The Importance of “Slow” for Liveable Cities
Jana Carp, Ph.D.
August 2014
(based on talks delivered in Milan and Genoa in April 2014)
I. INTRODUCTION
This e‐book focuses on an aspect of urban life that has significant implications for quality of life in technologically advanced cities: fast and slow. Correlated with digital and transportation technologies, high speed can be an advantage in discrete situations, but it has significant secondary effects that reduce overall quality of life, inhibit personal and public relationship, and exacerbate injury to people and ecosystems. At a time when we face the unprecedented question of human sustainability, and cities increasingly invest in digital innovations to improve the efficiency of urban systems (the Smart City), certain aspects of speed hinder capacity‐building for social and ecological resilience. Small but growing, the quasi‐governmental Slow City movement attempts to counter high speed’s negative effects by protecting and promoting a manner of living that fosters healthy and meaningful interrelationship among people and their natural environments at the scale of direct experience. Slow Cities promote principles and practices, including use of digital technologies, meant to achieve collective quality of life through particular cultural and local expression. It is an approach and scale of action that provides a cautionary note to the development of the “smart city” vision (Diamantini et al., 2014). This e.book begins by briefly identifying what is “fast” and its associated effects on everyday urban life. Then the Slow City concept is introduced. Finally, the question of capacity‐building is raised in a discussion of the effects of speed on civic participation in public life and democratic decision‐making.
II. SPEED IN EVERYDAY LIFE: SECONDARY EFFECTS
This is a time of acceleration: faster travel, faster communication, faster production and exchange, faster decision‐
making, and faster climate change. The experience and impacts of speed involve people every day in many different ways (Carp 2012a). Some aspects of high speed are advantages, such as quick emergency response time. The operational speed and scale of mobile ICTs (Information Communication Technology), including the data they produce, can help increase urban system efficiency by, for example, tracking infrastructure performance and locating water leaks or traffic blockages as they occur. With mobile ICT, the public can quickly and easily participate in urban governance by identifying nonfunctioning streetlights (e.g., Boston’s Citizens Connect), supporting community policing (e.g., Nextdoor), and “hacking” alternatives to urban policy (e.g., Code for America). Many of the machines that we use today – like vehicles and communication devices – are fast because they simultaneously collapse both time and distance. Without the constraints (“friction”) of locality or context, information seems to multiply as an effect of speed, and it requires a particular intensity of focus to recognize, process, and respond to the opportunities that present themselves on a device. Approximately 34% of the world’s population has internet access; 79% of North Americans and 63% of Europeans. The number of people using the internet is growing rapidly (566% between 2000 and 2012; Internet World Stats 2014). Also growing rapidly is the volume, velocity, and variety of digital information, known as Big Data. Big Data is quantified as an unprecedented opportunity for business and government agencies to utilize real‐time and trending information as a transformational resource for new and better services (TechAmerica Foundation 2012). Approximately 90% of the world’s data has been created in the last two years; it has a projected market value of tens of billions of U.S. dollars (McCafferty 2014). The speed effect of Big Data as a burgeoning resource is compounded by competition to develop new and better software applications, mobile devices, and transmission and storage infrastructure that will ever more quickly and efficiently assist people in many different situations to make instant sense of digitally‐
generated information. New, decentralized economic activity is cropping up – such as the “on demand economy” and “the sharing economy” – as people use ICTs to access dispersed and informal markets, products, services, activities, and resources.
