6 minute read
Trash Track: MIT Senseable City Laboratory
On December 24, 1900, the Boston Globe published a piece imagining what Boston would look like at the turn of the millennium. The illustrated article by Thomas F. Anderson painted an elaborate vision of a city with moving sidewalks, airships soaring high above the streets, and pneumatic tube delivery of everything from newspapers to food. The author’s predictions were imaginative and optimistic, and in retrospect almost comical, yet the perspective of glimpsing the future continues to enchant us.
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Speculations about the future have become a genre in their own right, throughout literature and cinema to architecture, with the common theme of imagining the future of the city. However, these visions almost invariably result in failure - as with the Boston Globe article. Could it be because, when trying to grasp the world of tomorrow, most people, including designers, attempt to accurately depict it?
In this article, we propose to pursue a different path. Our aim is not to portray what is to come. Rather, we intend to employ design in a systematic exploration and germination of possible futures.
The method we put forward is what we call futurecraft. It starts by conceiving future scenarios (typically phrased as “What if?” questions), entertaining their implications and consequences, and sharing the resulting ideas widely, to enable public conversation and debate. What we propose is to distance ourselves from the present condition and to place ourselves in a fictive but possible future context, so as to use the public discussion generated around certain topics to empower citizens and communities. In this way, the future of the city will be created by a plurality of individuals as opposed to single ones.
This method is rooted in a series of earlier attempts to design for the future. Recently, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby at the Royal College of Art in London proposed “speculative design”, a process that acts as a “catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to reality” and considering how things could be. Much before that, in 1956, the American inventor Buckminster Fuller introduced what he called Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science (CADS). Motivating Fuller in his work was a general belief that design, speculation, and science go hand in hand. “The function of what I call design science is to solve problems by introducing into the environment new artefacts, the availability of which will induce their spontaneous employment by humans and thus, coincidentally, cause humans to abandon their previous problem-producing behaviours and devices”.
Buckminster Fuller’s statement suggests a concept which we might call ‘evolutionary’. As technical culture progresses, objects are produced and refined through design – an act that introduces mutations to improve a function or enable a new capability. On a broad scale, these mutations collectively promote change and development, and each one of them represents a potential improvement in everyday life. Following Buckminster Fuller’s reasoning, we can think of the designer as what, in biology, is referred to as a mutagen – an agent of mutation. Although mutations in the natural world
are random, the designer has knowledge and skillset to produce targeted, specific mutations. This activity is precisely what we think of as futurecraft.
Designers must not force their ideas into the world – in fact, whether or not an idea is realized is largely irrelevant. When it is being stated, explored, and debated, a concept will necessarily make an impact. These specific mutations are tested in urban space and subjected to public debate, a process that functions like natural selection in biology. The public will eventually drive the development toward the most desirable future.
The method and the function of futurecraft are best shown in specific examples. Trash Track, a 2009 project by the MIT Senseable City Lab, imagined a future scenario in which geo-locating devices become so small and inexpensive that almost everything could be tagged. Researchers proposed a design into that scenario – trash that wirelessly reported its GPS location – and created a full-scale urban demonstration to test it. With the help of hundreds of volunteers, the team deployed thousands of tags into Seattle’s waste management system and watched as the tags traced waste movement across the United States. A set of visualizations and videos revealed the inefficiencies of the disposal chain and were communicated widely through exhibitions, news, and other media.
Figure 2. The Trash Tag
© MIT Senseable City Lab
Figure 3. inGeo CMA8110 CDMA tracking device by Qualcomm
© MIT Senseable City Lab
Figure 4. Packaging Material: Foam and Rubber
© MIT Senseable City Lab
Subsequent discussion and debate has led to systemic improvements by waste management companies, inspired startups that produce trash trackers, and, most importantly, documented behavioral change in citizens who are inspired to reduce their waste and to recycle. Trash Track exemplified a new relationship between designers and the public, demonstrating the power of futurecraft to shape urban development.
Figure 5. Aluminum Can in Seattle In transit for: 1 Days, 18 Hours 11 Minutes. Traveled Distance: 2.5 Miles employed on: SEP 01, 02:00 UTC Last report on SEP 02, 20:11 UTC Destination: Rabanco Recycling Center, 2733 3rd Ave S, Seattle, WA
© MIT Senseable City Lab
Figure 6. Plastic container of liquid soap in New York In transit for: 3 Days, 17 Hours 26 Minutes Traveled Distance: 18.3 Miles Deployed on: SEP 4, 02:00 EST Last report on: SEP 8, 07:26 EST Destination: 786-798 Belleville Turnpike (In transit)
© MIT Senseable City Lab
Figure 8. Composite Map of the Recorded Traces Colored by Waste Type
© MIT Senseable City Lab
The framework of futurecraft is based on four core ideas: that the articulation of future conditions is a hypothetical tool; that future casting is only meant to enable and provoke design; that possible futures are rooted in the present and not in distant, extraordinary visions (which means balancing provocation with strong ties to the world-as-it-is); and finally, that whether or not the imagined scenarios come to pass is irrelevant. We are well aware that, in all likelihood, the future will look different from our “what-if” snapshots, but designing into a projected situation can nonetheless guide us toward a possible and desirable future.
We can consider some of the key forces at play in the city today – from energy to building, from transportation to knowledge sharing. Each of these ultimately deals with citizen empowerment, suggesting the possibility of human participation in operating - and even hacking - the city. The future city will grow from a symbiosis between design and the public. Top-down frameworks are not enough: bottom-up actions are needed to transform urban spaces. There can be no smart city without smart citizens.
It is a fundamental responsibility of design to challenge the status quo, to introduce new possibilities, and ultimately to pave the way for the public to realize a desirable future. Design, as an act of futurecraft, can function as a mechanism for crowdsourcing the future – designers produce mutation, and the public engages in debate, variation, and implementation. By soliciting ideas, and response from citizens we hope that design can move society toward the most desirable outcome. As told with the adage of the computer scientist Alan Kay: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”.
For more information, visit: http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/
Video youtube link: http://youtu.be/fvTZc5hWBNY
Video download link: http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/trashtrack_release.mov
Press materials: http://senseable.mit.edu/trashtrack/press.php?id=5
About Author
MIT Senseable City Laboratory, Massachusetts, United States
Sensable City Laboratory is a research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The research lab focuses on urban imagination and social innovation through design and science. New design approaches are emerging in tandem with the growing urban complexity in today's cities. SCL's mission is to study these urban complexities and anticipate changes by deploying tools that aid in better understanding the cities in the present and future. It follows an Omni-disciplinary research approach that involves designers, planners, engineers, physicists, biologists, and social scientists. To know more about this research initiative and their latest projects visit, http://senseable.mit.edu/
