Oath of fealty and our HiDWON future

Sci Fi novel by Niven and Pournelle - Oath of Fealty. Our future?
photo Amazon.com

by Gregory Saville  

The world has 8,172,746,366 people and, since I wrote that sentence a moment ago, it has grown by tens of thousands. It grows every second. While the rate of growth is slowing, estimates place the global population at 10 billion by mid-century. Where, and how, will all those people live?

In many countries, housing and rental costs have skyrocketed. And in a country with an ethos of the “American Dream”, (now adopted in China as the “Chinese Dream”) the single-family home is becoming a thing of the past. In my city of Denver, the majority of new buildings comprise tens of thousands of high-density condos, apartments, or townhomes. The new building motto: Fewer cul-de-sacs, more density. 

Sadly, developers construct physical buildings at the speed of light, but they do not understand neighborhoods. When neighborhood planning takes a back seat to the home construction derby, absent any thought of a livable neighborhood, we are left with a bleak future. If you know anything about the history of CPTED, remember the crime catastrophe emerging from 1950s high-density public housing and modernist architecture. If you don't, read Newman’s Defensible Space! 

Giving rise to Newman's Defensible Space, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing apartments in St. Louis in the 1950s, before demolition.
High-density public housing with a new architectural style - modernism. 
- photo US Geological Survey, public domain, via Wiki Commons

HISTORY NEED NOT REPEAT

Are we building another crime-ridden, future catastrophe?

There is no shortage of city utopias in modern design publications. The cities they describe look futuristic and slick. They seldom describe what people will actually do to make ends meet or how they will live surrounded by thousands of others with nowhere to walk. Are there are stories about such places or the consequences of such places? There are indeed and every year, I ask the members of our SafeGrowth network to read a book that tells such a story. It is no utopia!

Larry Niven is an award-winning science fiction writer of the famed Ringworld series, among many other well-known novels. Larry Pournelle worked as an aerospace psychologist before launching into his writing career. Together they published Oath Of Fealty in 1981, a book considered among the top 100 best sci-fi novels. 

Oath of Fealty is a dystopian story set in the near future about a massive high-density structure called Todos Santos – a city within a city – surrounded by a crime-ridden and blighted Los Angeles. Todos Santos is an urban design concept called arcology, originally developed by architect Paulo Solare. In 2010, I wrote Arcosante – Our Future? about an actual arcology under construction in Arizona. 

[Note: I spoke to Paulo Solare in depth about his planning philosophy and I am certain he would be horrified by the Todos Santos style of arcology]. 

Dining area at Arcosante - a real-life arcology under construction in Arizona. Completely different from the arcology depicted in Oath of Fealty
- photo license Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 

TODOS SANTOS IN REAL LIFE

The Todos Santos arcology is miles wide and deep and a half-mile high. Solare told me he imagined arcologies as dense urban beehives with beautiful architecture and plenty of greenery. Because architecture in Todos Santos comprised an enclosed 3-D city constructed as one structure, it is easy to control access and establish territorial control (the basic principles of CPTED). Surveillance in all forms is a simple matter, especially with the permission (the Oath) of residents. Within such a high-tech, massive security castle (think of gated communities on steroids), controllers can protect a million inhabitants with their own security – as long as you swear an oath of allegiance to constant surveillance. 

Liverpool One development in the UK - photo courtesy of Wiki Commons 

In 2014 I wrote a blog titled A Few Years After Tomorrow about a development scheme in the UK to privatize 35 downtown streets, limit public streets, and control safety via a private security force and CCTV. Called Liverpool One, it was as close to Todos Santos as I could imagine back then – private corporations buying up the public realm and controlling security. Today, Liverpool One is now built, albeit with plenty of public access and without the private streets. It is not an arcology, but it does hold the promise of a safer future.

Oath of Fealty suggests that when faced with terrifying blight and crime (or at least the fear of them), a rarified, high-tech, comfortable life within the arcology is worth an oath fealty by residents allowing constant surveillance and monitoring to keep everyone safe. That lifestyle offers security that public police cannot provide because arcology dwellers choose to forgo their anonymity and privacy to secure their safety (at least, in the Todos Santos version). 

