese writer known for unconventionally using multiple narrators and intermingling points of view. He further emphasizes the importance of fractals in acknowledging repetition, connection, and specificity without erasing diversity. He wrote,

"Fractal scaling is used here precisely because of its specificity: it highlights dynamic, shifting relationships, but at the same time insists on a measurable self-similarity... this allows one to insist on the partiality of self-similarity, that is, to see repetition and connection over time and space without a complete identification that would remove diversity and specificity."

Van Gogh's "Starry Night" exemplifies both the polyperspectival and fractal-like qualities in its composition and representation. The painting incorporates multiple viewpoints, offering a sense of depth and dimension. Its swirling brushstrokes and vibrant colors create a rhythmic pattern resembling fractal geometries found in nature. Like the Earth's systems, the painting invites viewers to engage with it on multiple levels, appreciating its beauty and symbolism while contemplating diverse interpretations.

Perhaps unknowingly, Michael Mann’s nod to van Gogh invites us to consider these possibilities. By merging multiple perspectives and fractal-like elements, "Starry Night", like many other Impressionist paintings, presents a multi-layered representation of the natural world, reflecting its complexity and interconnectedness.

This aligns with the goal of many climate scientists and researchers who look to move beyond simplistic notions of abstract uniformity afforded by normalized aggregated data to embrace more inclusive and nuanced understandings. Van Gogh's artwork serves as a reminder of the power of imagination and artistic expression in conveying the intricacies of our changing planet.

Earth's systems, atmospheric dynamics, and climate change calls for alternative frameworks of representation. A single Earth conceptualized through multiple perspectives using a fractal-like grammar is one way to offer new ways to capture the complexity, diversity, and interconnectedness of our planet. Van Gogh's "Starry Night" embodies these concepts through its multiple perspectives and fractal-like patterns, reminding us of the importance of embracing inclusivity, complexity, and the transformative power of imagination in our evolving understanding of the Earth.

Hello Interactors,

We’re now into summer, but I wanted to sneak in one last cartography post. It’s a leap from last week’s post into the field of human dynamics.

If you don’t want to read the whole thing (shame on you 😉), I asked ChatGPT to make a poem out it.

In the realm of spatial analysis, behold the shift,

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

BRIDGING LAWS

"Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things."

This principle, known as the "first law of geography," was first articulated by my former cartography professor, Waldo Tobler, when I was just four years old in 1969. While initially presented as an idiom, it eventually gained recognition as a law. Some speculate that this classification arose during a period when geography was becoming increasingly quantitative and mathematical.

Essentially, the law suggests that the further apart two locations are on Earth, the less likely they are to physically interact. However, when we attempt to determine and measure what is considered "near" and "distant" on a 2D aerial map—an abstract representation of mathematical space—we may unintentionally detach ourselves from the physical reality of these places and the spaces between them.

Consider the route you might take by car to a destination that is 500 miles or kilometers away. It would likely involve twists and turns, ascents, and descents, and passing through various towns, villages, or natural landscapes. On a topographic map, you would observe squiggly lines that traverse a multitude of elevations. Now, envision flying to the same destination. After takeoff, the plane banks left or right and then follows a more or less straight path. On a map, it would appear as a direct line between two points. If you were to draw lines connecting all the places you have visited on a map in a year, you would likely observe Tobler's law in action. Those locations closest to you—where you live, work, shop, eat, and play—are all more closely related than those that are farther away.

These drawings of points and lines can be understood as network diagrams, representing measurable and mathematically describable relationships between objects. By examining the properties, connectivity, and patterns within these graphs, we can analyze various phenomena and solve problems across disciplines ranging from computer science to social science. Network analysis is integral to mapping software, guiding us with routes and directions on our phones or in our cars. It serves as a fundamental component of Geographical Information Systems and Geographical Information Science. Moreover, this approach is employed by software algorithms to recommend friends in online social networks or deliver advertisements that align with our distant yet related interests.

As critical as these spatial mathematical methods are to our modern everyday lives, they fall short when it comes to considering the surrounding factors that influence outcomes. For instance, while Google Maps may account for the time required to climb a hill when determining the most efficient route by foot, bike, bus, or car, it fails to consider factors such as circuitous routes, neighborhood safety and quality, or the presence of dedicated bus and bike lanes or sidewalks.

Furthermore, wouldn't a city with multiple direct flights to a particular destination challenge Tobler's law? If a city offers ten direct flights a day to a faraway location, wouldn't it be considered more related than a city that only provides one daily flight? The same holds true for direct flights themselves. I can fly directly from Seattle to Dublin in nine hours, while the cheapest ticket to my hometown in the middle of America would take twelve hours with one stop. However, the trip to Ireland would cost five times more. Of course, not everyone has the time or financial means to embark on such journeys. Nevertheless, for those who do, air travel has the potential to bring distant things closer, particularly when compared to a century ago.

Throughout history, technological advancements have continuously challenged the frictions imposed by physical distance, as encapsulated by Tobler's law. From the invention of boats and wheeled carts to the advent of the telegraph, airplanes, and the internet, the barriers posed by geographic separation have been progressively diminished. Increasingly, distant things possess the potential to become more connected to nearby entities. Technological innovations have alleviated the frictions imposed by the rugged terrain of the Earth, the impeding winds and waves of the sea, and the extremes of temperature.

And now, with the internet and widespread video conferencing, distance is brought to our doorstep or displayed on a screen just inches from our face. Those who have the means to do so are witnessing an ever-unfolding significance of "space" and "place" in our globalized world.

THE PRAGMATICAL, DYNAMICAL, AND GEOGRAPHICAL

Within the field of geography, there is a subfield that investigates this intersection called human dynamics. It explores human behavior, interactions, and patterns within the context of the physical environment. Human dynamics considers how individuals, communities, and societies shape and are shaped by the spatial distribution of activities, such as migration, urbanization, land use, and socio-economic processes.

Two prominent figures in this field, Shih-Lung Shaw from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and Daniel Sui from Virginia Tech, introduced a space-place framework that integrates previously compartmentalized studies of abstracted space with physical place. They refer to this integrated framework as a "splatial" framework, which draws inspiration from the four main schools of Western spatial thought discussed last week.

Shaw and Sui argue that humans, as dynamic entities, are influenced by four key dimensions of space:

* Absolute Space (Location): Absolute space pertains to fixed locations in space and investigates questions such as "Where do different objects exist?"

* Relative Space (Locale): Relative space revolves around locations relative to a fixed or moving object and focuses on inquiries like "What surrounds us?"

* Relational Space (Place Identity and Dynamics): Relational space examines the relationships between objects and concentrates on questions such as "What is connected or associated with us?"

* Mental Space (Sense of Place): Mental space explores the cognitive and psychological aspects of space, centered around inquiries like "What perceptions and thoughts do individuals hold in their minds?"

They represent these four dimensions as bubbles arranged in a circle, with the human being at the center. Each bubble is connected by lines, demonstrating the interdependent interactions and the organic unity of these dimensions, rather than viewing them as separate entities.

Their framework is also influenced by geographers Doreen Massey and John Agnew. In 1991, Massey advocated for a global and dynamic perception of place, asserting that places are characterized by multiple identities rather than a singular one. These identities constantly evolve over time and lack clear boundaries that distinctly separate the inside from the outside. In 2011, Agnew introduced a comprehensive understanding of the concept of place, incorporating three fundamental pillars: location, delineated by latitude and longitude; locale, encompassing the physical/environmental and socio-economic/cultural context; and a sense of place, rooted in subjective human perception and attachment to a specific location or locale.

Within the realm of spatial analysis, the emphasis has shifted towards examining place identity and dynamics, surpassing the traditional focus on mere location or locale prevalent in cartography and GIS. Given that relational space encompasses topological relationships and precise locations, the notion of place identity assumes significance within a relational network, such as an online social network where people share photos from specific locations. As technology becomes increasingly embedded in our personal lives, transportation, and cities, this integrated framework becomes crucial for differentiating each entity and comprehending their respective roles within the network.

In my lifetime, the field of cartography – and geography more broadly – driven by advancements in technology and evolving conceptual frameworks, has expanded our understanding of spatial relationships and the dynamics of human interactions. From Waldo Tobler's "first law of geography" to the space-place framework proposed by Shaw and Sui, we have come to recognize the complex interplay between absolute space, relative space, relational space, and mental space. This challenges traditional notions of distance and emphasize the significance of place identity, connectivity, and the cognitive aspects of space.

As we navigate a globalized world, the study of human dynamics in geography provides a valuable lens through which we can comprehend the intricate relationships between individuals, communities, and their physical environments. By embracing this integrated framework, we gain insights into the ever-unfolding significance of our special splatial interconnected and technology-driven society.

Hello Interactors,

Who would've thought that R.E.M.'s hit tune "Stand" held the secrets to Western spatial thinking? This week I break it down for you. From Aristotle's "Stand in the place where you live" to Newton's "Carry a compass to help you along," it's like they were dropping knowledge bombs all along! So next time you get this '80s hit stuck in your head, remember, you're getting a crash course in geographic philosophy. Rock on!

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

IT’S FIXED

R.E.M.’s 1988 hit single, Stand, starts with this chorus:

Stand in the place where you live

Now face north

Think about direction

Wonder why you haven't before

Now stand in the place where you were

Now face west

Think about the place where you live

Wonder why you haven't before

Followed by this verse:

If you are confused, check with the sun

Carry a compass to help you along

Your feet are going to be on the ground

Your head is there to move you around

Without knowing it, they outlined what one researcher regards as the complete set of Western thought on space and place. In 1996, history and philosophy of geography professor Michael Curry identified just four distinct, but relational, notions of space that emerged two thousand years ago but continue to shape Western thought today.

Curry's four main categories of space provide a framework for understanding different conceptualizations of space. These notions have influenced philosophical and scientific perspectives on space throughout history. Here they are:

1. Static, Hierarchical, and Concrete Space (Aristotle 384-322 BC):

This notion of space was influenced by Aristotle. It suggests objects and events have their natural places within the world. Aristotle associated the elements of earth, air, fire, and water with their respective natural places – a rock falls back to earth, water finds its way back to water, air flows to air, and fire moves upwards.

This perspective views space as fixed and objects, and their elements, as being in specific positions within it. Curry reminds us that despite what modern science may say about the atomic structures and behavior of the world, we can see – as Aristotle did – that a bubble rises through water to find air like a frightened toddler running to their mother. And even with the best throw, there’s no separating a rock from its mother earth. Aristotle embraced a qualitative notion of science, informed by what he perceived to be true. Even when we may know we’re deceived. For example, we have to remind ourselves that the earth is not fixed and the sun does not set, even though it appears to be true.

