Contemporary cities face major problems and certain technologies are employed to address these issues. However, while the technological advancement in these cities resolves the problems to a certain extent, further problems are also created. This essay will argue that this requires a continuous need for constant technological solutions to be created to solve the continual influx of problems. Ultimately, this continuous issue can be solved if our cities move towards achieving a smarter and sustainable world.
An examination of the cause of problems in contemporary cities, and the experiences they underwent once new technologies were introduced, helps people understand what technologies need to be used to address as well as irrevocably solve the problems cities face. The new industrial city demanded swift action and thought, which ultimately divided urban dwellers from themselves. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 302) Similarly, a connection can be made between rapid industrialisation, the acceleration of everyday life, and a decline in the quality of collective life. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 302) The everyday experience of the industrial city was transformed through the insertion of a variety of new technologies and organisational forms. These transformations generated both new ways of getting on with living in a city and new spatial-temporal imaginaries through which the transformed scale and speed of the industrial city was given structure and sense. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 303) During the nineteenth century, the most obvious producers of the accelerating transformation of urban life were the technological advances sustaining the industrial revolution. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 304) Through their efficiency, inventions like the railway offered not only a more efficient way of travelling across land and sea but they also transformed the ways in which production, consumption, and travel were experienced. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 304) Another problem that generated from the invention of the railway was that it led to cities becoming fragmented, which then led to a loss of social connectivity. While cities became faster, authentic social life disappeared. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 310) A way of looking at how this happened can be done by questioning the body and embodied experience. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 311) One of the most stated elements of the new technologies was the way in which they seemed to reconfigure embodied experience. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 311) The railway journey accelerated the individual while also making them immobile, a kind of inactive sense of speed. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 311) This experience could also be felt on other forms of travel, including aeroplanes and cars. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 311) The physical body is being left behind, rendered redundant in the face of the speed. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 311) This created a growing imperative for people to do a array of things ‘on the go’, such as make phone calls or eat, emanating a sense that they needed to be left uninterrupted, whereby nobody would engage with them in leisure conversation while awaiting their destination. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 311)
While technological advancement in cities resolved problems to a certain extent, further problems were also created. The need for efficiency in contemporary industrial cities was solved to a degree, ending an inefficient traveling system, however these new technologies brought major changes in the environment, from the spread of cars to the creation of new toxic chemicals. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 5) A solution to the lack of social connection was to invent social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, which was an attempt to reconnect people once again. However, it can be argued that this did more bad than good, because people were connecting to other people, but were trapped to a screen instead of the world and reality around them. People became anti-social and over time began to lack the common conversational skills that they should have. Leisure, sport and fitness (including walking) were attempts to keep up to speed with an ever-accelerating urban life and bring people back together. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 314) These were generative of different kinds of sociality, of various scales and intensities. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 314) For example, running was by no means exclusive but it also acted as the focus for all sorts of communities of interest – the running club, the athletics store, the informal Sunday running group. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 314) It also organised around itself all sorts of events of collective sociality in the city, including fun runs and marathons. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 314) These events can bring cities to a halt, profoundly altering their rhythm. (Latham, McCormack 2008, p. 314)
The most effective and idealistic solution to the problems contemporary cities face and the vision for the future to overcome these problems is the idea of sustainable cities. If this vision is fulfilled, the aim for sustainable cities will have been achieved, which is ultimately better for our world, providing us with a viable future. This vision is far from the present reality, and it actually constitutes a target to be reached. In fact, contemporary cities are confronted with considerable challenges, threatening sustainability targets towards their future development. (Stratigea, A et al. 2015, p. 44) Both the scale and scope of environmental degradation pose a possible threat to the survival of the human species. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 4) Many cities are now non-sustainable, inefficient, and highly resource hungry. The idea of sustainable cities was first proposed as a global aim in the Earth Summit of 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. Agenda 21 stresses the idea of community participation in the move to sustainable cities. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 6) Cities have a great capacity to be more resourceful and a lot depends on urban design and planning. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 11) The design of the city, size, shape, density can reduce energy consumption substantially. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 12) “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future” (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 15) Changing technologies have increased the capacity to make fundamental changes to present and future state of the global environment. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 15) The goal of a sustainable future and sustainable cities can only be achieved if there is the political will to do so. “The process of sustainable development implies tremendous political challenges.” It implies recognition that the costs of environmental degradation are not being shared equally throughout the world. It also means understanding that it is tied to the global economy and the global economic inequalities. The drive for economic growth is in conflict with a sustainable future. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 17) There are those who “denounce a naïve faith in the power of science to solve existing and future environmental problems”. Some people believe that only economic growth can finance the technological solutions to new city problems. Others feel that technological solutions must complement conservation concerns and policies. “Certainly experience tells us that technological advances will bring some solution, the trick seems to be avoiding some the problems of those technologies.” (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 18) There is a need to exercise the ‘precautionary principle’ if in doubt about environmental impact and consequences do not take the technology further. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 19) Sustainability requires a new political economy, fundamental changes in international relations, prioritising the needs of the poor and challenging the right to favour rich nations and rich individuals. Rich countries do not favour sustainability because of their economic growth and because it is largely based on inequality. Poorer countries do not favour sustainability because they are trying to industrialise quickly and improve their economies and standard of living quickly. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 19-20) Sustainable cities can be achieved when tied in to global sustainable initiatives, which focus on global political and economic changes as well as working on initiatives to decrease the demand on natural resources and try to achieve productive interaction between the city and it surrounding natural environment. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 23) A future of sustainable cities will help ensure that urban residents are not divorced from nature as a resource provider and as a source of well-being. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 23) Sustainable cities can create reciprocity between city and country. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 23) Sustainable cities can engage in co-operative forms of activity, community participation and being involved in setting up viable internal economic and social structures. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 23) They can promote anti-pollution measures, conservation of green areas, and re-forestation of surrounding regions, better transport systems, public services and waste re-cycling. However, sustainable cities need to link environmental policies to social and economic development policies and to link in with broader global development initiatives. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 25) A sustainable city will continuously improve the natural, built and cultural environment of the city whilst working in ways, which support the goal of global sustainable development. Cities cannot develop in a sustainable way in isolation of the global economy. (Haughton, Hunter 2003, p. 26).
This essay argues that contemporary cities face major problems such as inefficiency and certain technologies are employed to address these issues. While the technological advancement in these cities resolves the problems to a certain extent, further problems such as pollution and loss of social connectivity are also created. This requires a continuous need for constant technological solutions to be created to solve the continual influx of problems. Ultimately, this continuous issue can be solved if our cities move towards achieving a smarter and sustainable world as shown above.