Post-Optimal Cities or: How Architects Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Network and Vice Versa

Abstract

With this article, I would like to sketch out a few of the relations we can currently see emerging across a number of metropoles: looking from within the broad sociocultural condition here referenced as “network culture”, across the new geographies of the networked public sphere, and in the use of urban social spaces, a new culture of participation, which is performed through often mediated acts of augmentation, collaboration, confrontation and appropriation, is challenging the traditional role of public space, the disciplinary methods of urban design, and forces us to face larger issues about decision-making, governance, and, ultimately, democracy. In other words, what follows is a tentative exploration of the interlocked, equivocal relations between both fleeting and structural socio-cultural aspects of the network society, inertial practices in public spaces, contemporary models of governance and - again - their spatial presence.

Firstly, I will outline the framework of my propositions, referencing the paradigmatic socio-cultural shift associated with mobility and with the pervasive concept of the “network”. Then, I will briefly describe some of the implications of such transformations on the ways public spheres, urban publics and networked publics are produced. Afterwards, I will address the shifting role of public spaces in the experience of everyday urban life and in the constitution and upkeep of urban communities. I will conclude with a brief description of the protests in Taksim-Gezi Park, Istanbul, which started on 28 May 2013.

Throughout the article, I will hint to the possibility of alternatives to the prevalent rhetoric of the “smart city”, tentatively sketching what could be called “post-optimal cities”: while the emphasis in public debate is still on making cities more functional through the deployment of ever new technologies, what can we envision beyond plain efficiency?