 

Promotional painting from the 1927 German film Metropolis - an urban utopia that came true. It looks remarkably similar to large, downtown skyscrapers today. 
- image Wiki Commons 

OUR HiDWON FUTURE

Oath of Fealty also suggests that those inside the arcology are shackled by Big Brother. They forgo their civic responsibility and collaboration with others to ensure safer streets – the very thing we work to reinforce in SafeGrowth programming. Instead, they trust technology and rely, not on each other, but on the Todos Santos corporation. 

It all sounds very AI-like in tone. An electronic parent is always watching...just relax and let your fears subside. Your Oath of Fealty will keep you safe. Trust the massive global expansion of public CCTV and security AI. 

I am calling the new high-density redevelopment movement, which lacks neighborhood building and relies on technology for security, the HiDWON movement (High-Density WithOut Neighborhood). Will this new HiDWON movement lead to Todos Santos-style cities? Is this future really so distant?

On the threshold of a robotics revolution

R2D2 patrolling the street in modern day California?

Whenever I read the classic sci-fi Oath of Fealty I think of that mirror world where privileged  insiders reside behind their technology fortress and the rest of us are the mob at the gates. Except we forget that in Niven and Pournelle’s novel their technology fortress was modeled on an arcology, a real-life creation of walkable, ecological, and community-based cities where people collaborate to survive.

Such is the paradox of security; exclusion vs inclusion is hardwired into the beast.

K5 - a mobile emergency "blue light" station - all photos by ©Knightscope, Inc. 2015

Ultimately intention is the key. It fits no one except cynics to claim human nature makes every invention retrograde. Aerial flight may allow militaries to bomb, but planes also allow millions to travel world-wide and experience cultures in every global nook. That arguably brings us closer together.

ENTER THE K5

K5 is an autonomous data machine - aka, a security robot. Advertised by Knightscope as an autonomous neighborhood crime watch, the K5 appeals to both corporate and community. Tackling the high turnover in the security profession (by some accounts up to 400%), the K5 provide more reliable eyes-on-the street for everything from asset protection to identifying threats like armed intruders in schools. It then contacts police with real-time, reliable data and does so 24/7 without sleeping on duty.

K5 patrolling the Microsoft facility in California - ©Knightscope, Inc. 2015

The online promo describes automatic license plate recognition (for stolen cars), CO2 and temperature sensors (for fire), facial recognition with cameras, and low-light video sensors for night-time property monitoring. The gizmos on this robot are impressive; LIDAR, GPS, inertial and odometer sensors, geo-fencing for autonomous control, directional microphones, proximity sensors, and the list goes on.

I don’t really know what to make of K5: Big Brother’s Techno-Bride or R2D2’s charming bleeps? I suppose, ultimately, intention is the thing. True, removing humans from eyes-on-the street is scary. No doubt the robo-phobics will sound alarms.

On the other hand, who said people had to be removed just because they have their own K5 in their neighborhood?

Night-time patrol with low-light sensors - ©Knightscope, Inc. 2015

Knightscope warns us about epidemic crime. While rates are increasing in some places, crime science and police statistics say the opposite, all of which is beside the point. Even in a time of record-breaking crime declines security needs remain high. What bank doesn’t have security cameras?

Whatever the case, for some reason when I look at K5 I am not reminded of Schwarzenegger’s cyborg in Terminator. I’m reminded of Huey, Dewey and Louie, those cute robot drones from the 70s enviro-sci-fi flick, Silent Running. And they end up saving us from ourselves.

A legend dies

Paulo Soleri died this week at 93. To students of the city he is legend.

Former student of Frank Lloyd Wright, featured in films and books, Soleri created "arcology" long before the eco-sensible married the environment with urban development. To Newsweek his laboratory-city-in-the-desert north of Phoenix - Arcosanti - is "the most important urban experiment undertaken in our lifetimes." Over 50,000 urban design and planning students visit it each year.

Twenty years ago I was one of them. I went to find out what he thought of cities and crime.

Soleri told me he worried about a lack of equity in cities and the social corrosion emerging from it,  a sentiment recently featured in Wilkinson and Pickett's bestseller The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better.

Solari thought we need to remove cars from cities and we need more urban density (the basis of an arcology). Nowadays that's echoed everywhere in urban planning, such as MIT scholar/architect Kent Larson (check out his talk on TED.com)

"What about crime?" I asked him.

"There are very dense European cities with very low crime," he replied. "There are ways to do it right."

"What of policing an Arcology?" I asked.

He thought for a minute and smiled. "Well I guess the first thing would be to leave the guns at the door."

Paulo Soleri. Photo Arizona Daily Star