Ephemeral Cities
Demographic collapse may shrink them. Ephemeralization may transform them. The experience economy may resculpt them. But cities are empires of human value in all their diversity, richness, and wonder.
Whether Armilla is like this because it is unfinished or because it has been
demolished, whether the cause is some enchantment or only a whim, I do not
know. The fact remains that it has no walls, no ceilings, no floors: it has nothing
that makes it seem a city except the water pipes that rise vertically where the
houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be: a
forest of pipes that end in taps, showers, spouts, overflows.
—Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
For a finite-size flow system to persist in time (to live), its configuration must evolve in such a way that provides easier access to the currents that flow through it.
—Adrian Bejan
In “From City to Civium,” polymath Jordan Hall explores the transformative impact of digital communication, demographic collapse, and ephemeralization on human societies. Specifically, Hall highlights the shift from physical to virtual, which he thinks will profoundly transform urban spaces. Hall argues improved telepresence and deeper digital dasein — Zoom rooms and metaverses — will upend the city's role as a civilization enabler.
In other words, where in-person collisions once created collaborative knowledge and wealth networks, we can now use Starlink to catalyze “super-linear scaling.” In essence, we’ll make digital “cloud” cities where we might find Lando Calrissian, but what is left of meatspace interaction will be something more ideal.
Hall anticipates this transition will lead to a global network connecting more minds. Such will shift people from megacities to interconnected virtual networks, and what remains of the world can be treated differently. But that rather different approach to living among people will evolve humanity and our spaces. In short, more of us will go from living in cities to living in “Civium.”
Hall envisions this harmonious combination of planetary virtual networks and human-scale communities clustered in an arrangement closer to sub-Dunbar tribes. And in Hall’s view, we will (or should) sacralize this new arrangement.
This transition will necessitate reimagining living spaces, governance, economies, and even interpersonal relationships—as we aim to restore the community and personal connections so often lost in urban environments. Hall positions Civium as an evolution (or solution) for fostering responsible environmental stewardship that addresses a cluster of ecological crises and encourages more intimate connections with one’s community and commons.
In short, Hall thoughtfully explores digital technology’s role in shifting humans from urban living to more distributed, intimate, and humane networks.
But I have questions.
A Tale of Two Cities
Am I missing something? I thought.
Jordan Hall is one of those people who probably has at least 15 IQ points on you and me, but at least 60 on the average person. So I want to engage in critical reading out of respect for Hall and the distinct possibility that I’m functioning on some lower rung of the cognitive ladder. In short, I want to engage his vision.
In so doing, I couldn’t help but think of this from Plutarch:
The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.
The Ship of Theseus paradox had sailed into my mind as I read “From City to Civium” not because it’s a perfect analogy between cities and boats, but because it primes the intuition pump.
But first, my understanding of cities is that, no matter how many urban planners you employ or how many visionary mayors run the show, cities, in an important sense, cannot be planned or run. Even Milton Keynes and Brazilia are living systems. Cities are products of Stuart Kaufmann’s twin phenomena — emergence and evolution — and their development through time occurs through an ongoing cascade of adjacent possibles. Behind those twin phenomena are human needs and values, superlinear scaling notwithstanding. On this more later.
Through a thought experiment, we can take any of Jane Jacob’s great American cities—say New York—and understand intuitively that they will change and evolve through time. Let’s imagine a place way up in the tundra where all NYC replacement parts are shipped, reconstituted, and frozen for preservation. (Because people, not things, animate cities, we can acknowledge that these tundra cities would probably be occupied mostly by ghosts—though that would take us too far afield.) The point is only that these cities could, in principle, exist like the Ship of Theseus, which is to exist in two places. Of course, a relevant difference between Greek ships and cities might be that denizens don’t just replace parts: They augment things. Newer, taller buildings. Faster, more energy-efficient taxis. Tastier, more fashionable restaurants. (Or, if a city is in decline, the rate of constituting a parallel tundra city might slow such that Detroitus (Detroit’s twin) might take longer to constitute because Detroit has lost its former dynamism.) In any case, we get a tale of two (probably more) Big Apples when the old elements transition to the tundra as new elements are introduced in Manhattan.
The question is not so much which city should be considered New York, although that’s the core of the classic paradox. Would it matter that the new cities are bigger? Smaller? Different? Indeed, as cities move through time, they are not tundra-ghost-cities and living systems, respectively. 1955 NYC and 2025 NYC will be living cities, but their postboxes, properties, and people are not exactly similar.
Is Hall arguing that the transformation will be so profound that the world’s great cities will soon go the way of Persepolis, Carthage, or Old Tulum? He writes:
Civium is the name that I am giving to a hypothesis: that the most powerful form of network is a properly architected planetary virtual network populated by wholesome, healthy humans who are in intimate relationship with place and each-other.