Aristotle’s notion of space remained in Europe throughout the Middle Ages and guided all thought and action. But even though this Aristotelian common-sense view of the world can be seen even today, Curry notes that in 1277 the Church did its part to stamp it out. The Catholic church’s passing of Condemnation of 1277 aimed at eradicating Aristotelian teachings. The Church also embraced mathematics in the Middle Ages, though later challenged advances in math that conflicted with religious doctrine, recognizing its truth, contribution to education, and sensing the economic and intellectual power it wielded.

As the Enlightenment awoke, and with it the rise of Church-backed European geopolitical power, a more exacting view of space emerged. Surveying was ripped from the Roman ages and with it the gridding of land for political, economical, and military organizing and domination.

Then, in the mid to late 1600s, Descartes further quantified space by marrying elements of algebra to geometry imbued with Christian religiosity. He, and the Church, preached – like Plato did – that this model of mathematical certainty is the bases of all knowledge. So, while the common sense, observational, and qualitative views of Aristotle are still with us today, they don’t have nearly the influence over science Cartesian approaches do. Which leads us to Curry’s second big influence on our notion of space.

2. Absolute Grid Space (Newton 1642-1727):

The second notion of space is most often associated with Isaac Newton. This conceptualization of space is influenced by Descartes and views space as an absolute grid. In this view, space is considered an infinite and independent entity within which objects exist and events occur. It is a framework where positions, distances, and directions can be precisely defined, a fixed reference frame allows for the measurement and calculation of an object’s position and movement. Curry reminds us that Newton is largely regarded as a secular contributor to science, but like Descartes his work is riddled with religious overtones.

His Christian view of space as infinite and eternal, where objects and motion are the work of an omnipresent God, are found in his 1686 Fundamental Principles of Natural Philosophy. He says God

“is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient…He endures forever and is everywhere present. He is omnipresent not virtually only but also substantially…In him are all things contained and moved, yet neither affects the other; God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies, bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God.”

But Newton’s voice and influence was not alone. Which gets us to number three.

IT’S ALL RELATIVE

3. Relational Space (Leibniz 1646-1716):

The third notion of space was influenced by Newton’s contemporary Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He argued for a relational understanding of space. While adopting the scientific outlook of Newton, Leibniz attacked Newton’s absolutist approach tinged with Christian orthodoxy. Whereas Newton rejected the senses, as they may deceive God’s power and will, Leibniz emphasized the importance of considering how we sense relationships among objects and events. Because our eyes (with the help of our brain) can sense objects moving relative to one another, Leibniz argued space is fundamentally defined by these relationships. The positions and properties of objects are interdependent. This relational view highlights the dynamic and interconnected nature of spatial relationships that comes from motion of one object relative to another.

This notion of spatial relationships, that some objects appear to move in absolute space while others remain stationary has echoes of both Descartes and Newton but without metaphysical religiosity. It also embraces elements of a human-centeredness that culminates in unique and individual spatial perceptions. This opened the door to number four.

4. Imposed Form Space (Kant 1724-1804):

The last notion of space, associated with the philosopher Immanuel Kant, challenges the previous perspectives by positing that space is something imposed on the world by humans. Kant argued that space is not an inherent quality of the external world but rather a framework through which humans perceive and organize their experiences. In this view, space is a subjective construct that shapes our understanding of the world.

Kant very much believed in Descartes and Newton’s mathematical truths in how to describe the world and how objects behave, but in his 1781 Critique of Pure Reason he questioned what we can really know about the world given it’s all skewed by our perceptions. Curry recalls that Kant himself regard this shift in thinking as a ‘Copernican Revolution’. Just as Copernicus reoriented the universe by centering planets around the sun, Kant believed his critique of reason shifts the center of knowledge from what was thought to be known to the perception of the knower. He observed that even though something can be shown to be mathematically true, like gravity, we can’t see gravity. We can calculate wind speed, but we can’t see what caused the air to move. Kant’s revolution opened the door for radical alternatives to describing the world, including the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry just thirty years after Kant’s publication.

Curry’s four notions of Western spatial thought just may have culminated in a pop hit single in the 1980s. Aristotle would have liked that R.E.M. suggest we “check with the sun” given his version of space is all about the fixed positions of natural elements. Newton would commend them on advising to “carry a compass to help you along” an absolute grid space. Leibniz would remind the confident compass holder that while “your feet are going to be [at a point] on the ground, your head is there to move you around” relative to that point. And Kant would have told everyone to just stop and “think about the place where you live, wonder why you haven't before.”

Hello Interactors,

I’ll admit it, the early summer weather here in Seattle has been a distraction. So, I turned to a writing companion this week to help. I took my notes from a talk I saw at the AAG conference in March, and you know what comes next…I pasted it in ChatGPT.

I then took some papers referenced in the talk, grabbed their abstracts, and pasted those in ChatGPT. After a few iterations of ‘expand on this’, ‘merge these…’ and ‘shrink this to three sentences’ I had all the working components needed to form an essay roughly 1000 words long.

I pasted that into Word and began editing in my own voice and adding bits of my own thoughts. When I’d get stuck on a concept or blending of concepts, I’d ask ChatGPT to blend them for me. When I was unsure or dubious of its confidence, I’d turn to Google Scholar and Wikipedia for further reference or content to be rewritten more evidentially.

I find ChatGPT a valuable writing companion. Some facts are often way off and downright fictional at times, but it is good at taking a jumble of ideas, lists of points, or disparate topics and putting them into cohesive starting points. Especially when the sun is shining and it’s 72 degrees outside.

Let me know what you think and what your thoughts are on using ChatGPT for this kind of thing. Here’s what ChatGPT says are three takeaways from this post.

Key Takeaways:

* Grid and Place Cells: Researchers have discovered specific patterns of neuron firing in the brains of rats, mice, bats, and humans, known as place cells and grid cells. Place cells are found in the hippocampus and respond to specific locations in the environment, while grid cells in the entorhinal cortex form grid-like patterns representing the overall layout of space.

* Non-Euclidean Geometries: The discovery of grid cells and cognitive maps challenges the dominance of Euclidean geometry in understanding spatial cognition. Grid cells exhibit a hexagonal grid pattern, highlighting the non-Euclidean nature of cognitive maps in the brain.

* Computational Models: The integration of computational models such as reinforcement learning and successor representations, inspired by the research on place cells and grid cells, offers a deeper understanding of spatial cognition. These models capture the complex interactions between cognition, decision-making, and the environment, reflecting the non-Euclidean nature of grid cells and challenging traditional geometric frameworks. By incorporating these computational approaches, researchers can develop more comprehensive and inclusive models of spatial cognition that consider the interconnectedness and dynamic nature of cognitive processes and the environments we navigate.

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

TELLTALE CELLS OF RAT TRACES

In my last post, I talked about how Platonic and Euclidian geometric purity and gridded Cartesian planes may have overly influenced Western thought, beliefs, and actions. Scientific thinking may have been errantly seduced by the certainty and accuracy of rational proofs to describe not only the physical world but how our minds and body interact with it and each other. We now know it’s likely the world is constructed of layers of indeterminant, interrelated complex interactions occurring at atomic, chemical, biological, psychological, sociological, astronomical, and cosmological levels.

And yet theoretical and observable patterns emerge amidst this chaos that can and are described and understood through both Euclidean and non-Euclidean patterns. For example, patterns found in the brain. Cognitive scientists studying rats in the 1970s discovered a collection of neurons fired when a rat entered a particular place in a maze. They called these neuron firing locations place cells.

This video shows a rat running around in a circular environment (black line) and any time a particular cell is active (red dots). The red dots cluster around one location, which is the place field of the cell. (Source: Jankowski M, O’Mara S (2015) via Wikipedia)

Place cell patterns are found primarily in the hippocampus region of the brain. They’re derived from a collection of firing neurons that selectively respond to specific locations or places in an environment. Place cells are influenced by environmental cues and play a crucial role in spatial memory formation, allowing for the association of specific memories or experiences with particular places. They are instrumental in the formation of cognitive maps, which are inherently non-Euclidean because they can include unpredictable shortcuts, deviations, and distortions.

As research continued in the 1990s, the arrangement of these patterns began showing signs of grid-like regularity. Some speculated the brain was forming a kind of rectangular grid. And then in 2005, scientists discovered grid-like patterns firing in an area neighboring the hippocampus, the entorhinal cortex – also involved in spatial processing and memory. They termed these grid cells and they indeed resembled Euclidean regularity.  

These collections of neurons fire at regular intervals as a rat moves about the environment. As it nears a node of its virtual lattice, neurons fire in the entorhinal cortex. These nodes make a grid-like pattern, but it’s not a regular rectangular grid. It instead is comprised of hexagonal shapes. Unlike place cells, which have specific firing fields for distinct locations, grid cells offer a continuous representation of space, capturing the overall layout and virtual hexagonal geometry of the environment in the brain.

By establishing a kind of coordinate system, scientists theorize grid cells are used to monitor movement and position relative to the surrounding space. This supports path integration and reinforcement which helps maintain a sense of direction and distance traveled. While the eyes play a crucial role in strengthening these patterns, the lattice is nonetheless present even when traversing in the dark – absent of external cues.

While this phenomenon has been found in the brains of rats, mice, bats, and humans, similar findings exist in insects, albeit sparse and more static. Neurons in their antennal lobe encode the identity of odors through patterns formed by synchronized oscillating feedback loops with other neurons responsible for olfactory processing and learning.

Research on place cells, grid cells, and other brain structures involved in spatial representation and learning can provide valuable insights into how humans perceive and navigate space. By understanding the neural mechanisms underlying spatial cognition, researchers can refine and validate cognitive models of space.

MOST CERTAINLY A CERTAIN UNCERTAINTY

While I was attending the American Association of Geographer’s conference in Denver last March, I attended a session aimed at a body of research called behavioral and cognitive geography (BCG). This discipline has opened new avenues for understanding the links between human cognition, behavior, and the environment. This interdisciplinary field combines concepts from geography, psychology, neuroscience, AI, and other disciplines to explore how individuals and groups interact with space and make decisions individually and collectively.

One important aspect of BCG is decision making. Researchers in this field aim to develop more representative models of decision making by incorporating insights from disciplines such as judgment and decision making. This involves moving away from unrealistic assumptions grounded in traditional, rational interpretations in geography using Euclidean geometry. Two of my professors at UCSB, Reg Golledge and Waldo Tobler, both called for non-Euclidean investigations after forays into their groundbreaking research in cognitive maps in the 1970s.

Advancing this knowledge will require accounting for the context of spatial decision making. This includes social norms, institutions, and the physical environment that influences us. Additionally, acknowledging the heterogeneity among decision makers and considering cultural values is crucial for developing comprehensive decision models that are representative of all groups.

Collaborations with fields such as artificial intelligence, computational neuroscience, and social physics are contributing to expanding the scope and ambition of BCG. One researcher in this area from the University of Leeds, Ed Manley, presented at the conference. He is developing new analytical methods that blend topological and computational neuroscience, like those found in grid and place cell research, to account for both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries and explanations.

