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?

Aerotropolis - Future city today?

Creative lighting at the Detroit airport pedestrian tunnel

by Greg Saville

A thought occurred as I pondered our Chicago SafeGrowth training and the upcoming group projects about work in 4 different cities. SafeGrowth teams in Chicago are tackling crime and disorder at vacant land sites, a small open park along a heavily trafficked roadway, and a historic public square. Hopefully, they can spread this message across more of their city. We will see.

The group projects are all cases where transport routes and locations intersect revealing flaws in local places and the social life of urban spaces. Problems like this point to geography and geography is where I began my academic career.

The study of geography spans medical geography (epidemiology) and climatology to social geography and urban planning. My undergrad studies included all of those, but one of the most interesting was transport geography.

Vancouver International Airport - transport hub with cultural flavor
- photo Flights nation

GEOGRAPHY SHOWS THE WAY

There are no cities without transport geography. Moving people and goods requires organizing our cities and regions through efficient and ecologically sound ways - walkways, trails, roads, bike paths, rail, and airports. Locating neighborhoods, shops and businesses near, or far from, transport routes is the path to urban profit or debt. And poor transport geographies create niches for crime and fear.

Environmental criminology has for years attempted to use the mobility of people as a predictor for crime patterns (arguable, with mixed results). CPTED uses movement predictors of people to prevent high-risk paths and crime hotspots. Clearly, transport geography is a big deal. That led me to ask; Is the modern hub airport a future city?

Detroit's indoor people-mover train

HUB AIRPORTS AS FUTURE CITIES? 

John Kasarda’s Aerotropolis claims the modern airport hub has evolved into a new urban form called Airport Cities. He means the area in and around the airport. Transport Geography journals describe hub-airports as a new kind of city.

I wondered: Are airports not only parts of larger metro areas but, in fact, distinct cities unto themselves? If so, what lessons do they offer our efforts to build safer neighborhoods?

Airports would not exist but for the populations of nearby urban places. Still, I practically live in airports nowadays and I am struck by the layers of complexity in them. They have all forms of urban design - restaurants, health food markets, resting places, hotels, medical facilities, lounging areas, physical fitness areas and spiritual centers for reflection. They have their own transport systems ranging from small trains, buses, moving sidewalks, and shuttles. In other words, a city!

Moving people in creative ways

True, you cannot own property in airports and you cannot actually live in them. And the only reason to go there is to go somewhere else. Yet, as I look at them, they offer fascinating lessons - good and bad - we might consider in planning safer places.

THEY ARE SAFE

First, once you get inside them, modern hub airports are safe. They have CCTV surveillance, electronic access controls, police, and security screening at the entrances. Shootings are rare. Consider the few recent cases like when a crazed gunman shot up LAX or a Fort Lauderdale shooter attacked passengers at the bag claim. All those occurred outside security.

The fact is once you are inside security, shooting risks plummet to near zero. There might be insane people who assault others or bar fights from drunk travelers, but these are quickly squashed by security and police. In modern hub airports you are much safer than most American cities. Guns simply don’t often make it into airports. Gun control, it turns out, works incredibly well! Airports teach us that.

Mother and child - Palm tree arboretum in Long Beach Airport, California

THEY ARE BIG

Second, they are HUGE! Concourse B in Denver is a half mile (1 km) long. Detroit is a mile (1.6 km). The Dubai International Airport is the world’s second largest at over 18,000,000 sq ft, nine times bigger than York’s Grand Central Station. That’s big! It means airports must figure how to transport people quickly and safely.

Their solutions include moving sidewalks, pod-cars, light rail trains, and people-movers (short distance, mini-wheeled trains cheaper than light rail). And they are fast. I travel through long airports quicker than I can walk across a suburban 8-lane intersection at rush hour. Airports can teach us something about urban mobility.

THEY HAVE ART

Denver International Airport murals

Third, there is the art. Airports have been installing murals, paintings, art galleries, music performances, and other displays of local culture. Airports might be for movement, but they realize the importance of de-sterilizing bland places and blank walls with art. Place-making in airports is alive. We should take heed.

In the 1980 sci-fi book Oath of Fealty, the future Los Angeles contains a self-contained mini-city called Todos Santos, a secure arcology built apart from the crime-infested dystopian suburbs of Greater L.A. That fictional Todos Santos reads like an actual modern hub airport.

Oath of Fealty predicted the building of the L.A. subway. Has it also predicted the future of cities based on hub airports? As futurist William Gibson once wrote, the future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed.

Paleo exhibit attracts interest in Chicago

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 few years after tomorrow

There are these new urban regeneration schemes called malls-without-walls, one example being the Liverpool One development in the UK. They bring to mind Oath of Fealty, a science fiction by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. They raise a thought worth pondering.

The Liverpool One land development is owned by the British Duke of Westminster. It privatizes 35 downtown streets and spans 42 acres all controlled by a private security force and CCTV. Of course big shopping malls are not new but they are usually relegated to the suburbs far from the downtown core. Not this one.

LIVERPOOL ONE

The Liverpool One land development project turns a new corner. Costing up to $2 Billion it is a central city shopping mall on steroids - hotels, plazas, shops, golf course, apartment towers, open air designs all policed by private security.

Decades ago Oath of Fealty prophesized a massive high-tech, city-in-a-city called Todos Santos, constructed following race riots and walled away from the chaos of Los Angeles surrounding it.

A thousand feet tall, single-structured super city, Todos Santos residents lived with constant surveillance in return for safety away from the grime, crime and bedlam that was a future Los Angeles. (Imagine the opening sequence of the film Bladerunner). Residents gladly offer up their Oath of Fealty for the benevolent Todos Santos security blanket.

In 1981 Oath of Fealty prophisized a new kind of city

Liverpool One is nowhere near that. It is a mega mall on steroids, not as sophisticated as the futuristic arcology, Todos Santos. It looks like a well-designed, upscale mall. Its private streets are subject to regular city by-laws.

Thus far.

Yet it is more interconnected than most open air malls and has abundant private security and pervasive CCTV. And like all evolutionary trends it exists in a context.

FEAR

Consider the fear triggered from watching the Ferguson mayhem this week, dozens of riots in cities around the world in recent years and, in spite of declining crime rates, millions who now live in gated communities.

In all these contexts there is one constant. Fear! Who wouldn't want to live in a beautiful, secure place of the future?

Consider the comments about Liverpool One by Roy Coleman, criminology faculty at Liverpool University: "The rules for the newly privatised city centre fabricate an ideal citizen - aspirational in consumption and thinking big with urban pride."

That sounds very Todos Santos. It leads me to ask some elephant-in-the-room questions: If we have the resources and desire to build safe mini-cities within cities where people can freely choose to live, is that a good thing? Or if it is such a bad thing, why are so many of them showing up?