The excitement that high speed brings is not always tempered by awareness of its secondary effects, many of which are negative for individuals, communities, and ecologies. There are the obvious problems, such as the increased risk of injury and death relative to higher speeds in vehicle accidents. High speed’s negative impacts to economic, environmental, and social well‐being are less recognized. Yet they have societal as well as individual ramifications, such as exacerbating inequality. Speed is competitive – a fact quite clear in athletic competition. But also, people in general who are more productive than others over the same time period often gain prestige and higher pay (Kane 2000). The advantages of high speed redound: for example, those with more financial resources can pay the higher costs of faster transportation and of support personnel, which enables both higher productivity and time for leisure. Markets and cultures that value speed disadvantage those who operate slowly, an ethical point debated in arguments on such topics as net neutrality, productivity‐based pay, and administration of standardized testing in culturally diverse schools. The negative effects of speed on the environment involve the degredation of ecosystem services from energy production, since combustion engines and electricity generation (in addition to compensatory cooling processes) are fundamental to high speeds. Further environmental degredation results from the materials extraction, manufacturing, marketing, operation, and disposal of fast machines and products. As an example, refrigeration can be perceived as fast: cold storage of perishable foods allows them to be shipped “fresh” at greater distances than otherwise possible and makes seasonal foods available year‐round. China’s fast rate of growth in this sector is expected to have significant environmental impacts before approaching the level of per capital refrigeration use in the U.S. (Twilley 2014). Engineered for efficiency, the food, transportation, and other fast systems of production generate the greenhouse gasses that contribute to the dangers of the quickly changing climate (IPCC 2014). The expected intensity of climate change effects is associated not only with environmental degradation, but also with human conflict, including interpersonal violence (Hsaing et al. 2013). Negative effects of high speed are linked to habits and technologies in common use, and the reductive focus required to manage high speed has become the social phenomenon known popularly as “distraction” (Pang 2013). The agglomerative result strongly influences material and social conditions where high speed dominates. Eriksen (2001) identifies simplification, assembly line effects, loss of precision, spatial domination, and unanticipated, detrimental side effects (see also Carp 2012b). Orr (2002) links “fast knowledge” to design failures. Studies exploring comprehension, retention of information, and judgment have shown adverse impacts related to the speed and quantity of information delivered, and to the requirement of a fast result (Carr 2010; Eppler and Mengis 2004; Schwartz 2004; Heitz and Schall 2012). It is not the quality of information or media that is at issue, but the impacts of speed itself. As information and technological innovation grow exponentially, their velocity is likely to heighten the difficulty of addressing complex problems effectively (Carp 2012a; Carr 2010).
Fast and Slow are not mutually exclusive. The problems of speed occur when life is dominated by an extreme and suffers from negative secondary impacts. A society that is dominated by extreme slowness might be unresponsive, irrelevant, resistant, or unimaginative (Scheffer et al. 2003). Good quality of life, and better business results, depend in large part on strategic employment of fast and slow (Davis and Atkinson 2010). It is not about pace in itself but what pace affords. When fast people slow down, they experience other people, the incidental pleasures of life, the character of the land, the weather, sounds, smells, and tastes. This embodied awareness of place and people is part of what signifies the quality of life promoted by the Slow movement. It is not envisioned as a period of leisure outside work life, but as characteristic of the social and ecological environments in which people live their whole lives.
II. THE SLOW CITY: COMBINING PLEASURE AND RESPONSIBILITY
Slow Food, the most well‐known part of the Slow movement, started in Rome in 1986 as a protest against the fast food industry and the decline of traditional osterias. Now an international network of people in over 150 countries, Slow Food members support locally produced, hand‐crafted, and traditional foods enjoyed convivially at a leisurely pace. Varying widely in terms of cultures, languages, and access to resources and technologies, Slow Food members are connected through their commitment to common principles. As a social movement, they work to integrate the experience of pleasure with local knowledge concerning biodiversity and ecological health, support local economies, ensure cultural survival, and engage in the science and politics of food production. Cittaslow, or Slow Cities, grew out of the Slow Food movement. There are also smaller Slow initiatives: Slow Medicine, Slow Money, Slow Schools, Slow Science, and many more.