His recent research integrates both cognitive and behavioral geography using advanced agent-based modeling and spatial analysis. By leveraging the availability of large-scale, rich data on human mobility with computational models of spatial cognition he sees opportunities for deepening our understanding of how people interact with place.

There are two computer-based models he is currently exploring – reinforcement learning (RL) and successor representations (SR). These concepts are influenced and inspired by advancements in neuroscience – including place cell and grid cell research. Reinforcement learning is a general framework for learning optimal behavior through interactions with an environment while successor representations are a specific method used within reinforcement learning.

Reinforcement learning involves an agent that learns to make decisions and take actions in an environment to maximize cumulative rewards. The agent interacts with the environment, receives feedback in the form of rewards or penalties, and adjusts its behavior based on this feedback. The goal is to learn rules that map states to actions to maximize the expected cumulative reward.

Successor representations represent the state transitions and expected future rewards associated with different states. Instead of directly representing states and their values, successor representations capture the underlying structure of the environment. Probability scores are mapped to transitions between states and the expected cumulative reward that can be obtained from each state.

The modeled probability values of a state relates to the expected cumulative reward obtained by starting from that state and following a particular set of rules. By representing states in terms of their expected future rewards, successor representations provide a more compact and informative representation of the environment.

COMPLEXITY AND CONNECTION IN SUCCESSOR EVOLUTION

In the context of reinforcement learning, successor representations can be used to facilitate learning and decision-making by providing a structured representation of the environment's dynamics. This allows computer-based agents to make better-informed decisions based on the expected future rewards associated with different states.

Manley’s integration of SR into cognitive geography holds promise for understanding the construction of spatial knowledge and its connection to cognition. This method captures the idea that previous choices inform future decisions, mirroring the cognitive processes involved in spatial learning. This approach is closely linked to the spatial-dependent nature of tasks, which arise from geographic processes – including the formation of the natural and built environment.

This research also shows potential for tailoring learning processes to known demographic and background factors, allowing for more fair, accurate, and representative models of spatial cognition. This enables researchers to account for the diverse influences that shape decision-making and spatial behavior among different populations and their environments.

Moreover, the utilization of these methods in cognitive geography provides an avenue to develop models of space that blend metric and topological representations systematically. This integration allows for a more comprehensive understanding of spatial environments, capturing both the quantitative measurements and the qualitative relationships between locations.

This approach to geography represents a departure from dominant Platonic, Euclidean, and Cartesian thinking, embracing complexity and connectedness. These computational approaches reflect and acknowledge the dynamic nature of cognition, where the iteration of past choices inform future decisions.

It highlights the interconnectedness between cognition and the environment, challenging compartmentalized views and fostering interdisciplinary approaches. This departure from fixed and predetermined paths echoes a broader shift towards embracing complexity in our understanding of the world. It encourages us to view spatial cognition as a dynamic process influenced by a multitude of factors, rather than relying solely on rigid geometric frameworks and dogma.

It invites us to move away from rigidity and instead embrace the dynamic, interwoven nature of our cognitive processes and the environments we navigate. By doing so, we can foster a more nuanced, inclusive, and holistic understanding of spatial cognition and representation that aligns with the intricacies and interdependencies of the world we inhabit.

Hello Interactors,

As I was preparing for my talk at Harvard last month, I was finishing a book called The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent. He explores how culture shapes values, and those values shape history. Hat tip to Kasey Klimes over at rhizome r&d for the recommendation.

Lent uncovers the history and evolution of dominant Western culture through the lens of evolutionary biology and neuroscience and the role patterns play in cognitive and cultural development. He then compares it the lesser examined evolution of Eastern, mostly Chinese, culture, philosophy, and scientific history.

He found discrepancies in dominant Western thought, and how it sometimes is incongruent with select examples of more recent advances in science. Especially the degree to which the world is increasingly understood as a nested array of interdependent and indeterminate complex systems.

Quantum physics, complexity Science, and other various branches of the physical and social sciences, are revealing evidence of a pervasive interconnectedness that can often get lost or overlooked in some more traditional methods and beliefs of dominant Western science and culture.

“Divide and conquer” is one such example of how we routinely attempt to simplify to resolve problems. And yet, it seems divisions are what may be contributing to our global problems. Lent’s book made me wonder how much Western thinking and culture may be keeping us from solving our most perplexing problems. What happened to ‘united we stand, divided we fall?’

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

FRANKENSTEIN V.2

Descartes once said,

"Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it."

The breaking down of problems does simplify challenges. At the same time, I wonder if divisions can also introduce challenges. Consider the division of today’s global crises into economic, social, and environmental problems. It’s feasible to divide these even further but is it necessary to resolve them? What if instead of resolution division and partitioning is contributing to our ruin?

We’re good at division. Economic inequality divides the wealthy from the poor, political polarization has unraveled civil discourse, increased hostility, and a growing distrust of democratic institutions. Climate change exposes these divisions and imbalances as those more vulnerable to its effects suffer more than those most responsible for its existence.

This is all amidst an age group divide. Rising housing costs, stagnant wages, and reduced opportunities make it harder for younger people to avoid financial precarity let alone secure family wealth. The gulf between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ is widening.

Cultural polarization also divides communities along cultural and religious lines leading to a rise in hate crimes and extremist movements. Age can reveal differing attitudes towards social issues further solidifying divisions leading to more hostility and distrust. Divisions regarding the role of technology in society can also divide along age lines, but also wealth.

Digital divides can exacerbate social and economic inequalities, as the pandemic quickly revealed. We also witnessed how those without access to technology disproportionately struggled to access education, healthcare, jobs, and other essential services.

Fear and distrust in technology is currently directed at AI. As with seemingly every fast-approaching technological innovation in human history, many fear it while many revere it. Jeremy Lent notes that advances in artificial intelligence are particularly encouraging for futurists who see AI as furthering the quest to disembodied intelligence.

Transhumanists imagine a fusing of machines with physiology – the brain supplanted by a connected web of universal artificial intelligence. In the words of a leading advocate and enthusiast, Ray Kurzweil,

this transformation would upgrade “the frailties of these Version 1.0 bodies we have.”

Sounds like a modern-day Frankenstein to me.

Lent also reminds us that futurist visions can also look more like the science fiction classic, The Matrix. Human bodies are relegated to biological livestock consumed for energy so a global matrix of software can run a simulated existence – a virtual world, a meta-universe, or metaverse. Sound familiar? Most of today’s technology CEOs from Musk to Zuck subscribe to various forms of these visions of the future and they’re not alone.

A crude modern-day demonstration of this separation exists with remote work. While physically present in one place, people interact virtually with 2D representations of other humans to perform collaborative cognitive operations – information work. I spent my career helping to develop software tools to enable this mode of working.

Now imagine instead of looking at a computer screen people are wearing a headset or special glasses, as often envisioned by leading tech firms. These attempts, in varying degrees, separate the functions of the mind from the body. Our mind can exist in a virtual world while our body remains planted in the physical world.

The idea of separating mind and body is not new. These ideas are rooted in ancient Greek philosophical notions that the mind can be separated from the body. It then permeated Christian religions which influenced Western cultures leading to yet another example of division in our present-day society. These philosophies separate the brain – a seemingly computer-like organ – from the physical reality of our biological physiology. 

Plato viewed the mind as divine, and the body as a polluted swamp. Purity and truth existed only in the mind. He believed the earth to be perfectly round and light rays perfectly parallel. The physical world was constructed with combinations of pure geometry. For him, this reality only exists in mathematical abstractions present in the mind. But for Plato, what is in the mind is what is true. He believed the eye, the physical senses, were not to be trusted. They deceive. He was so adamant in this geometric virtual existence that he had these words carved in stone above the entrance to his academy: “Let no one unacquainted with geometry enter here.”

DIVIDED WE STAND

Aristotle later rejected this strict dualistic separation. While he is interpreted to believe the mind indeed operates differently than most organs in the body, including processing the immaterial in the form of cognition, the mind and body are nonetheless more uniformly connected.

This Aristotelian view was picked up in the middle-ages by the influential Christian theologian Thomas Aguinas. He treated intellect, and the soul, as independent but unified physical forms. While separate entities, he believed separation would starve the soul and the intellect of the necessary memories contained in the brain. The mind was for reason and free will while the physical body was but a vessel.

But as the Enlightenment unfolded, it was Plato’s ideas that took hold. His dualistic beliefs were prominently elevated by the mathematician and philosopher, René Descartes. His form of dualism came in the existence of two substances: mind and matter. A person only exists – they only matter – because they can think. Hence is famous phrase, “I think therefore I am.”

Descartes rejected the notion that the universe is comprised of atoms. He was a mechanist, believing the body to be like a machine made of specially formulated parts predetermined and preassembled by a God. He believed the body’s parts – the pumps, pullies, and gears, were controlled by processing unit in the brain – a power gifted by a Christian God – the pineal gland. We now know this part of the brain is primarily responsible for producing the sleep regulating hormone, melatonin.

This idea of the brain as the ‘central processing unit’ serves as the prevailing metaphor of conventional Western thought to this day. Just as Descartes’ theories emerged out of Christian theology, Greek philosophy, and modern mechanistic technological advances, by extension, so too do today’s intellectual and scientific influencers.

Descartes’ influence was surely substantiated, and perhaps – like Plato – influenced, by his contributions to mathematics. Moreover, his Cartesian coordinate system provided mathematical language and visualization that further enabled deduction, detection, and delineation. It made it easier to draw borders and boundaries; to bisect and bifurcate with the exacting detail and believability that can come with mathematics. The certitude of mathematics can sometimes delude us into conflating the certainty of a truth with the truth. Plato was right, the senses, via the brain, can deceive. But so can math.

Descartes mechanistic view of the world, together with the language of mathematics, meant the universe could now be calculated and communicated with extreme precision. This gave his beliefs and philosophies an added tinge of proof – of the truth. His work helped to unite an understanding of the world by mechanistically dividing the universe “into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.”

The proliferation of printing presses in the 17th century helped to spread and perpetuate his perspective. It was the Cartesian coordinates that helped project the complex three-dimensional world onto a simple two-dimensional surface accelerating the craft of cartography and European global exploration. Soon, those with the means and power to draw maps did so.

European powers could now easily and abstractly divide land, in their mind, conquering invaded lands into as “many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve.” They could control how they believed people should interact with each other, economies, and their natural surroundings.

These Cartesian maps, plans, and projections continue to legally manifest and define so much of how we think, live, and exist in the world. Our modern society has been shaped by various forms of rigid Platonic and Cartesian concepts steeped in a desire to separate the mind from body, pure from putrid, place from space, physical from virtual, us from them, and what we think from what we feel. And it all churns on at various scales of governments and societies with seemingly little regard for how these separations may be deceiving, limiting, or destroying us.

