An overview of Masdar City
Masdar City is one of the budding smart cities that use environmentally friendly technologies to stir novelty and empower business. The city is located in Abu Dhabi and covers a total area of 7kilometers square (Jaber 2).
Since it is powered by renewable energy, it offers an environment that promotes creativity, provides investment opportunities, offers avenues for testing novel technologies and promotes informal sharing of ideas amongst like-minded experts and serves as a an attraction hub and genesis of world class talent.
The unique environment of the city is drawing regional and global companies to establish sales, promotions, servicing and exhibition hubs to demonstrate their renewable energy and sustainable technologies. In addition, Masdar City offers these companies to set up research and development infrastructures and regional head offices in their respective fields (Masdar City 1).
An overview of the New Babylon City
The concept of New Babylon City is epitomized by the politicization of urban space which has emerged as a major aspect in the social and political plans of most Urban Social Movements (USMS). This includes the famous Reclaim the Street (RTS), a worldwide lobby group that begun in London in 1990 as a response to the automobile culture and highway extension projects (Smith157).
The modern urban social movements-including RTS- have emerged as direct reaction to the ever-rising aggressive politicization of urban space by a number of proponents of global capitalism in the post-modern cityscape (Lefebvre 148 & Bauman 70). Since its launch, the politicization of RTS agenda has expanded and transformed to embrace nearly all facets of urban space (Smith 158).
The concept of New Babylon City is well articulated by Constant. He states that, “without public space no culture is possible because, ‘the forum in classical times, the market square of the middle ages, and, more recently, the boulevard… were the places where cultural life developed” (Heynen, 159).
In his New Babylon project, Constant gives priority to an open, public space for residents to use in their social interactions. Constant explains further that the main aim of mutiny against conventional standards and conditions is to regain social space (the street) needed for play (Smith 161).
Masdar as ecology vs. function
The Masdar project is an initiative of the Abu Dhabi government that aims to use it enormous resources in the world energy markets so as to promote the rising technologies of the future. The project will also commercialize and adopt these technologies to mange energy use, carbon emissions and conserve water to enable Abu Dhabi shift from consumer technology to producer technology.
The Masdar City project has a Carbon Management Unit (CMU) that aims at developing strategies to reduce carbon emissions. The unit produces value by commercializing carbon emissions via the provisions of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) structure of the Kyoto Protocol. The CMU also creates sustainable technologies for major projects that result in significant reduction of carbon emissions.
For instance, Mustang Engineering Company was contracted in 2008 to design the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) plant. The aim of this project is to promote sustainable development by providing clean energy and reducing carbon emissions (Awad 10).
According to Rashmi De Roy, Masdar City will be the first city in the world to achieve a zero carbon emission environment by 2015. The city aims to attain the ten principles of sustainability of One Planet Living, a worldwide program started by BioRegional, an environmental organization based in the UK (2).
The power for Masdar City will be created via photovoltaic panels. Water will be presented via a desalination plant, controlled by solar energy. Masdar City aims to achieve the ten principles of sustainability in the following ways. On zero carbon emission, the city aims to produce renewable energy via photovoltaic solar panels and wind energy technologies.
On zero waste programs, the city intends to adopt measures that reduce waste and recycling waste where possible. On transport, the city aims to attain zero carbon emission by promoting automobile sharing and the use of public transport system (Roy 2).
The city will promote the use of sustainable materials for example bamboo and timber that are certified by the Forest Steward Council for construction. On sustainable food, all the retail shops will be required to supply organic foodstuff and other sustainable consumable products.
On fauna and flora, the city management will focus on efforts to protect all valuable species. The culture and heritage of the city’s residents will be synchronized with the construction plans of the city.
On equity, the city will aim to provide better working conditions and fair wages for all employees as elucidated by international labor laws. On health issues, the city will aim to provide adequate and easily accessible healthcare facilities and recreational centers for all residents (Roy 2).
The Masdar city and the Protocol of Program
The evolution of human species in the last hundred thousand years has almost been negligible. Our senses and hereditary innate media are identical to those that enabled us to endure the predatory pace of the primeval savannah. Moreover, the city’s very genuine landscape of information creation and reception, those same rhythms continues, in contact with our new media and enhanced cognition.
The modernists demand for strong use of technology in merging urban and cybernetic programs. Any efforts in this direction cast the digital city as a communal nervous system. Currently, the rupture of digital information network via the casing of the city into the open view of residents and their mobile screens depends on the ability of the body to map its own dislodgment in real and imagined topography (Bratton 5).
The incarnation of historical image of environment-an irreducible, automatic circuit of habit and habitat- relates to the ambient informational fields that blur the city and which enables us to gain knowledge on how to steer spheres both near and distant.
