Revisiting reductionism

Cities, ecosystems, and the universe in its most general sense share an affinity for unpredictable, even chaotic, forms of behaviour. Though appearing nonsensical and messy, these machinations manifest a profound logic; innumerable cascades of information coalesce and bifurcate, build up and tear down, explore and consolidate, all the while weaving and harnessing flows of energy to ever greater degrees of organisation and complexity. These structures demonstrate a remarkable capacity for problem-solving and resilience and do so precisely because of — not in spite of — their arcane and mysterious workings. It is, therefore, interesting that our minds are peculiarly and frustratingly confounded by this form of logic. Worse, we exhibit a perpetually confident yet naive notion that we can somehow tame these workings and neuter any semblance of complexity by enforcing a reductionist outlook that is sufficiently simple for our minds to grasp. Packaged concepts look so much neater, so incredibly logical, so precise, so (ahem) scientific! We can treat them like checklists, flowcharts, and formulas, optimise them “for our own good”, and bend them to the will of grandiose masterplans.

At heart, cities and their emergent complexity are artefacts which simultaneously manifest and catalyse the open-ended accretion of human networks. This ceaseless proliferation of connectedness occurs in lock-step with the evolution of technology, and it is through this emergent enmeshing of human know-how that increasingly capable tools have been developed: Modernity brought mass-production and sanitary conditions for the post-War masses; digital networks intensified the networking dynamic underpinning societal agglomeration; Digital Twins promise to help us use our sparse resources more effectively.

So, what is the problem? Reductionism.

Every technological development rests on countless co-evolutionary processes of trial and discovery which have led to that point. Each of these leaps forward emerges from entangling streams of information coursing through cities, engendering evermore sophisticated assortments and configurations of knowledge. It is this proclivity which allows human societies to do such remarkable things, yet, the faintest glimmer of a new technological development elicits the familiar and perstistent refrain that the latest buzzwords will finally let us control ‘all-the-things’ and solve all those pesky problems so inextricably linked to these monstrously complicated cities with all of their unpredictable moving parts and hopelessly inefficient processes. Why is it that our first reaction is this persistent aspiration to straightjacket complexity?

The stories we tell ourselves seem to change only in form but not in substance, and proffer variations on an elementary theme: ergo, if only we had enough information and control, then we could tame cities, ensure their orderly behaviour, conjure those ever-promised utopian cities that have motivated people since time immemorial and yet have remained, perpetually, out of reach. Whether Modernist masterplans, Smart Cities marketing brochures, ML & AI’s omniscience, IoT, the Cloud, Digital Twins and connection and observation of all things [insert next technology here…] the problem is not the use of new technologies, per se, but the reductionist logic with which we persistently attempt to apply these shiny new tools to cities. This short-circuit occurs because we imagine that models of abstraction and control which work well for controlling human contraptions — steam turbines, aircraft engines, Apollo missions, Formula 1 cars — would work equally well if applied to societal systems arising from emergent complexity. Instead, they indiscriminately sever the infinitely intricate forms of feedback underpinning the emergence of such systems in the first place.

As always, Jane Jacobs beat everyone else to the punchline [see the valuable inefficiencies of cities for a related discussion]. Nevertheless, we predictably repeat the same mistake even if we’ve already paid dearly for the lesson. Per Modernism and the necessitated backlash (Harvey 1989), cities and their ‘messy’ complexity should not be tamed but celebrated. They are not abstract ‘things’, nor geometrical figures on drawing boards, nor schemata: they are people and the continuously evolving networks of relationships that bind them. For this reason, efforts to prescribe and simplify city processes are invariably destined to fall short while potentially causing untold damage by undercutting the deeply imbued logic of self-organising emergent complexity.

So, the next time reductionism is tweeted in the guise of the latest buzzword, remember that there are no simplistic shortcuts. Instead, encourage resilient spatial structures capable of allowing complexity to unfold and persist across space and time: connective pedestrian-accessible street networks, granular and dense urban morphologies, mixed land-uses permitting incremental adaptation. Provide open and equitable access to information with due care for privacy and fairness while holding off the heavy-handed impositions of technological wizardry invoked in the name of observing, predicting, and controlling every last action and reaction of an unwitting populace. There is no need for bot-overlords commandeering control centres. Nor the brittle and biased contrivances endlessly invoked in the name of neatness, order, and those ever-elusive efficiencies.