I wonder how this way of thinking contributes to the litany of divisions around us – economic divides, political divides, digital divides, gender divides, race divides, cultural divides, urban-rural divides, transportation divides, age divides, education divides, and more. We’re primed to divide, categorize, clump, group, sort, filter, slice, and dice who we are, where we live, and thus how we interact with each other and the physical world.

In the sixth century, another Greek philosopher, Æsop, shared a parable on division. An old man pointed to a tied bundle of sticks and ordered his eldest son to break it in half. The boy picked up the bundle and strained to crack it but failed. His younger brothers, hoping to show him up, also tried and failed. The old man then instructed the boys to untie the bundles and each take a stick. “Now, break”, he said, and the sons triumphantly broke each stick. The moral of the story is union gives strength, or as it’s commonly transposed today: united we stand, divided we fall.

It's easy to imagine this as an origin of an intellectual path to Descartes’ interpretation and desire to divide into “as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve.” But is the universe really a bundle of sticks tied by a string? Are our worlds constructed as machines made of discrete, discernable, and dissectible parts with a CPU as a brain? Perhaps the metaphor has led us astray. Perhaps Descartes did error.

PARTLY INDETERMINENT

Through it all, I worry we underappreciate, ignore, or deny that all of it, including our minds and bodies, are connected in ways that are not so easily divisible. Descartes, and later Isaac Newton, believed all problems could be subdivided into tiny bits of matter whose behavior could be described by physics in the language of mathematics. These are all important and necessary tools to understanding the world, but as Nobel-award winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann once said,

“Imagine how difficult physics would be if electrons could think.”

The uncertainty of human behavior, our free will, our human interactions, are unaccounted for in Cartesian and Newtonian forms of scientific inquiry – including physics. So are issues surrounding values and beliefs. Our behavior does not neatly contain the determinism Platonic, Cartesian, and Newtonian theories require. It’s this observed complex uncertain behavior of systems, compounded by interactions, that led to discoveries in quantum mechanics, relativity theory, non-linear dynamics, and other fields of complexity science.

What would our world be, what could it be, should we shift our thinking to reflect a closer approximation of how the world, and our minds and bodies, may actually work? Instead of focusing on divisions, what if we investigated the connections, the interactions, the overlaps? The crises we face today tend to be framed categorically as economic, sociological, and environmental problems. In a fit of Cartesian inquiry, we tend to “divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary”.

Of course, subdivision can be useful, as can the Cartesian mathematics to describe it. Simple components, the results of subdivisions, exist – and are most informative – not in isolation but as part of systems of systems. An ant is most interesting, not just an ant but as an ant in a colony. Humans are best understood not alone but as members of a family, a city, or a society.

Mainstream science continues to struggle with how best to account for the interaction of these components and their complex, nonlinear, and unpredictable nature. Individual components are still largely studied in isolation, divided from their reliant systems. And yet, the actions and interactions of component parts are greater, different, and potentially more impactful than their cumulative sum.

It’s hard to predict, let alone control, the outcomes of these complex systems. After all, these components, including humans, are not centrally controlled. Our limbs are not controlled by the puppeteering pineal gland nor by a distinct ‘central processing unit’ encased in a Body v.1. There is no central control of our bodies, brains, cities, or societies. Even our free will is not to be trusted.

What if we better scrutinized the emergent behaviors resulting from the countless interconnected outcomes of our world that can’t be understood by looking at individual clusters, components, or categories alone? Making better sense of this remains the ongoing work of complexity science.

This fundamental shift in thinking, and in science, remains contentious. Even Descartes had his detractors. I often wonder what course humanity may have taken had Enlightenment philosophers, theologians, scientists, and mathematicians more interested in connections than divisions had won favor.

Such is the case in ancient Chinese philosophy and science. Those of us most influenced by Western thought may want to better understand the prominent thinkers that came long before the Enlightened Europeans. For example, it was the nineth-twelfth century Song dynasty polymaths and philosophers, like Shen Kuo, who invented the first compass, mapped the seas and stars, and helped to unleash geologic, geographic, chemical, meteorological, and astronomical discoveries. All while the Europeans were just coming out of Medieval times. One unsourced Wikipedia entry even claims Kuo was the first to hypothesize about gradual climate change.

We in the West can sometimes be accused of being over-confident and reluctant to admit when we may have been deceived. We shouldn’t be surprised when AI systems like ChatGPT echo back the same over-confident and sometime deceptive words we’ve fed it. It’s a bi-product of attitudes and beliefs that just may be contributing to our many differences and divisions.

But I’ll give Descartes the last word. It was he who said, “It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.” And, “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”

I doubt it’s possible to divide our way out of the problems we face. My bet in on understanding the dynamics of the component parts. Let’s better understand, communicate, and represent what it is that emerges from the interactions of the divided parts. And we’ll need AI, and Cartesian and Newtonian computations, to help us know what it is we’re seeing and where it is we might be going. After all, we’re all nothing more than collections of systems bound by natural laws determined to adapt, change, and evolve into something beyond our knowing.   

Hello Interactors,

I recently returned from an extended trip back east for a talk at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD). I also threw in quick visits to Boston and New York to visit my kids, and then stopped over in Kansas City to visit family on the way back to Seattle.

I was invited to keynote a two-day symposium hosted by the Laboratory for Design Technologies on the role of technology in micro-mobility in urban environments. My friend and colleague, Allen Sayegh, has been tracking my work on Interplace and thought my perspective was worth sharing. I was joined by two other speakers:

Carole Turley Voulgaris, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the GSD. Carole focuses on explaining what influences decisions on travel through cities. She considers how transportation planning institutions utilize travel decision making to inform their plans, policies, and infrastructure design.

Bryan Boyer, cofounder of the architecture and strategic design studio Dash Marshall. Brian is also an Assistant Professor of Practice in Architecture and Director of the new Bachelor of Science in Urban Technology degree at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. He is a graduate of the GSD.

The title of my talk was a riff on one of my first essays about my time at Microsoft: A Computer on Every Desk and a Car in Every Garage: How Bill Gates and Herbert Hoover Altered How We Interact with People and Place.

It was the PC revolution that enabled virtual interaction with others around the world – all while seated behind a glass screen. Meanwhile, automobile proliferation further isolated others from their neighbors and immediate surroundings enabling a virtual interaction – all while seated behind a glass screen. Given these trends, what are the implications for land use, the built environment, and collective mental, physical, and societal health? How did we get here, and where do we want to go…today?

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

Thank you for reading Interplace. Please share!

GSD, LDT, AND THE LCGSA

“Technology is accelerating profound changes throughout society, affecting everything we do — how we live, work, produce, build, and think.”

These are the words that frame Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design’s (GSD) Laboratory for Design Technologies. The GSD has a long-storied history. It was the first in the country to offer a landscape architecture class in 1893 and the first in the world to offer landscape architecture degree in 1900. The program was founded by Fredrick Law Olmsted, Jr., the son of the more famous Frederick Law Olmsted. That same year Harvard offered the country’s first urban planning courses and by 1929 expanded to become the first urban planning degree in North America.

In 1936 the official Harvard Graduate School of Design was launched housing schools of architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture. A year later, the famous modern architect Walter Gropius became faculty chair in architecture and the GSD’s reputation as a modernist powerhouse was established. In 1972 that reputation was solidified in the iconic concrete brutalist architecture of the GSD’s new home, Gund Hall.

But in the shadows of the looming starchitects climbing the stairs to the tiered terraces of sundrenched cubicles teaming with design students, was a computer lab. It was here technology minded design professors and students were incubating the foundations of software we repeatedly use everyday to find our way around the world – computer generated maps.

In 1965, the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis (LCGSA) was formed by a Harvard trained architect, Howard Fisher. He was enamored by the work of a University of Washington urban planning professor, Edgar Horwood. The University of Washington geography department had already established itself as a center of excellence in quantitative geography and computer cartography as part of geography’s quantitative revolution. Horwood’s use of computer cartography spread to Harvard, the LCGSA, and throughout the GSD for years to come.

Fisher’s program attracted grant money that helped it grow to forty researchers. In the 1970s, the Harvard administration encouraged the commercialization and licensing of research across the university. The LCGSA continued to innovate licensing software and graduating entrepreneurs that fed the infancy of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) industry and discipline of Geographical Information Science (GIScience). In 1969, one GSD landscape architecture graduate went on to create what is now the world leader in GIS software, Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI).

As more staff left for industry, funding also subsided. By the 1980s Harvard cooled on the commercialization of research, funding was curbed, and the GSD was encouraged by the administration to focus on pure research. The last director of LCGSA, which closed in 1991, was the late Dan Schodek.

Dan continued to provide a place for technology minded designers and directed the Laboratory for Design Technologies. I was introduced to Dan by a Microsoft colleague and GSD student in 2007 and Dan invited me to spend a year at the GSD as a visiting fellow. I traveled back to Boston regularly to explore ideas for computer interaction design curricula inside the GSD. It was there and then I was introduced to Allen Sayegh.

In the years since, Allen has turned his attention more toward my past – interaction with technologies – while I’ve turned my attention toward his past – interaction with the built environment. And it is precisely this kind of incongruent and serendipitous collaboration that keeps the GSD, and its technology lab, a fertile source of exploration and discovery. This symposium was no exception. With invited attendees from the University of Bergamo in Italy, who also study urban mobility, students and faculty spent a few days exploring the role technology plays in the built environment and the interaction of people and place.

This topic is perhaps more pressing today than in human history, thanks to a worldwide pandemic and the PC revolution. In March the U.S. department of labor released their 2022 survey results on remote work. It reveals nearly seventy percent (67.2%) of information workers continue to choose to work remotely some or most of the time. This contrasts with more traditional industries that require a physical presence like those related to the built environment, including transportation (13.6%) and construction (10.5%).

A gulf has formed between those able to chose to work in the ‘virtual’ world and those required to work in a ‘physical’ world. What does this split say about how we move and interact between and within the physical world and its occupants…or not? How will it impact how cities plan? To unravel how we got here, we should start with Bill Gates. His company, Microsoft, was the primary catalyst for enabling a new way of working and communicating on a tool many now take for granted – the PC.

When I started at Microsoft in 1992, the graphical user interface was just taking off and computers stood alone, disconnected from each other. I worked on designing micro-interactions, on micro-computers, in micro-spatial environments. It was microcomputer software, Microsoft.

Sharing information between computers required physically walking or mailing a floppy disk to another person. But that was short-lived. By the end of my first year, Windows for Workgroups released which connected computers through growing local area networks (LANs). The ‘sneaker network’ was replaced by the ‘ether network’. But this ‘virtual’ sharing of information was mostly contained within buildings and campuses. Still, Microsoft Windows enabled microcomputers to share information virtually at a microspatial scale through PCs that were growing in popularity.

USER FRIENDLY

As popular as they were, computers were still relatively hard to use. I was hired as part of a growing team of usability engineers and user interface designers tasked with making them easier. Complex software made for complex behavior, observed scientist and Nobel Prize winner Herb Simon in his quote, “The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves.”