The Cittaslow/Slow City movement started in Greve, Italy in 1999, and now includes 179 towns in 28 countries (72 in Italy; Cittaslow International). Slow Cities must be smaller than 50,000 in population, and there is a certification process. Certified Slow Cities must have environmental policies that sustain and improve their unique urban and natural areas, and their infrastructure improvements must be attuned to the historic and cultural character of the town. They must use technological innovations in ways that maintain the integrity of the environment and the traditional use of the land. Slow Cities must encourage locally‐owned businesses and the production of local and organic foods, crafts, arts, and other products, especially those that are historically significant, and they must have Slow Food convivia. They must encourage people to enjoy public spaces: parks, squares, theaters, shops, cafes, sidewalks, and wild areas. Finally, Slow Cities must promote hospitality toward visitors, encourage direct contact between producers and consumers, sponsor community events that celebrate the seasons and local traditions, and pay particular attention to the education of youth (Carp 2012b). City governments often seek Cittaslow membership as a brand, a marketing investment in global visibility that is expected to support tourism. However, the value of being a certified Slow City reaches beyond economic or strategic advantage. Slow Cities are not perfect. The three Slow Cities in the U.S. are beautiful places but they have typical urban problems such as social exclusion, severe income inequality, water pollution, unaffordable housing, ecosystem degradation, lack of public transit, and so on. Still, these cities are also beautiful, historically significant small towns with good quality of life. They have governments and communities who know what characteristics of the city make the experience of living there pleasurable, and they want to sustain these in a changing world. Some of the greatest assets of Slow Cities seem to be privileges of an elite lifestyle – living in a beautiful place, enjoying a relaxed conviviality during a good meal, careful attention to taste and aesthetics, and a serious approach to leisure. Living in a Slow City might appear to be a “lifestyle choice”: a more pleasurable alternative to conventional daily life that is dominated by industrial‐ scale technologies and the global economy. The meaning of pleasure in the Slow movement is much bigger, more political, and important for our common future. “The right to pleasure” has been a central principle of Slow movement philosophy from its beginning. The ways in which it connects social and ecological domains is clear in the context of food. Pleasure comes from the good taste of the food; pleasure comes from the knowledge that the food is produced and prepared in an ecologically healthy manner by people who are making a fair living; pleasure comes from growing and producing the food; pleasure comes from appreciating the local cultural tradition and biodiversity that produces the food; and pleasure comes from sharing the experience with others during preparing and eating the meal. It takes time to take such depth of pleasure, yet in effect it combines ecology, economy, and equity, the three components of sustainability. It also implies personal and societal responsibility. Everyday life is the setting for actions that are intended to sustain quality of life and ecological health, simultaneously, for everyone – an effort of natural capacity. Slow City proponents undertake a number of “slow” civic projects. What they do could happen anywhere there are people committed to a future that is rooted in local history and ecological health, and who have slowed down enough to combine pleasure and responsibility with attention to the human scale. For example, in Sonoma Valley, California, Cittaslow Sonoma Valley has brought together a number of people, schools and agencies who were concerned about the decline of pollinators in the area (Carp 2012b). They know that their quality of life depends on the health of their environment, and they are aware of the significance of bees in the local ecology, not only producing honey but also pollinating plants and supporting biodiversity. Group members include the local ecology center, the Slow Food chapter, beekeepers, farmers, vintners, master gardeners, schoolteachers, youth clubs, and university research scientists. The Cittaslow Pollinator Stewards Collaborative (CPSC), set three goals: to reestablish bee colonies locally; to provide public education about the importance of pollinators for local food production; and to understand and plan for climate‐change adaptation at the local level. They did not rely on additional money; the collaborative was an opportunity to find synergy among their normal, but separate, activities. Once their goals were set, they created ways to get public attention and to bring in people who usually would not be partners.
In addition to convening the CPSC, Cittaslow Sonoma Valley helps integrate the activities of CPSC members into civic life. An annual city festival shows how they connected economic development, ecological conservation, local foods and cultural expressions, education, social inclusion, and fun – all specific goals of the Slow City. CPSC members organized students from a low‐income, ethnic minority school to join the festival parade, wearing bee costumes and doing a “bee dance” behind a CPSC banner held by the mayor. They won an award for their parade entry although they represent a population group that is socially and politically marginalized. CPSC members also organized a Cittaslow booth offering locally‐made organic ice cream flavored with Sonoma Valley honey. CPSC environmental educators staffed another booth that had a display of native plants and a bee box; they encouraged festival attendees to create pollinator habitat in their backyards and to take a “pollinator pledge” to protect the bees, wasps, and moths in their home and work environments. Other CPSC activities include building bee habitats and planting trees with youth clubs, connecting the low‐income elementary school with a low‐income community in Ethiopia that relies on local honey production, and providing evidence to the city government that prompted a revision of policy on bee hives within city limits. School garden directors, local produce growers, and participants in the high school culinary and agriculture programs now participate in pollinator conservation efforts. The university scientists have a ready supply of volunteers for their pollinator tracking studies, and a CPSC member introduced a number of vintners to a new water conservation technology for adapting their vineyards to climate changes.