The transition from city to civium will involve re-building humane places, re-learning how to live properly with each other and our environment, coming into symbiotic relationship with the virtual and re-grounding in the sacred.
This is some heavy-duty idealism. It’s certainly appealing.
Even as we’ve seen the first stirrings of urban depopulation due to zoom and COVID, we have also seen a lot of people behaving badly due to The Screen of Gyges effect. Because Hall elsewhere inspires optimism about self-sovereign identity, improved incentives, reputation systems, and “Sovereignty as a Service,” The Screen of Gyges problems could be mitigated in time. I agree this is possible because, we shape our tools (and rules), and then our tools (and rules) shape us.
Still, I am skeptical of the Civium thesis, in part, because I don’t think anyone knows how to learn, much less re-learn “how to live properly with each other and our environment.” Frankly, such rings of Rousseauvian pabulum around noble savages living in a Garden of Eden that never was.
Such is not to argue that indigenous or sub-Dunbar peoples don’t have wonderful insights and lessons for us—pace Tyson Yunkaporta. It is rather to say we cannot and should not fetishize any human group or stage of psychosocial development. And, indeed, such is not to argue that there won’t be more conservation and communitarian efforts. As I argue in The Social Singularity (2018):
Reconnecting with the earth might not seem like an enterprise, much less a scalable one, but it is. Bioremediators are cleaning up after the Industrial Revolution. Bioarchitects are mimicking nature as they help us live more directly with it. Artisanal farmers produce agriculture on the long tail. Conservationists are exploring and preserving everything from the earth’s wetlands to the wild deserts. Ecotourism is already a multi-billion-dollar industry. As clean energy options are getting better, faster, and cheaper, we’ll enjoy more energy abundance with fewer externalities.
Indeed, I add,
Human beings also need community, but real community is not just being around other people. The invisible threads that bind us together usually start with mutual dependency.
I certainly agree that if we extrapolate the threefold braid of digital communication, demographic collapse, and ephemeralization, we’re likely to see a decidedly more solarpunk state of affairs—one that will change the character of cities. My next question, though, is whether and to what extent that state of affairs will obviate the city and whether the rise of Civium is a prediction or a plan.
Reimagining What and How
Assuming an evolutionary transition “from city to civium,” how much of the reimagining implicit in Hall’s transition thesis will be grand and rationalistic, versus local and evolved?
After all, Hall writes:
Of course, as people leave cities, they will go somewhere. But where? My thesis is that with the superlinear scaling attractor no longer driving people into cities, the new dominant attractor will become the oldest dominant attractor: we will begin to return to wholesome, human-scale, ‘indigenous’ contexts.
Depending on the depth of the coming demographic collapse, I’m not so sure. For now, let’s interrogate the means of transitioning from city to civium.
The British philosopher Michael Oakeshott offered a substantial critique of rationalism, particularly in his essay "Rationalism in Politics" (1947). He was concerned with what he calls "technical" rationalism in political and social contexts. Here's a brief summary of his critique:
Abstraction. Oakeshott argues that rationalism excessively values abstract principles at the expense of tradition and practical knowledge, leading to an underestimation of inherited wisdom.
Reductionism. Oakeshott also believes rationalism oversimplifies complex human experiences and social phenomena, failing to capture their true nature, which too often results in misguided policies.
Suppressing Tradition. Oakeshott criticizes rationalists for dismissing the value of time-tested tradition and the embedded wisdom of practice in favor of theoretical notions or utopian pieties.
False Certainty. Oakeshott asserts that rationalism fosters overconfidence, even hubris, as people overlook the limitations and fallibility of human understanding. Such leads to perverse unintended consequences.
Instrumental Politics. Oakeshott sees rationalist governance as overly instrumental and concerned with dirigisme. Like F.A. Hayek, he advocates for a more adaptive and pragmatic approach that values the application of local knowledge and respect for local culture.
Oakeshott's critique is a defense of the importance of practical knowledge, tradition, and cultural context against the post-war (WWII) excesses of abstract ideologies that animated the two Great Wars he’d endured.
That critique can be applied to Big Industrial Policy or Small Indigenous Living.
The question of whether any of the above aspects of an Oakeshottian critique apply to Hall’s thesis depends on how one interprets Hall, perhaps in the following passage:
We should be mindful that this transition is not one simply of architecture and urban design. Everything is implicated. Governance at human scale is an entirely different kind of problem than the mass governance that we have become used to. Our approaches to food production, physical manufacturing and waste have been entirely defined by the needs and capacities of the city. We will need to invent entirely new economies in the new context of distributed human-scale civium.
In my estimation, an Oakeshottian critique turns mainly on whether Hall is being predictive or normative.
So, for example,
We will need to invent entirely new economies in the new context of distributed human-scale civium.
This certainly smacks of rationalism (with a dash of scientism).