Through a bit of luck, ingenuity, and design iteration, progress on more learnable user interfaces was made. And by 1995, the advent of the ‘Start’ button in Windows ‘95, a desktop icon labeled ‘The Internet’, and software offered in many languages, Microsoft and the PC industry quickly grew globally. This growth coincided with, and was aided by, the widespread sociopolitical and economic expansion of globalism in the 1990s. Microsoft enabled and inspired people around the globe to consume, produce, and share information virtually at an historical scale. Micro-software at a macro-scale. This global reach prompted Microsoft’s ad agency, Wieden+Kennedy, to invent the Microsoft tagline, “Where do you want to go today?”

This worldwide virtual connectivity worked in both directions. While people were connecting and collecting, Microsoft was too. For those who elected to do so, we anonymously collected software usage data from far reaches of the world. A feat unimaginable just a few years prior. We could now see what features were being used, how often buttons were clicked, and statistically model how people were interacting with our software. We paired big-data quantitative analysis through remote telemetry with high-touch qualitative analysis from on-site usability labs.

Addressing expanding markets and satisfying endless varieties of user goals, demanded more and more new features. By 1998, three years after Windows and Office 95, Microsoft software was perceived as slow and bloated with features. Recalling Herb Simon, the apparent complexity of user behavior was largely a reflection of the complexity of the software environment which we found ourselves creating. To better understand the issue, a colleague and I even sponsored a multi-day workshop at a conference that resulted in a paper paradoxically titled, “Too much of a good thing?” Customers and end-users would complain of too many features out of one side of their mouth and request three more out of the other.

In the eyes of Microsoft and its shareholders, too much was a good thing. Between 1990 and 1997 the percent of U.S. households owning computers more than doubled across all demographics. Similar growth occurred throughout other parts of the world with necessary communication infrastructure and wealth. It took 25 years for Bill to achieve his domineering capitalistic dream of ‘a computer on every desk and in every home.’ The PC had become a household appliance and Microsoft a household name. The world would never be the same again.

Meanwhile, another successful vision of economic and product domination was already over 75 years old and was sweeping the country and parts of the world. In I928, future U.S. president Herbert Hoover, and the Republican party, ran on this campaign promise – ‘a chicken in every pot and a car in the garage.’ That promise led to a flood of automobiles that reshaped our land, our behavior, and our society – including how we interact with people and place. The world would never be the same again.

Transportation and how we use land are trapped in a perverse self-supporting spiraling circularity from the center outward.  As urban populations grow, housing creeps to the fringes of the city center. This spawn’s transportation needs to further away places where more development welcomes new homes and businesses. These new developments require even more transportation which in-turn attracts more growth. More growth requires more transportation. It’s a cycle that leads to sprawling urban metropolises and leap frog developments.

America is known for its sprawling metropolitan areas, but Europe sprawls too. While 75% of Europeans live in dense urban areas, satellite imagery reveals many of their cities also creep and leap. Paris is currently the darling of championing a more walkable and bikeable “15-minute city”, but just beyond the urban core are the same car dependent suburbs you find in America. Sprawl exists around the world. Many factors play into the self-perpetuated circular calculus of sprawl, but it’s broadly a function of income, population, agricultural land value, transportation costs, other socio−economic factors, and climatic and geographic realities.

Attempts have been made over centuries to address sprawl with movements like ‘New Urbanism’. We have ‘new’ urbanism circa 1950s to the 1980s, ‘new’ urbanism of the 1990s to 2000s, and ‘new’ urbanism of today. One could argue that even the walled cities of ancient Mesopotamian, Greek, Chinese, and American civilizations were also deemed ‘new’ forms of urbanism. We humans seem to always be struggling with needing more space while wanting less sprawl. Bloat. Too much of a good thing?

IMAGINING CITIES

City planners, managers, and policy makers have long rationalize planning schemes through quantitative reasoning. For example, in more modern times, beginning in 1826, Johann Heinrich von Thünen devised a model for urban planning in his book The Isolated State. With the city center as the middle of a bullseye, he articulated rings of land use for optimal agrarian economic development. The first ring was reserved for those items that may spoil the fastest or had the highest need, like dairy and market goods. Then came the forest for fuel, grains and crops, ranching, and finally ‘wilderness’…aka, optimal land for new urbanist sprawl.

This model was improved upon by Walter Christaller and his Central Place Theory in 1933. I recently wrote about how his theory now has some empirical validity with the Universal Visitation Law of Human Mobility which states the frequency of visits to a location is inversely proportional to their distance.

Top down, economic spatial reasoning remains the dominant method of urban planning to this day. And while it’s served the economy well, it hasn’t necessarily served humanity all that well. One notable critic of this style of planning was urban planner and author Kevin Lynch. Lynch was interested less in the top-down, God-like, cartesian, cartographic image of a city. He advocated for leveraging the mental maps people had of their surroundings. His popular book, Image of the City, included maps of the Boston area derived from the mental maps of area residents.

Another popular and influential critic of traditional urban planning was urban activist and author, Jane Jacobs. She was a voice of the people – the occupants, users, and shapers of urban spaces. In her 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she wrote,

“There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans.”

She frequently spoke out against the patriarchal, top-down, carving up of cities like a monopoly board. And yet, here we are, still playing monopoly on a board carved with lines optimized for the flow of money, private wealth accumulation, and the moving and parking of cars. It’s a game that results in players stuck in traffic, often in their car, waiting their turn, with this question in their mind – “Is this where I want to go today?”

Sitting in that car, moving in physical space, motorists are increasingly digitally connected to a virtual world out there – just beyond the glass of their automobile. Many of them just came from sitting at a desk digitally connected to a virtual world out there – just beyond the glass of their computer.

Embedded in our cities is the digital promise of the Internet of Things, Smart Cities, autonomous driving, and the pervasive, embedded, ubiquitous technology that has turned the automobile into a PC on wheels. And just as with software, a reciprocal relationship occurs. All those connected sensors embedded in the urban fabric, in our phones, and in automobiles make it possible to instrument and monitor how we interact with people and place.

It’s this very capability that enabled those scientists to turn Christaller’s theory into power law through anonymized mobile phone data. But at what price? Both sitting at a PC and sitting in a car, humans are trapped in a physical bubble. The world is virtually available to them at an arms length distance to a mouse, keyboard, and computer screen or a steering wheel, dashboard, and windscreen. All while being inaccessible to the real world. Interactions are relayed through metal, plastic, glass, and silicon that virtually connect us to faraway people and places around the world on a PC, while physically separating us from our family, friends, neighbors, and neighborhoods in a car.

It's also led to a digital divide. An estimated 90% of high-income earners in the world have accessed the internet in the last three months versus 20% of low-income earners. If wealth attracts, encourages, and perpetuates car and digital dependency that in-turn is shaping the form of our cities, what impact does this have on societies? It’s impossible to predict, but this much we do know: The apparent complexity of our environment is largely a reflection of the environment we find ourselves in. That environment has grown in complexity, and so has our behavior. What emerges next depends, in part, on how each of us answer these questions: Where do I want to go today, how will I get there, what choice do I have, and who is most impacted?

Hello Interactors,

I’ve been absent the last few weeks. First our kids were back for spring break and then I was off to the American Association of Geographers (AAG) national conference in Denver, Colorado. Both were fun, exhilarating, and inspiring and I’m bursting with things to write about!

We’re officially in spring here in the northern hemisphere. I now turn to cartography and the role mapmaking plays in shaping how we interact with people and place. There will be themes of cartography in this initial spring post, but first I’m offering my impressions of the conference.

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

BURRITO BOYS

“It’s got a nice kick to it”, he said, as I sat down to join him for breakfast. He introduced himself as Mark. He lifted his attendee badge that hung around his neck. It read, Mark Schwartz. We broke the awkwardness by talking men’s basketball. The Kansas Jayhawks, my mom’s beloved team, had recently been eliminated from the NCAA tournament. He informed me he got his PhD from Kansas in 1985 and is now teaching and researching at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in the geography department.

Mark is a climatologist. More specifically, he’s one of the foremost experts in phenoclimatology which looks at the effects of climate change on seasonal variability. We humans look to the calendar to tell us when spring arrives, but what if you’re an ant or a plant? They already know, so phenologists look for the biological responses to seasonal changes. Phenology comes from two Greek words that roughly combine to mean ‘the study of bringing to light’.

Mark co-founded the National Phenology Network (NPN). This is where the world turns to see when spring is officially arriving across the United States. Including journalists. Here’s a story in the Washington Post on this spring’s arrival and the NPN website. It features quotes from Mark.

“‘What I like to tell folks is that you still need to be prepared for considerable variation from year to year. You won’t simply be able to start planting your garden earlier each year…”

Before long, another gray-haired man joined us. I observed older attendees at this conference naturally congregated. Gerontology...from geron and logia (the study of old men). Our new guest introduced himself as Ron. I could tell he was older than Mark and myself and I was right. When I was three years old, in 1968, Ron Abler was getting his PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota. Soon after, in 1971, he was the lead author on an influential geography textbook on spatial organization. He went on to teach and conduct research at Pennsylvania State University and was the President of the AAG from 1985-86. There’s an AAG award named after Ron, the Ronald F. Abler Distinguished Service Honors. Mark was a recipient in 2005.

We were soon joined by another older gentleman, but closer to my age. He introduced himself as Joseph and I read his badge as Joseph Oppong. He was the recipient of the Abler award in 2021 and studies medical geography at North Texas State University. He received his masters in 1986 and PhD in 1992 from the University of Alberta in Canada and his bachelor’s at the University of Ghana in 1982. Joseph was one of a few at the conference of African descent, but like the rest of America the geographic, cultural, and biological diversity of this academic community is increasing. This was apparent in my first session of the first day of the conference.

JUST GEOGRAPHY

The morning before my breakfast with the burrito boys, I attended a panel consisting of four young academic women of Indigenous, Hispanic, Black, and mixed heritage. It included Fantasia Painter, an Assistant Professor of Global and International Studies at UC Irvine, Elyse Hatch-Rivera, a student seeking a law degree at Macalester in Minnesota, Gabriella Subia Smith, a PhD candidate in geography at the University of Colorado, and Dr. Danielle Purifoy, a geography professor at the University of North Carolina with a law degree from Harvard.

Fantasia’s paper: Our Lands, Your Lines: How Inter and Intra National Borders Try and Fail to Contain Indigenous Land. She argues “that inherent in the idea of “the desert” is the undoing of the settler colonial bordering project. This is not a desert. This is O’odham land.” 

Elyse’s paper: The Right to Secure: The 100 Mile Border and the Making of a Carceral Geography. She “explores the emergence of the 100-mile border zone (HMBZ) in order to argue that the U.S. has expanded its borders inward and redefined notions of national security and our modern understanding of human rights.”