Typical Slow City activities are varied, small‐scale, and community‐oriented. People who participate in community‐based work with a regard for the links between social and ecological systems often feel that what they are doing is important for our common future, even if it isn’t clear how (Carp 2012a). Working together is an opportunity to engage complexity, become aware of the consequences of our actions, reflect, deliberate, and become wiser. These cognitive skills are necessary for addressing present social and ecological challenges (though speed‐dominant practice seems to reduce them, according to previously cited studies). Slow City activities can build social capital, equipping cities with the capacity to respond to the inevitable uncertainties, inconsistencies, and injustices of civic life. The Slow City idea is to practice a deep form of sustainability: supporting social and ecological health by taking responsibility for collective pleasure.
III. QUESTIONS FOR DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION AND CAPACITY‐BUILDING IN THE SMART CITY
Slow Cities, like Slow Food and other initiatives of the Slow movement, originated as a defense against the negative effects of the high speed of industrial‐scale systems. Since that time, Smart City, a compelling new ideal, has emerged. Although a Smart City is defined in various ways, most ideas promote, at the civic level, many of the benefits of high speed that are realized by technological progress: efficiency, immediacy, convenience, and ubiquity (Diamantini et al. 2014, Johnson 2013, Anttiroiko 2013, Hollands 2008). The Slow City is based on embodied experience and interaction at the human‐scale, accepting technological innovation in a precautionary sense. The Smart City is based on systematic integration of digital technology into the function and sociability of urban life. Both visions of the city assume that social and ecological benefits ensue (or will) from their progress. Yet the future is radically uncertain because of the overwhelming scale of the ecological crisis that we are beginning to recognize, and, at the same time, the acceleration of human population and technological change (Borenstein). These conditions influence the economic, ecological and social aspects of people’s lives, including the social interactions that are the basis of democratic practice. Nonetheless, each generation of a democratic nation must learn, question, and affirm or adjust the political forms by which they govern themselves. In terms of public participation in democratic practice, will the Smart City ideal lead to improved civic capacity? Is digital technology transformative in the civic sphere or does it reinforce the existing, unsustainable state? Can the profit motive and political influence of technology and energy corporations be balanced by the participation in governance of a growing diversity of users? Brandon Pierce of Facebook says that “the greatest illustration of democracy in the world is access to information and ability to have a voice” (Castle 2014). In what Pierce calls “the tech‐centered world”, 39% of the global population regularly use the internet, supposedly so they can join in a great freedom of access to information and ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime (Internet World). In this view, the ubiquity of ICT is the great driver of democracy because it evens out distinctions among people. We are all the same, and we all matter. However, “having a voice” is not the same as being heard and understood. On‐line visibility is not the same as being known. To explore democratic participation from the standpoint of fast and slow, let us consider what democracy requires. What capacities are necessary that enable people to participate effectively in self‐governance? Among the capacities that could be discussed are the following three. ● People need a free flow of information and the capacity to make reasonable sense of it. ● People need social interaction that builds and sustains trust in fellow citizens, those they know and those they don’t know who participate in a sense of civic identity and common interest. ● People need widely distributed good health – bodies, minds, and the natural environments that sustain life on Earth. Evidence of the secondary effects of high speed associated with ICTs presents significant implications for building and sustaining these capacities among residents of the Smart City. The purpose of the following discussion is to raise questions about the assumed benefits of ubiquitous digital technology for democratic decision‐making and to suggest the need for a thorough discussion of Smart City and Slow City benefits.
Basic literacy and the right of free speech are fundamental capacities that support the free flow of information. Beyond these, people need to understand information, to think about it critically so that they are able to look at problems or opportunities from different angles, and to evaluate bias, relative merits and implications. Such discernment in decision‐making is necessary for effective democratic practice (Center for Media Literacy 2005). At the same time, people need to understand how human limitations are reflected in messages, and to practice forbearance, so that they can listen to others with the intent to understand. Does the Smart City priority on ICT support the free flow of information and the capacity to make sense of it? It is clear that the digital revolution has increased the amount, sources, and type of information available, and that “anyone” can be part of that great melée via a prodigious number of computing programs and applications. But the use of digital technology presents problems for comprehension. Information overload and time pressure results in poor decision‐making, while attention spans are shortening (Heitz and Schall 2012, Eppler and Mengis 2004, Schwartz 2004, Eriksen 2001). For many, it is more difficult to comprehend and retain what is read on a screen than what is read on paper (Carr 2010). Studies demonstrate an intensification of bias through specializing what information one receives, which leads to communities segregated by interest, and less attention to the difference that place makes in realizing the common good (American Friends 2012, Iyengar and Hahn 2009, Galloway 2004).