Will we need to “invent” them piecemeal—value by value, plank by plank—as we go, or will we need to apply more scientistic so-called “systems thinking” and “doughnut economics” that passes for thinking and economics these days?
I argue we will continue to tinker and reconstitute society as we always have, in a discovery process, one solution to one problem at a time—where the aggregate effect is completely transformative but still grounded in socioeconomic fundamentals. Julian Simon-esque substitutions through time will transform our social agglomerations through ephemeralization. The new replacement rate will shrink cities. And we can revive our communitarian and conservationist values.
Under one construal, Hall seems to be more predictive than normative:
Governance at human scale is an entirely different kind of problem than the mass governance that we have become used to.
This sentence would make Oakeshott smile, but that is a far cry from inventing “entirely new economies.”
With all due respect to the cosmo-local Michel Bauwens types or permaculture-uber-alles types, we might indeed evolve into something Civium-ish. And if I’m being charitable, Civium will therefore turn on emergent, evolved, local adaptations rather than grand designs or rationalistic systems thinking. But if it does so turn, Hall’s piece is less of a moralistic crusade than a Toffleresque treatise with a sprinkle of optimism.
But here’s a bit that gives me pause:
Our approaches to food production, physical manufacturing and waste have been entirely defined by the needs and capacities of the city. (Emphasis mine.)
Really? Entirely?
Here’s the problem: If Hall is correct that our current approaches have been defined by the needs and capacities of people in cities—much less entirely by those needs and capacities—then I worry his vision of Civium will likely never materialize—or will continue to resemble cities in respects that make Civium just different, perhaps just scaled-down cities, or cities that pump different things back and forth in the urban-to-suburban-to-rural vasculature.
But if Hall is wrong that the needs of city folks define our current approaches, it’s not altogether clear that any such decoupling or transformation will also help transform our current approaches, particularly in a manner that is commensurate with solving various ecological crises Hall is concerned about. Whether and to what extent such crises are linked to the existence of megacities is an open question. And so, too, is the question of whether such crises are severe enough to be considered existential threats, which seems to be a fashionable thesis.
Human Networks and The Constructal Law
Adrian Bejan's constructal law is a principle of physics that predicts natural design and evolution in both animate and inanimate systems. The law states, "for a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it." We can see this channelization and vascularization everywhere in nature, including river basins, lung architecture, social systems, and cities.
It always reveals a pattern: “few large, many small.”
As regards cities, Bejan’s constructal law suggests that the design and structure of urban areas evolve to provide easier and more efficient access to flows—be it of people, goods, information, or energy. This can lead to the kind of superlinear scaling Luis Bettencourt and Geoffrey West have studied in depth, as cities grow and evolve to become more efficient. For example, larger cities often have better-developed infrastructure, more diverse economic opportunities, and more efficient distribution of resources, all of which can contribute to higher levels of productivity and innovation per capita compared to smaller cities. Relative size usually indicates relative efficiency, according to Bejan.
Bejan’s concept of vascularization can be understood as the development of networks (such as transportation or communication networks) within the city that facilitate flow and access.
In the simplest description, civilization is the name for the coexistence of farmland with the market. Those who live on the area exchange farm products (and other goods, services, and information) with those who manufacture products, services, and information) with those who manufacture products and deliver services in compact places—first hamlets, then villages, then small towns, and finally cities. (Design in Nature)
These networks can be seen as analogous to the vascular system in living organisms, which enables the efficient distribution of nutrients and removal of waste products—which is why you’re more likely to find a garbage dump in the exurbs. According to Bejan’s constructal law, the vascularization of cities would evolve over time to optimize the flows within the city, contributing to superlinear scaling as the city grows. And the law is explanatory: constructal evolution might explain Prigogine’s dissipative structures, for example.
Superlinear scaling relates to vascularization and urban growth as Bejan’s constructal law predicts knowledge networks, too. Both involve the evolution of systems to optimize flows and increase efficiency, leading to increased productivity and innovation as the system (in this case, a city) grows.
Bejan’s law implies that energy use within a city also follows principles of optimized flow. The city's infrastructure, such as electricity grids and gas pipelines, would evolve to minimize loss and distribute energy efficiently.
Energy use per capita may show economies of scale, where larger cities can often use energy more efficiently due to the optimized structures and networks.
These results are described in economics as productivity gains that flow from economies of scale, labor mobility, knowledge externalities, and other prosocial agglomeration effects.
But Hall thinks humanity’s ascent into the digital Cloud City will obviate the city’s superlinear scaling function—defined narrowly as proximity-based knowledge and opportunity networks. Recall that Hall’s claims that,
Our approaches to food production, physical manufacturing and waste have been entirely defined by the needs and capacities of the city.