Gabriella’s paper: The Evolution of Colorado's Third District. She argues “Looking at the evolution of congressional districts can help us to better understand both the possibilities for equitable political representation and the limits of borders for fixing politics in place.”

Danielle’s paper: Setting [Futile] Boundaries: Black Municipalities in the White Settler State. She uses two case studies showing how decades work of “scholars of law, geography, and political science have taken up the social, political, and environmental impacts of this largely white municipal practice of geopolitical exclusion on Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities.”

Here’s a video of Fantasia introducing herself and her work at UC Irvine

The conference theme was Toward More Just Geographies and this session was a fitting kick-off. It was titled Futile Borders: Why Borders Fail and How Borders Function in the Incomplete Project of Settler Colonialism. These scholars, all of whom have a legal focus to their work, challenged the popular and simplified notion of borders as articulated in both popular culture and the legal text of the United States. They drew attention to the violence these words perpetuate through legal acts of interdiction, deterrence, and deportation.

The panel description cites research pointing to “[s]ettler state violence and legal-spatial violence” that “permeate borders through border enforcement practices of surveillance and detention and also through attempts to map over Indigenous lands and nations by creating colonial certainty over jurisdiction and national membership.”

While these laws exists to protect the rights of some “it is through law, legal decision-making, and formal processes, policies, and practices that legal-spatial border violence is enacted and sustained.” It is the law, as currently written, that “help to form, manage, and control borders and mobility [that] weaponize state violence and operate to assert settler legal authority.”

During the discussion, one of the presenters positioned legal text as a form of fiction that feature fantasy borders on maps that ignore the non-fiction realities of plant and animal existence, persistence, and relationships – including with humans. These fictions provide the “legal reach of the state [to] extend externally and outwards in order to preserve imperial power while regulating and restricting immigration and mobility through racialized strategies.”

This panel was a powerful introduction to the conference. It featured perspectives of bright, ambitious academic women of color who are bringing miles and piles of fresh knowledge to the academy and students. Many similar sessions were offered by women and BIPOC scholars who seek to challenge traditional institutional geographic histories, knowledge, and perspectives pervasive in the field of geography. I attended at least one a day for five days straight, but there were so many I couldn’t attend them all.

The field of geography, and cartography in particular, was invented in large part to discern and delineate the natural world for the purpose of dispossession and ownership of land and people for and by private and government actors. As one attendee told me, “Cartography barely has a just leg to stand on.” Consequently, these forums and platforms act as a mirror to the discipline of geography. They offer opportunities for scholars and practitioners to become more self-aware, reflective, and critical of geography’s past and future. If sustained, this focus, attention, and prioritization of pluralized perspectives has the power to transform the discipline – to tilt the world toward more just geographies.

It’s a tilting earth that brings about seasonal change. Mark Shwartz and his team of geographers maintain a map that chronicles the bringing of light to the natural world. It offers no human bias, no imperial agenda, and reveals just how fictional borders really are. Phenoclimatology reveals human-induced climate change is causing spring’s arrival to become increasingly meteorologically erratic and extreme.

Many scholars at this conference pointed to how settler-state induced human and environmental violence have contributed to these climatic changes. They also showed how these forms of legal, economic, and spatial geographies are causing increasingly erratic and extreme societal injustices and imbalances. They’re chronicling and remapping a discipline by bringing light to the world of geography.

Hello Interactors,

I’ve been delayed getting this one out after being hit with a stomach bug. But I’m back in business and back to looking at urban behavior. This time, I dig into a power law that proves a Geographer right (again) while making the dizzying array of diversity in human urban mobility look shockingly similar.

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

A THEORY CENTRALLY PLACED

A few days after meeting with a group concerned with rapid urban development, I found myself in another meeting, in the same room, with a group who thinks it’s not rapid enough! Meanwhile, Washington state legislators are proposing and passing legislation aimed at addressing the impacts of increased population growth, housing shortages, and transportation.

We were meeting to discuss what kind of housing density and transportation infrastructure is necessary to get people walking, biking, or rolling within 10-15 minutes of their nearest store or transit stop. As I wrote last month, getting people to drop their car is easier said than done. For starters, people need jobs and businesses to walk to in the first place. However, businesses only thrive when there are enough customers to keep them alive. More potential customers walking, biking, or rolling only comes when there is more dense housing.

Like that found in downtown Paris. Over the last three years Mayor Anne Hidalgo has been made famous championing the 15-minute city concept. She’s restricted car use to certain areas and has built hundreds of miles of bike lanes. Her efforts made the Paris core so desirable property value increases started to squeeze poorer people out of the area. In response she built affordable housing.

However, just outside this urban core Paris continues to remain car dependent. The same can be said for Olso. In fact, despite 75% of Europeans living in dense cities, while also declining in population, their major cities continue to sprawl.

There are many variations of land use and transportation configurations around the world, but they all emerge toward, or are influenced by, by central place theory. This concept was developed in 1933 by the German geographer, Walter Christaller and became influential in how cities were planned around economic activities.

To illustrate the concept, he drew an array of hexagons each with their own center around a center hexagon representing a core city center. Imagine a hexagonal flower. He used this diagram to then describe these three principals governing behavior within and between geographic regions:

Consumer choice. Each of us have a choice to make around much time and money we’re willing to spend to arrive at a particular destination. Like any forager, we can choose the cheapest path at a risk of reducing our choices of goods or we can invest in a longer journey in exchange for more or better choices.  

Firm agglomeration. A company offering goods to these consumers must decide whether to operate further away from their competition or cluster nearby. They’d be sharing more customers while also saving in delivery costs other economies of scale.

Functional hierarchy. As with natural systems, complex hierarchies emerge from these actions that are self supporting and become embedded in the environment. When governmental and commercial power is concentrated, functional hierarchies are strong. When power is diffuse and distributed individual agency weakens the hierarchy.

Christaller theorized that if a person within a hexagonal cell sought a good or service, they would first seek one within their boundaries if available. He added that if this cell happened to be the center cell, home to the densest population and services, the resident would rarely leave their own cell for routine activities. We’ll call ‘shopping within my own cell’ level-one.

If the service is not available within their hexagonal cell, they’d decide to go to next nearest cell with the available service. Let’s call that level-two. Those in level two most likely would go to the center cell, the city center, given it has the most consumer choice due to agglomeration. It is also relatively nearby.

Those living in level-three hexagons likely travel to the center cell for some activities and the level-two cells for others. Should they choose level-two instead of the center, more than one level-two cell may contain the same service within the same or similar distance. It’s assumed some of the people will choose one location some of the time and others the other location another time.

This model fits with my experience recently when our roof started leaking amidst a torrential downpour. Living in a tier-two area, I had two Home Depot stores equidistant from my home from which to purchase a pump. Each within their own tier-two areas featuring agglomerated retail.

I needed to quickly siphon swelling standing water from our flat roof that has recently acted more like a tub. The website said the one to the north had three pumps in stock, so off I went. Nope, there was no product to be found. So off to the one toward the south. They had one, though the website said they had none. My cost of travel more than doubled, but at least my drip stopped!

It was the ‘functional hierarchy’ of city planners, developers, and politicians that used central place theory to place these agglomerations of stores where they are. It’s the same theory used to decide where hospitals, fire stations, and Starbucks should go.

A LAW CENTRAL TO THE THEORY

For decades geographers and city planners have primarily used one of two laws to determine these locations and the movement of people between regional levels. One is called the gravity law and the other the radiation model. Both methods have a fundamental flaw in that they only consider aggregations of residents moving across the region. This doesn’t afford the ability to look at the frequency of individual trips to a given location. There are other models that look at fine grained behavior, but they lack the ability to then consider the patterns of the larger population.

But in 2021, a group of spatial, urban, and complexity scientists landed on a preferred method. What they discovered is central place theory is more than a theory. Using anonymized cell tower time stamp data from cell phones, they were able to determine individual origins and destinations across a large region and population. They divided the study area into a grid and counted how many times people entered a given cell. This provided them with frequency of trips to and from various destinations – the granular data amidst an aggregate that has thus far been missing.  

They found, with astonishing regularity, what Christaller assumed. Both frequency and distance to a destination are the sole determining factors in predicting behavior. For example, people travel a museum or mall less frequently and may travel a great distance to get there. Their data shows that not only are these special function locations visited less frequently, they address a larger radius of travel distances. The travel distance per visit is thus inversely proportional to the visitation frequency.

The opposite is also true. Trips to more common destinations, like a grocery store or restaurant, are not only visited more frequently, but they are visited in higher numbers by those living nearby. Their data also supports Christaller’s notion of functional hierarchy. Travel between the various levels of hierarchy is supported by both consumer choice and the agglomeration of services. It also out performed both the gravity law and radiation model.

What is most miraculous is these findings are consistent regardless of the city scale or location. Singapore, Boston, Dakar, Lisbon, Toyko, New York, you name it, they all exhibit these universal visitation power laws. The results were so surprising it prompted the authors to state,

“Given the extensive literature on and detailed analyses of movement and transport in cities, it is surprising that the simple but powerful visitation law derived here had not yet been discovered.”

It should be noted, however, not everyone can afford a cell phone. So, this data, and the power law, reflect the strong functional hierarchy embedded in our cities. That is, our cities have been planned and built by powerful functional social hierarchies that encourage clustering of businesses to efficiently allow for consumer choice for those with greater means. I wonder what patterns emerge for those without cell phones and less served by nearby services. It would sure raise questions of equity.

I’m also curious how this breaks down by mode of transportation. That is, how many trips were by car or transit and how many were by walking or biking. Their results are robust scaling from grid cell sizes 250m to 2km. Though they admit the model wouldn’t perform at smaller levels.

Two-hundred and fifty meters is about three city blocks. That’s less than a 10- or 15-minute walk. The frequency law they uncovered would suggest if sufficient and attractive services were agglomerated within a short walk people would choose them for many trips over a further distance. But as Central Place Theory states, this requires sufficient agglomeration and density. The data reveals that sprawling Greater Boston has a wide distribution of distance covered to destinations relative to number of visitors compared to dense Singapore where the distance covered is more concentrated. If the data included elevation, it would reveal more Singaporeans also travel more up and down high rises for daily activities than those in Greater Boston! A vertical 10-minute neighborhood.

For a walkable 10-15 minute city or neighborhood to exist will likely require all three elements highlighted by central place theory. For walking to be a consumer choice, agglomeration is needed. The cluster of businesses can only be justified when there is a sufficient number of consumers. The only way consumer density can occur is if it is zoned and built into the fabric of the region’s functional hierarchy. Just this week the state of Washington passed a bill legalizing duplexes or fourplexes in areas historically zoned for single-family homes only. Should it become law, will it provide sufficient density to spawn a corner grocer, a neighborhood bakery, or hardware store? Or will the price of eggs, muffins, and lightbulbs keep people driving to Costco?