However, such spaces must be learned, and whilst it takes time to understand remote controls, we are fast at learning how to do it. For example, there is a monkey at Duke University who controls a robotic arm miles away via interfacial electronics linked to his brain.
The temporal desires of the monkey are converted into informational pulses which when correctly steered, activates a remote prosthesis to respond to his needs. Just like the monkey, human bodies are instilled and intersected by the protracted networks of the living city, both directing its machinery from a remote area and triangulated psychologically and socially by that machinery in the course of human movements.
Humans are thus able to operate the city as a meta-interface, one made up of numerous tiny strategic interfaces (Bratton 6).
Just like children acquiring new skills, we learn via gaming how to plan and adapt bodily signals with environmental spaces, to direct nearness and remoteness at the same time, both as individual commuters of the city and as collective groups in emergence.
We learn how to touch and pinch, point and click, and poke and wave. As automation turns into an invasive element in the structure of the habitat, the dawn of locative media implies the need for urban operating systems that are able to interlace into one unit the multitudinous computational incidents into an elegant, programmable prototype (Bratton 7).
The Masdar City, viewed via the media of that face trickles with live data to be touched and rewritten all over again. Interface with this information is recursive. In this recursion, the existence of information, whether good or bad, can be openly disruptive of social behavior as individuals alter paths and choices in the image of the actions and veers of others that they see indexed in their personal interface.
As the channels of the Masdar city are condensed and disclosed by the handset’s interfaces, the contiguity and gravity of architectural programs melts. The Masdar city demands a logic program that is similar to OMA sectional map and iphone desk itself. The sectional clustering of diverse zones of behavior into a solitary unit give away to interior and exterior sites that can be triggered in urban scale (Bratton 9).
New Babylon as Control vs. Chaos
According to Gilles Deleuze, the concept of control within the New Babylon framework that describes the position of any aspect in an open environment at any moment does not constitute science fiction (7). Deleuze considers a city where an individual is able to move around with his electronic card that controls his movements.
The study of social technology mechanisms of control at their beginning would have to be systematic and define the current process of changeover for the disciplinary areas of enclosure. According to Deleuze, a new dawn has emerged where control measures are used within the society (7).
For example, in the education system, there are a number of control measures that have affected training programs for students (Stadler 16). In the healthcare institutions, the new medication without patients or physicians identify ailing people does not demonstrate individuation but introduces a code that controls dividable material.
Within the business sector, there are novel ways for managing humans, profits and money that do not use outdated factory form. Within the penitentiary system, electronic devises are fitted on prisoners to monitor their movement. These examples reveal the movement towards setting up of new mechanism of controls in the society (Deleuze 7).
Ever since it emerged in 1990s, the Reclaim the Space (RTS) movement has constantly used carnivalesque tactics in its program of reclaiming urban spaces that have been privatized, sanitized and colonized by the aggressive forces of global capitalism (Tafuri 176).
Jordan contrasts the notion of institutionalized festivals that are endorsed by the state with the carnivalesque attribute of the sporadic street parties that are common during RTS activities.
He argues that whilst formal festivals are organized in a linear and an orderly manner, the RTS reclaiming actions are “vortexed, whirling…involving an uncontrollable state of creative chaos… that breaks a cultural obsession with linearity, order and tidiness, epitomized by roads and cars” (Jordan 355).
Jordan emphasizes on the collective facet of the carnivalesque RTS street actions by stating that when “thousands of people have reclaimed a major road and declared it a ‘street now open,’” replacing “the roar of [automobile] engines” with “music, laughter and song,” and transforming “road rage” into “road rave,” then “Lautreamont’s desire that ‘Poetry must be made by all…not by one’” is realized (Jordan 354).
Thus, Jordan uses this poem to trace the current RTS actions from the 20th century European activists such as Dada to the current Situationist International (Smith 163).
According to McCreery, the Situationists believed that the only way to reduce the overwhelming influence of capitalism was by living a less alienated, richer and more inclusive culture. This way, individuals would be in a position to control their own lives by integrating art into day to day life (239).
The active criticism by the Situationist on the dissimilarities between politics, art and day to day life was considerably pursued by the proponents of the movements itself, where politics, art, activism and ingenuity were combined into a distinct unit.
The main aim of the Situationists to blur the distinctions between these elements was to speed up an instant mutiny which would be carried out on all levels of the social order, including everyday life experiences (Smith 164).
Therefore, the RTS is a perfect reincarnation of the Situationists movements that seeks to question the conservative divisions between politics and art in day to day life. Thus, by seeking to reclaim public space from forces of capitalism, it becomes manifest that the movement aims to dissolve the margins that separate social praxis, art and theoretical reflection (Heynen 151).
Thus, the RTS efforts to combine these aspects is mirrored through their actions of reclaiming public space, which is taken as a model of political exploits where the protest is personified as living and spreading political message (Ferrell 132).
