The Urban Design of Cyberspace: Our Newest Public Right of Way

Over the past several decades our culture has created entirely new dimensions of place that are densely inhabited, and yet, as chaotic as Houston or any favela – cyberplaces in cyberspace.

For a large portion of global population, significant spans of biological time are spent in these new dimensions.  We work there, meet there, lounge there, consume there, circulate junk there, and depend on there for many essential life functions.

Where in the 19th century, if the railroad barons bypassed your town, and in the 1950's if the interstate bypassed your town, the town withered in favor of stops along the new lines of commerce, similarly, in our times - Where IT is not, you can't.

At this moment in time critical infrastructure design decisions are being made regarding the shape of our nation's interactive tele-communications infrastructure.  Tragically, these decisions are often made in a vacuum, in the absence of integrated urban and social development planning.

Remarkably, to date little attention has been paid in urbanism circles in the USA to the design of this critical new infrastructure.

Successful urbanism will, increasingly, address the need to integrate the intentional development of this space for the same reason that it serves the public good to intentionalize the development of traditional eco-systems.

This new element of urban geography is woven into our towns and cities, accommodated in franchises along public rights of way.  In fact, it is at its best, a public right of way.  This obtains in much of the world, and in a few localities in the US.  Sadly, in much of the US, these right of ways are managed like toll-roads, and most aspects of their design, routing, capabilities, costs etc are determined by private entities and without due consideration of the broad public interest.

And yet, the analogy to railroads, telephone systems, and so many other communications systems developed by our society is apt.  In the end, these systems become essential aspects of our culture and economy, generally either publicly owned or regulated.  In fact the basic legal structures for public participation in their design exist.

What is lacking is the language, the culture, even the expectation that this new facility in our urban fabrics will be determinative of our future well-being, and that its design requires integration into our community, cultural and commercial development planning just like roads, ports and other places in between.

Then again, here we are, all of us, witting or unwittingly, making it up as we go along.  These cultural, linguistic and political tools and processes are taking shape – in spite of our lack of coordination and mindfulness around that process.

But here’s the risk and the opportunity:

·         Risk = Tower of Babel Syndrome

o    Independently evolved cultural & linguistic systems often are incompatible, meaning we can’t understand each other, and most importantly, we can’t tile together our datasets in order to enable regional and global networks & patterns.

·         Opportunity = Colloquy

o    Knowing that we are simultaneously inventing these cultural norms and all hoping to generate memes capable of improving the well-being of the communities inhabit, knowing that, we can now choose to collaborate on devising best practices, protocols, and standards allowing locally generated information to contribute to our well-being.