Lawmakers may hold the power to pass the laws, to strengthen the functional hierarchy which includes zoning for more density. We control our own consumer choice. But it will all come down to developers building density and firms agglomerating. Meanwhile, one law has been passed — the universal visitation power law of human mobility.

Hello Interactors,

I’ve recently been sucked into a conflict over the fate of a cherished section of our small downtown area. Emotions ran hot, but I think they ought not. Everyone has reasons for why they react they way they do, but I wondered what they are. I don’t like seeing distress, so into the rabbit hole I went.

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

IS IT A PARK OR A LANE?

I walked into the room hearing the end of this tirade, “WHAT DOES SHE KNOW? I’VE LIVED HERE FIFTEEN YEARS AND SHE’S BEEN HERE SIX MONTHS? HOW DARE SHE THINK HER OPINION MATTERS AS MUCH AS MINE!” The room was tense, people were nervous, and this was the first hour of the first day of two weeks of daylong 15-minute stakeholder ‘listening sessions.’

Our city government hired a consultant to determine the fate of less than one block, about 200 feet, of our quaint little downtown business district. It’s a stretch of road was once called Commercial Street. This offers a clue as to what the original city organizers had in mind for this strip of concrete just steps from Lake Washington. A ferry once docked there bringing affluent Seattle folks to shop at the local J. C. Penny’s and buy fresh produce. Now they drive over a floating bridge to buy multi-million-dollar lakefront homes.

The 1970s brought a rebuilding of this area. Local entrepreneurs refurbished dilapidated downtown stores, paved over of marshlands to make parking lots, and renamed Commercial Street to Park Lane. Select members of the organizing committee envisioned a pedestrian-oriented, tree-lined boulevard. Instead of a road, there was talk of regreening the creek that once fed the marshland at the shore’s edge but had since been channeled in a culvert underground. In the end, the road was preserved and made to be one-way with angled on-street parking on each side. More of a lane than a park.

But nature has a way of protesting. For decades the subterranean slough cracked and buckled the streets, the trees became waterlogged and diseased, and maintenance was troublesome and routine. In 2015 the city beefed up a water pump, remodeled Park Lane in the image of a Dutch ‘Living Street’ – a road that puts cars and pedestrians at the same level so the space may be shared. The roadway is curved or has obstacles to slow cars to the pace of the people.

In the Netherlands, you’ll sometimes find two or four spots for parking or deliveries on a stretch this long. Park Lane has seventeen. The Dutch would have a hard time calling this a true ‘Living Street’. It’s more like a small parking lot with a meandering lane down the middle.

But it is far better than a conventional road. It features bioswales to absorb floods of runoff and restaurants have just enough space for limited outdoor seating. Like so many other restaurants around the world, that seating was expanded when COVID hit. In a controversial move, the city allowed restaurants to spill into the parking spaces during select times, blocked cars from entering the lane, and gave the entire space over to pedestrians.

Now that emergency COVID measures have lifted and people – and cities – are attempting a nostalgic return to a so-called ‘normal’, a decision needs to be made on the future of Park Lane. It seems many residents, if not most, would like to see Park Lane as some did in the 1970s – a more natural, people-oriented place. Not a parking space. But not everyone agrees.

The business owners have mixed opinions. Some restaurants enjoyed the increased revenue, some had trouble scaling staff, and others are indifferent. Retailers and service providers care less about what happens after hours. They support whatever restaurants want in the evenings, but are adamant parking remain during business hours.

Like so many places around the world, Park Lane has become a contested public space. It’s an area zoned for commercial use, so business and property owners believe their opinions should be given priority. But this area is also contained within a much larger neighborhood filled with a growing number of residents who believe their opinions matter most. The neighborhood sits within a city, surrounded by a county, encompassed by a federally mandated regional metropolitan planning organization (MPO), which coordinates between the federal, state, and many local governments on how best to grow. All of which are in a state united with others under the power of a federal government.

The citizen run, and city government ordained, neighborhood association has a neighborhood plan with multiple policies calling for fewer cars, less parking, and more – and safer – transit, biking, and walking. And so does the city’s master plan.

Meanwhile, the city competes with neighboring cities to attract more businesses which bring more revenue. This city has also applied to the MPO for this downtown area to be delegated a ‘Regional Growth Center’ which will bring denser housing, many more people, and a chance to qualify for federal funding. The population of this area is expected to double over the next 12 years bringing more diversity of people and business.

A decision is pending in June on the fate of how these 200 feet of public space will be used. But in many ways, this is a proxy for a larger battle brewing throughout the city, the county, the region, and the state — just as in many other cities worldwide. As expected, sides form and tribes align between business alliances, citizen coalitions, and property rights guardians. It’s getting tense, people are nervous, some are scared, and everyone wants to get their way. This is emblematic of the last few years and perhaps the first of many in decades to come. Get ready for more ‘listening sessions.’

NIMBYS GO BANANAS

Notice I used the word ‘battle’ to describe this ordeal. It’s a popular metaphor. There’s a book called ‘Street Fight’ about these conflicts over space, and another called ‘Neighborhood Defenders’. You can subscribe to a podcast called the ‘The War on Cars’. What is it about place that makes people want to defend it or upend it like a battlefield? Why not append it or amend it like a constitution? Or tend it and mend it like a garden?

There’s a pejorative term for those attempting to protect a place from change, NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard). For a variety of reasons, they feel compelled to protect their property against any nearby changes that might impact them, their property, or their values. Like anyone who has a pejorative term attached to them, they reject it.

When confronted, they might say things like, “It’s not that I’m against more space for walking, but…” or “It’s not that I’m against renewable energy, but…” or “It’s not that I don’t like Black people, but…” And the ‘but’ is usually followed by a proposed project nearby that makes them uncomfortable. Sometimes this can become extreme and people go BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone).

(Below is a video that illustrates what many public comments sessions sound like)

But curiously, some research shows a different NIMBYISM can exist called “inverse NIMBY syndrome.” It’s been shown that some who live near certain developments can sometimes be more accepting than those living further away. They have the most intimate knowledge, experience, and discourse allowing them to cope better with the change.

YIMBYs (Yes In My Back Yard) are often critical of NIMBYs because they believe these folks are just ignorant of the facts. Researchers call this ‘information deficit’ and it can inspire proponents of new projects to attempt to educate the opposition in hopes of persuading them. But there’s data that shows NIMBYs can often be very well informed and oppose projects not on lack of facts, but out of self-interest. They may even agree on the facts but reject the change on personal grounds. However, this is also problematic as it’s been shown that often times the ‘self-interest’ argument masks larger issues around self-perpetuating social, racial, or economic inequities.

That is, while they may have a right to reject a proposed project, they may be doing so from a position of unfair power. They have an individual right, but they also have a duty to their fellow society members. Individual rights are granted only when their duty to fairly honor the rights of others are observed.

What is at the root of one’s desire to protect a place? Research in the field of environmental psychology claim these people are not just protecting a place, they’re protecting their own identity which is associated with that place. Their defense, sometimes aggressive, may be a coping mechanism stemming from denial of eventual, inevitable change. There is a fear that a potential disruption of a coveted place could lead to a potential disruption in their life.

The questions I put forth in the survey last week are a common method of getting at this sense of identity attached to place. Eleven out sixteen Interactors said they agree or strongly agree that they feel the place they call home is a part of them. When asked if they identify strongly with this place five out of fifteen were neutral, four agreed, and three strongly agreed.

I’m reminded of these sayings, ‘you can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl’ or ‘home is where the heart is.’ These strong, emotional associations can either emerge from within or be reflected by society. For example, “I feel like Rome is a part of me” versus “I feel completely Roman.” These attitudes and behaviors can also develop, morph, and strengthen over time. Communication, language, and how a place is portrayed in media and politics can also influence individual differences in how one identifies with a place.

When these places are disrupted naturally (like natural disasters and fire) or by humans (like burglaries, voluntary migration, or redevelopment projects) people experience psychological trauma. Just the fear of changes to a place or threats of loss can induce anxiety. This can be revealed or compounded over time contributing to multiple stages of grief.

COPING WITH THE CONCRETE

Researchers have uncovered a three-stage process of trauma associated with disruption of place:

* Pre-disruption: Anticipating possible outcomes or imagining potential futures.

* Disruption: Immediate feelings of anxiety and grief from loss or disruption.

* Post-disruption: Anxiety associated with adapting to change.

These are often found to correspond with varying levels and stages of ‘emotional volatility’ from shock of the eventuality of change, to anger and depression of the actual event, to residual feelings that come with coping with post-change adjustments.

In the case of natural disasters or fires these stages of trauma can be sudden, pronounced, and rushed, while urban redevelopment projects can stretch these emotions over months or years. How those who are impacted communicate with one other, and those around them, can influence the collective and individual emotional volatility.

One way of managing these emotions is to manage the communication. One technique used in Europe more than the United States is a socio-psychological approach called social representation theory. This involves sitting down with groups of people to first orient them to their own shared beliefs and knowledge – an anchoring. With a shared understanding, new abstract concepts and ideas are then presented in concrete ways that associate change with their shared understanding – objectifying change. The group can then have a conversation over which elements represent threats and which offer opportunities.

Patrick Devine-Wright is a professor of human geography at the University of Exeter who incorporates environmental psychology into his research. He believes social representation theory offers a holistic approach to understanding and reducing the adverse psychological effects that come with changes in place. He proposes a staged approach that considers both the social and psychological factors associated with place-based conflicts and traumas.

It starts with becoming aware of what kind change in a place might occur. With a shared awareness, the next stage is interpreting the potential implication to the proposed change. The shared interpretation leads to evaluating the potential outcomes, both positive and negative. Addressing the inevitable stress and anxiety that can come with these results, he moves to coping – how one can deal with change in a healthy way. And the final stage is acting on those healthy means of coping.

He believes this

“framework provides a psychological account of public responses that should be seen within a larger multi-disciplinary context of economic, political and sociological factors that shape the histories of places, the policies and procedures shaping development and the abilities of individuals and groups to actively support or oppose change.”

I think he’s on to something. As I consider how local governments announce public projects, seek public input, and execute on new projects, I see how each stage of his proposed process is either side-stepped, performed inadequately, or unintentionally avoided. It’s no wonder sides get formed, emotions run high, and frustrations, distrust, and anxieties become perpetually present with each propose change to public space.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but is it impossible? Perhaps it is. It takes concerted effort to hold even the most rudimentary public forums to discuss propose changes to place. It may be even harder now knowing how divisive civic discourse has become. I can see where cities would rather not even ask.

Perhaps cities shouldn’t do on their own. It could be that the process professor Devine-Wright devised is both divine and righteous. If I squint at his process, it looks a lot like a well-functioning democracy by the people, for the people, so long as it’s executed by a government that cares for people. But expecting that to occur brings about my own kind of frustration, fear, and anxiety!