According to Constant, the culture of New Babylon does not emerge from differentiated activities or unique situations. On the contrary, it results from worldwide activities that involve the entire humanity where each person is engaged in an active relation with his environment.
The regularity of each person’s movements relies on the choices he makes and renounce on impulse. Under these conditions, communal mobility mirrors the picture of kaleidoscopic whole, resulting in sporadic changes. This picture is different from the models of a community life governed by the tenets of utility where the structures of behaviors are identical.
In the New Babylon city, the urban must react to communal mobility which means a more precise and elastic organization in macro and micro level.
Autonomy of creation requires that individuals limit their dependence on material contingency. It assumes an enormous system of communal services needed for social mobility. The automation thus facilitates the creation of colossal centers, located far from public space (Nieuwenhuys 11).
The construction of New Babylon project can only start when the economy is fully aimed at the satisfying the requirements of the society. Such an economy will allow the mechanization of non-innovative activities hence facilitating the development of creativity.
However, the execution of New Babylon project is a sluggish process that gradually substitutes the existing urban structures (Baurnan 58). At first, isolated sectors emerge among the multinational companies and become centers of attraction for the previous structures to the level that, as more time used in work diminishes, the settlement turn out to be chaotic.
As the number of these sectors increase and the ties that bind them swell, the activity within them become highly independent and specialized with respect to the residential areas (Nieuwenhuys 15).
A new way of life thus emerges within the New Babylon when these sectors are reordered to form a network- a structure that is able to rival the residential structures whereby its importance is gradually reduced as the role of man in the production process ceases to exist.
During the initial stage, the distance between group of sectors and sectors raises the demand for swift means of transport because crossing settlement areas from one sector to another must take the shortest time possible. Afterward, when the various sectors are united and variations increases, the need for swift mobility between sectors is rendered irrelevant.
The elasticity of internal space within these sectors allows for several fluctuations in the ambiance and environment. With respect to transport means, these sectors will not be affected by social mobility. A new role thus appears to enhance the role of these sectors where they shift from being tools for work and become tools for play (Nieuwenhuys 17).
The New Babylonian way of life is traverse through a sluggish and uninterrupted fluctuation where dislocation is among the different types of activity in the sectors (Nieuwenhuys 18). Thus, in general, the New Babylon city is a system of enormous links, the greater part of which is elevated above the surface.
The links are typically free from building, although with the exemption of production centers and other systems that lack space within the sector’s social space. Examples include: drilling rigs; transmission antennae; observatories; historic monuments; and other scientific research facilities.
A segment of these free spaces is allocated to different activities on the surface. Another section is allocated to wooded park, nature reserves. The network structures enables access to these areas, where the time spend to move from one area to another is greatly reduced (Nieuwenhuys 19).
The topographic survey of New Babylon is a complex activity that cannot be done by employing the usual methods of cartography. This is due to the existence of a time- fourth dimension.
The 3-D representation would thus be ineffective since the model of every sector is made up of numerous sections and planes of diverse levels. Thus, it would be necessary to use a computer to capture all the complex topographical aspects of the city in details (Nieuwenhuys 20).
The sector is the smallest unit in New Babylon network. The dimensions of the unit are greater than those of the elements (buildings) that create the city. The extent of these elements is determined by the social interactions system.
In most cities, the human relations are formed and strengthened at workplaces, school or leisure places and other meeting places. This translates to every single member of the family letting go private ties outside the manufacture places. As a result, bigger residential units, equipped with communal services, emerge (Stalder 44).
The element of control is manifested within the New Babylon city where the movement of an individual within a social space is constrained by the obligations to resume to a fixed abode. The social space of an individual (such as workplace, home, family members) is defined by his social interactions.
These constraints are absent within the New Babylon framework. The social space of an individual in the New Babylon City is infinite as he is not controlled anymore. The mobility and chaos generated as a result of constant transformation of space promotes interactions between individuals (Nieuwenhuys 27).
Conclusion
Following the discourse presented above, it’s quite obvious that the development of both cities-Masdar and New Babylon- will heavily rely on technology in merging urban and cybernetic programs. As already explained, Masdar City aims to integrate a number of renewable and sustainable technologies to reduce carbon emissions.
For instance, the CMU is an integral segment of the Masdar City project that will guide the development of new strategies that reduce carbon emission. On the other hand, the concept of control is envisioned within the Babylon City where individuals will be able to carry out their daily tasks via an automated system.
Such control measures will be adopted in virtually all sectors of the city, such as education, healthcare sector, and business sector. The protracted networks of the living city will be instilled in the bodies of individuals living in Masdar and New Babylon cities.
They will thus be able to operate-from remote areas-both cities as a meta-interface, comprising of countless small strategic interfaces. Social mobility within all sectors in the city will thus be rendered obsolete.
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