To repeat, Hall thinks the city self-organizes as people seek access to knowledge networks, but these networks will soon live mostly in the cloud. He writes:
My argument here is that what we are observing in the superlinear scaling of cities is a consequence, not of cities themselves, but of the nature of information and communication networks. At the most fundamental level, in order to get superlinear scaling, we don’t need people to “live” next to each-other, we need them to communicate with (and collaborate with) each-other.
If digital cloud cities absorb our planetary knowledge networks, thinks Hall, all cities can go the way of Tikal. We can then return to something far closer to Eden.
My thesis is that with the superlinear scaling attractor no longer driving people into cities, the new dominant attractor will become the oldest dominant attractor: we will begin to return to wholesome, human-scale, ‘indigenous’ contexts.
If I understand the constructal law, cities evolve via vascularization such that people, vehicles, goods, and energy can flow more readily to people, and, indeed, more readily outward to the periphery—suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas. Like veins and arteries. If I understand Hall’s Civium thesis, people won’t need to agglomerate in urban meatspace to avail themselves of the generative collisions of knowledge and opportunity networks—which, in Hall’s estimation, are the prime generators of cities.
And this leads to my final question.
What Do You Value?
Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody. —Jane Jacobs
In “Knowledge are Market Ecosystems,” the brilliant economist
calms our nerves about AI systems of central control by reminding us about the complexity and biodiversity of dispersed knowledge:We can analyze patterns in data after the fact, and we can use AI and machine learning to help us make out-of-sample predictions of future outcomes using those historical data, but that is different from being able to access and take action on private, subjective, contextual, and tacit knowledge in real time. Even sophisticated computation and AI cannot substitute for decentralized market processes and for humans taking action and making choices.
I hope to return to the questions about AI another day, I want to emphasize the bit about “being able to access and take action on private, subjective, contextual, and tacit knowledge in real time.” The idea of subjective value might be critical to predicting the future of what we might call ephemeral cities.
In The Social Singularity, I wrote:
MOST OF US WALK AROUND on planet Earth with certain programming. Biases. Tendencies. Preferences. Cultural baggage. In your first experience at Black Rock City, you at the very least become acutely aware of it. For a few days, you can suspend the programming to some degree, maybe even leave some behind. Some of us need a bit of deprogramming—a few of us desperately. It invites us to acknowledge all the counterproductive memories, mores, or mental monsters, and ask what can be left out there to burn.
A great temple there invites you to come in and pray or reflect or meditate. When you do, pictures of people have been tacked up as makeshift shrines all around. Look up and a fractal of wooden beams climbs into the sky. Though it is breathtaking, in another day or so the temple will burn. Something else equally compelling will take its place next year. And it too will burn.
Buddha smiles.
Walk over to a tree of life pulsing with energy. It’s an illusion created by projection mapping. People are sitting nearby in bonds of love, and the tree’s energy seems to flow through them. You might scoff at illusions. But you can feel that energy all around you, even though it’s started with eye tricks and music. Isn’t everything in our mind an illusion of some kind?
What I have been describing is Burning Man.
Isn’t everything in our mind an illusion of some kind? Isn’t Black Rock City? Isn’t the Big Apple? Aren’t Civium?
The point here is that value is subjective. Whatever complex combinations of social influences and genes shape our preferences, our experience of value is immediate and personal. And what we value may require human agglomerations at urban scales. In this way, cities might be quasi-periodic, strange attractors that empty out and fill up again for reasons beyond just knowledge networks. If people are drawn to each other because of nightlife, live jazz, shopping, tourism, bacchanalias, people-watching, community, concerts, farmer’s markets, culture, cuisine, worship, public art, dive bars, festivals, carnivals, street performances, musicals, bazaars, the bizarre, diversity, shopping, architecture, serendipitous collisions—and any other aspect of the experience economy—there will be cities.
And there is something sacred in that.
Technology is great. But I seriously doubt people will want only to spend time between living in the Matrix metaverse and a 149-person ecovillage that has to do Mennonite mitosis every time a few people decide to have kids. I don’t.
Demographic collapse may shrink them. Ephemeralization may transform them. The experience economy may resculpt them. But cities are empires of human value in all its richness and wonder, and I don’t think their existence can be reduced to any single factor. We’re likely to see, “few large, many small” cities, a la Lorente and Bejan. That said, I suspect they can coexist with civium. So my prediction—and my normative stance—is that cities will and ought to stick around well into the future. Here’s one last excerpt from The Social Singularity:
Neither Black Rock City nor New York City is the sum of its structures. These cities are also collections of people who come and go—clusters of laws, cultures, and ways of life—places, proximate and approximate, situated on the earth. They’re all of these aspects in a mix of physical and social construction. Buildings, people, rules, and ways of life constitute layers of reality. The invisible filaments of community bind all these layers together in novel ways.
Love, love this piece. Excellent analysis of the Civium, my friend. I am considering working on a piece that looks at ephermeal cities with the context of network states or autonmous governance services.