I’ve been sucked into this problem, so how am I coping? I’m starting by sharing in hopes of gaining a shared understanding. I’m working to interpret the implications of changing our little Park Lane and evaluating the potential outcomes. I’m trying to do it with people I know may be suspicious of me or what I believe. But I know change is coming because the only thing permanent is change. So I’m doing my best to cope, aid others with how they may cope, and encouraging actions that can reduce our collective psychological trauma. Maybe you can too!

Hello Interactors,

I asked you last week how you get your groceries. It led to some good discussions! Thanks to all who contributed to the poll and left comments. This question was prompted by recent local events in my town around why more people don’t walk to shop when they can. But it raised bigger questions in my mind about how other animals seek food and how we’re different. It turns out our brains have evolved to work nearly 99% like rats and raccoons. And those living in a city may have an edge over country folk.  

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

CITY SLICKERS AND COUNTRY BUMPKINS

We have an outdoor camera that sometimes captures nighttime activity of our animal neighbors. A mouse here, a rat there, here a rabbit, there a rabbit, everywhere a rabbit, rabbit. Recently the camera caught our racoon friends sniffing around. Cute little things, and crafty too.

I mentioned my encounter with raccoons in week one of Interplace two years ago. They were politely rolling back the turf on our lawn in search of grubs…which were happily feasting on the roots underground. I would roll the turf back in place and a few days later those little rascals would pull it back again. I installed a sprinkler with a motion detector to scare them away. That worked for a while.

Until one evening I heard the sprinkler go off. I ran to see if I could spot them. There one of them sat perched on their haunches, arms to their sides staring at me in the doorway. Water was dripping from their perked ears, un-phased by the staccato rat-a-tat-tat beat of the oscillating sprinkler. A nice moisturizer for their furry frocks. Spa day in the lawn. Made complete with earthly scented, protein-packed pupae. I removed the lawn, and with it the grubs, but the raccoons still come sniffing for a snack.

Raccoons are notoriously smart critters. And these raccoon visitors, and their family and friends, are getting smarter the more my sleepy suburban town of Kirkland, Washington becomes increasingly urbanized. Comparative psychologist Suzanne MacDonald at York University in Toronto studies the behavior of raccoons. She hopes to uncover ways for us to coexist. She conducted a multiyear project tracking raccoons with GPS-collars in urban and rural settings. One location was in an area that had overlapping travel boundaries for both rural and urban raccoons.

She baited two different containers. One was a container familiar to both city and country coons – a trash can with a bungie cord securing the lid.  The other was a novel container to both – a bucket suspended 30 cm above ground by ropes tied to nearby trees. What she found surprised her. Both the rural and urban raccoons were able to deplete the weird hanging bucket with ease. The situation may have been novel, but once they got to the bucket it was relatively easy to extract the food. But the trashcan, while more familiar, proved to be a problem for rural racoons.

She recorded 17 of the 22 urban raccoons successfully consumed the contents of trashcan, but not one rural racoon could successfully rid the familiar trashcan of its bungie cord despite multiple attempts. The urban raccoons demonstrated they were better at experimenting, iterating, and manipulating the can. This was as true for males as females, old and young – as young as five or six months old. She speculates that “Persistence, neophilia [the love of new things], and high levels of exploratory behavior may result in increased survival and reproduction in the urban setting, and thus we may be observing cognitive evolution in action in this species.” Cities, it seems, have made them, and their offspring, smarter.  Which could explain why they continue to flourish in the face of increasing human induced urbanization and climate change while extinctions of other species grow by the day.

Ok, fine, we’re talking about racoons. What about humans? Yep, similar evidence has been found for humans. Educational psychologists recently conducted a study in Brazil between rural and urban children comparing cognitive abilities. They found both wealthy and poor kids from urban areas scored better on two separate intelligence measures than poorer kids from rural areas. They didn’t have sufficient data to make claims about heritability and admit the small sample size doesn’t make the findings conclusive, but they did confirm what is already known about the brain. The more novel experiences it encounters, the more capable it becomes at dealing with them. City raccoons, like human city dwellers, are exposed to more novel situations and volatile environments. It seems they’re cognitively, and possibly evolutionarily, rewarded for it.

My sprinkler was no match for those silly, city raccoons.

A CAT IS A CAT IS A CAT

Our senses are feeding our brain an incomprehensible amount of information as we interact with people and place. Brains are like a biological statistical learning machine making inferences based on cascading levels of probability of risk and reward. It’s seeking a path with the fewest surprises as a way of optimizing performance and survival amidst an environment of infinite variability. An environment for which it is tightly coupled. Our brain actively constructs a model of the environment for which is exists; against which it infers probabilities for survival in a myriad of situations over space and time and then stores the information in DNA.

These neural inferences are happening constantly in the background of our lives so often and so quickly we’re not even conscious of them. The neuroscientist John Krakauer offers examples in the form of anticipatory postural adjustments – small micro movements our body makes in anticipation of situations our brain has inferred on our behalf.

He says,

“I can have you hold onto a handle and just crouch while holding onto it and then unbeknownst to you, suddenly the handle will pull on you and you'll have a very quick intelligent, reflective response to stay from falling over.”

“Now I put a cup of coffee in your right hand and do the same thing. Your very short latency reflective response will take into account that you're holding a coffee cup in your right hand and your quick reflective anticipatory postural adjustment will be intelligent and will change in the context of having that conversation. You have no conscious idea about what you just did. You have no concept that you did it, you have no conscious awareness of it, but you made a flexible adjustment that was very intelligent.”

But Krakauer believes the human brain is more than just an advanced statistical reasoning mechanism. He agrees our brain shares similar control of our biomechanical structures as other animals. And he admits the brains of a mouse, rat, rabbit, or raccoon are all just as miraculously marvelous, cunning, and adaptable as the human brain. However, he also believes we are distinct from every animal on the planet. He said,  

“…if you are a cat in Istanbul and you are a cat in Boston, you basically look exactly the same. You do very similar things. There may be some adaptations, but a cat is a cat. Whereas humans can be trapeze artists, they can be machine learning programmers, they can be composers.”

He believes some mutation in our brains occurred in our evolution, and we don’t know what, where, or when it happened. He doubts we ever will given none of the species of humans that connect us to primates survived. But something enabled us to dominate the animal world; harness, hoard, and destroy resources – and potentially slow or accelerate our own extinction. That certainly would make us unique to other animals.

As Krakauer says,

“you can be intelligent in many different ways using really smart dumb algorithms that get 99% of the lifting required to exist on this planet…”

But what about that 1%? There’s a lot packed into that tiny fraction of difference in humans that makes our behavior so bewildering. It’s what keeps rats, he demurs, from “ever having to do podcasts, write books, and send probes up into space.”

LAZY RATS

It’s easy to imagine the probability algorithms at work as those rural and urban racoons wrestled with that garbage can. Curiosity, the attraction to novelty, can get one in trouble, but it also has its rewards. Rewards help teach us and condition us to behave in particular ways. The classic rat and pigeon experiments of the 1960s and 70s by the behaviorist B. F. Skinner taught us the principle of reinforcement – that future behaviors can be reinforced and even strengthen when a certain action is rewarded.

Skinner, and many others since, showed rats are more willing to pull a level many times, or harder, or longer, to get a reward than feast from a free buffet. It’s the same mechanism at work in game design, gambling, and other addictions – like drugs. Or those little icons that count your likes and number of new emails in your inbox. Stimulus, response, reward, repeat. How addictive.

It made me wonder how hard we work for our food. My shabby little survey last week revealed 53% of 34 Interactors drive a car for their food. Another 32% walk, 9% take a bike, and 6% find another way. Nearly three quarters of these respondent’s report living less than one mile (1.6 km) from a grocery store. That’s roughly a twenty-minute round trip walk for an able-bodied adult without many hills, wind, sleet, snow, or heavy items.

I then asked why drive when one could walk? Sixty-seven percent (~23 of 34) said they include grocery shopping with other car trips. And 22 percent clicked my cheeky choice claiming they are ‘lazy.’

That choice got me in trouble with my former statistics professor. He commented, “Oh dear, Brad, I guess I should have taught you a little better on survey design. I'm lazy? Talk about a loaded question!” Loaded indeed. I asked him to expand on why such a question is loaded. He’s written many academic papers on exactly why it’s hard to pin down travel choice behavior.

He said, “so much depends on individual attitudes, perceptions, beliefs.” Right there we see three words raccoon, rat, and cat researchers don’t (yet) deal with. He notes, “These [elements] are hard to observe and can vary from individual to individual in ways that are not necessarily correlated with the easily observed things like age and income of the traveler, and cost and time of the trip.”

But there’s more…

“Layer in constraints that are in theory observable but in practice costly to collect – and that vary in a chaotic fashion from trip to trip and day to day…” Much travel choice research also relies on surveys that require participants to recall or predict their behavior…both of which are notoriously flawed and often inaccurate.

But then he gets into what I think is a particularly stubborn trait of humans – “the effects of habits that are hard to dislodge…” My professor admitted to driving to get groceries when he could walk or bike. Clearly, he didn’t choose ‘lazy’ on the poll, and he rightfully should not. He has good reasons for using a car and they’re probably shared with many other people.

Car drivers can sometimes get cast as being lazy. If given the choice of acquiring food with least effort, why not take the car? But wait, what about rats preferring to work for food? They surely wouldn’t take a car if given the choice, right? Wrong.

Researchers out of Virginia found that rats trained to take a custom-made car to get food were less stressed than those who did not. It was even more calming for driver than the passenger. They also found the only rats successful at achieving this task were raised in a more complex environment, complete with more novel environmental stimulation — like a city.

Researchers wondered if these rats were getting the same satisfaction from learning a new skill, we humans get. A reward in the form of satisfaction, stress reduction, and what psychologists call agency – the ability to read a situation and make decisions that best suit your goal.

A human’s choice to drive requires money. The act of driving is lazy compared to the labor required to own or rent one. Forget for a second the effort of learning to drive. Even a rat can learn to drive. Consider instead the amount of work required to amass the necessary money to purchase, own, operate, insure, and store a car. That says nothing of the labor required to build it and repair it. Or consider the labor needed to build the infrastructure required to operate it. The labor of first responders called to the scene of horrific collisions.

That is a lot of lever pulling for the reward of private car ownership. It’s hard to call car owners and drivers ‘lazy’ given how much labor goes into owning and operating them. And this says nothing of the satisfaction amassed in the social status or the pleasure of being propelled through space with little to no effort.

I suspect the more the car is used, the more reinforced the behavior becomes. Heck, it may even become an addiction. I, for one, have found the less I use my car the less rewarding it is to own or drive one. I admire them, use them when I need to, and remind myself of the privilege to own and drive one. But the less I drive, less rewarding it is. I’d rather walk if I can. As an urban animal walking, I encounter more novel situations, more environmental stimulus, and thus more cognitive stimulation. Just like a rat, I have agency. It’s making me smarter, right? I think not, I can’t even out smart a raccoon.