BESSERUD, Keith et alt 2013. Scales of metabolic flows. Regional, Urban and Building Systems Design at SOM

BESSERUD, Keith; SARKISIAN, Mark; ENQUIST, Phil; HARTMAN, Craig (2013): Scales of metabolic flows. Regional, Urban and Building Systems Design at SOM, Architectural Design, London

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(…) This biological process coordinating interactions between all the physiological systems of the body via the reading, processing and transformation of chemical molecules is what is commonly referred to as ‘Metabolism’. Metabolic systems are essentially information-processing systems, regulating the flows of biological information and instructions.

Pharmaceutical scientists are also very interested in metabolic processes. The drugs they develop are doses of molecular chemical information that get absorbed into the body’s metabolic flows. Ideally, the drugs are designed to address very specific cells and to communicate very specific instructions (…)

Within this framework there are two related but discrete modes: diagnosis and intervention. Procedures like blood tests provide important diagnostic indicators of the metabolic status of the body. Intervention, on the other hand, whether it involves medicine, surgery or genetic engineering, is a very different mode, requiring the ability to predict that a certain intervention will achieve the preferred outcome. This second mode is fundamentally a process of design.

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Biological analogies with the urban domain

(…) Like biological systems, cities and their various urban systems are perpetually ‘metabolising’ flows of information, energy and matter to drive their processes (…)

The diagnostic question of how to measure a city’s health is one that is attracting a great deal of global attention. In the absence of predefined standards, cities are crafting their own set of urban metrics in order to better manage their affairs. Categories of measurement include public safety, public health, education, transportation, jobs, cost of living, local culture and the environment. Specific indicators range from the near universal (for example, commuting times, graduation rates) to the more local (manatee deaths in the city of Jacksonville’s local waterways).

The enormous amount of information that feeds into these metrics represents a form of ‘big data’, which comes from open data movements (…) As a result, new and innovative forms of urban ‘blood tests´are quickly emerging to help understand urban metabolic flows. The idea that better metabolic flows, enabled with big data, will lead to better cities underpins the philosophy of the ‘smart’ cities movement.

However, as with the design of drugs, the move from diagnosis to intervention with respect to urban system is not simple. The great challenge for urban systems is not simple. The great challenge for urban designers and policy makers in dealing with the complexities of urban systems is to intervene with the existing metabolic flows to achieve the intended results without triggering undesirable side effects (for example, lack of affordable housing, ineffective public spaces, unsustainable development). Currently, our abilities to reliably predict the holistic fallout of an urban design or public policy proposal –in terms of social, economic and ecological effects –are limited to relatively simplistic pairings and based primarily on experienced intuition.