Another requirement of democratic participation concerns meaningful civic interaction. To be able to respond constructively to the problems and opportunities of civic life, people must experience a sense of common interest or “community.” Social capital is built among people who live in the same area and who engage in responding to common problems by interacting in shared social institutions, such as neighborhood groups, service clubs, city government meetings, church groups, and so forth. Through developing and maintaining social capital, people learn to trust others because they have a common commitment to public well‐being. People learn tolerance because they are working together as imperfect people with good intentions. People accept individual responsibility for collective issues. People and institutions are held accountable for their values and actions. People learn to take creative initiative, to try new things without too much risk, and where future leaders are first identified and nurtured. These experiences and practices are the foundation for what people expect to occur throughout civil society, and in this way community social capital supports similar experiences and democratic practices at greater scales of region, state, and nation. It is the context in which people learn to believe in the potential goodness of human persons and how to appeal to a moral standpoint. Does the Smart City ideal support building social capital in local communities? Mobile technology facilitates communication among people who know each other, as well as among those who are anonymous, but without the condition of shared place experience. There are some effective on‐line networks of neighbors, such as Italy’s SocialStreet, or NextDoor in the U.S. . However, digital devices can be addictive to the extent that some users become unable to socially interact where they live (Bian and Leung 2014). The “plugged‐in” person is often distracted from their immediate physical environment, who is there, and what is going on (Grabar 2013, Pang 2013). Misra et al. (2014) shows that the presence of mobile phones during a personal conversation, even if they are not in use, can inhibit interpersonal closeness, trust, empathy, and understanding. It has never been easy for people to engage in matters of common concern. It becomes even more difficult if ubiquitous mobile technology influences social interaction to become more shallow, especially between people who don’t know each other. Good health is another requirement for democratic participation. A society needs most of its people to be in good health in order to participate in self‐governance: people who are well‐rested, nourished, safe, pain‐free, interested in the future, and somewhat confident in themselves and others. Effective participation depends on people who are not chronically stressed by their individual circumstances or social inequity, people who are not depressed or anxious, and people who want to interact with others throughout their lives, giving and getting help. In addition, a safe, functional, and beautiful built environment is a democratic expression of the common good (Shutkin 2000). Further, the health of natural environments may be the most significant requirement for self‐governance because it ensures our very existence. Yet Louv (2008) raises the concern that children in the U.S. are so carefully managed that they have no time for the natural world. People who do not go outside and spend time in nature become fearful and avoid it, becoming more comfortable indoors where they are increasingly drawn to using digital devices and more likely to be obese and depressed. Meanwhile, studies show mounting evidence of the health benefits of immersing oneself in nature: heightened immune system function (Tsao et al. 2014), reduced attention‐deficit disorder (Kuo and Taylor 2004), boosted creative problem‐solving, improved confidence, a feeling of belonging, and an increased sense of well‐being (Selhub and Logan 2012). While the natural world is the source of all ecosystem services, those indispensable and naturally occurring functions that support life, people who do not spend time in nature are less likely to support conservation efforts (Dailey et al. 1997, Larson, Whiting and Green 2011). As human impacts increasingly stress ecosystem services despite conservation attempts, human health and safety is increasingly at risk (Costanza 2014). IV. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ON CIVIC CAPACITY
The way forward is uncertain. People who value self‐governance have the responsibility to make intelligent choices that sustain the capacity for collective decision‐making. Over the coming years, urban adaptation to climate change will take more attention at every level of government, as well as the full efforts of business and private sectors. Civic capacities, such as the three requirements of democratic practice outlined above, are necessary to democratically support needed adaptive policies and programs. To this end, inclusionary processes of public engagement are more promising than merely providing public input as “participation” in government programs (Quick and Feldman 2011, Carp 2012a). But inclusionary practices require localized, interpersonal involvement over time, an approach that seems to be eroded by ICTs. Should people put their hope for our collective future in the fast ideals of the Smart City and the promises of improved performance on the basis of business and engineering? Or should people put their faith in the Slow City ideal, embodied awareness of social and ecological well‐being, and the natural capacity to be responsible for securing the shared experience of pleasure as a collective right? Regarding either of these ideals, or a hybrid that may emerge, societies should use their tools in ways that sustain and improve human capacities to think creatively and critically, to collaborate with others in local communities, and to guard public and environmental health. REFERENCES
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