Cultural planning and Chaos Theory in Cyberspace: some notes on a Digital Cultural Atlas Project for Western Sydney
Bob Hodge and Elaine Lally
University of Western Sydney
A perennial issue for digital politics has been the debate between those who
claim a liberatory role for digital technologies and those who see them as instruments
for a more effective oppression. We prefer to avoid such abstract oppositions
and ask more specific questions: what kind of digital technology, used in what
way by whom, for what purposes in what contexts, may support the efforts of
those who work for a better, more open society? To focus our enquiry we look
at the intersection of digital systems and "planning". "Planning"
in a general sense is a fundamental human activity in all societies exercising
the "rationality" that has come to define humanity since the ancient
Greeks. Yet the dominant form of planning in western societies today employs
a specific form of ‘rationality’ which has emerged only recently, labelled ‘Occidental
rationalism’ by Weber (1930:26), which insists on crisp, clear categories and
a linear, reductive logic. Starting with Weber himself there has been a continuous
tradition of critique of this form of reason, which we will categorize as linear
reasoning.
In spite of the many inconvenient or worse consequences of this form of rationality
as applied to human societies, it has maintained an unassailable position because
it has been seen as inseparable from science, which has been presented as based
on the same principles of rationality. Digital technologies have developed within
science, and naturally incorporated these principles of reason in their conceptual
foundations. This gives a special value in this context to what have been called
chaos and complexity theories. These also developed within science, yet contain
a highly developed, fully scientific alternative to linear rationality (see
e.g. Law, 2004). These theories allow us to take full cognisance of the fluid,
dynamic, turbulent situations which constantly challenge the reductive linearity
of modern planning. They also allow us to re-think the possibilities for digital
technologies in non-linear planning processes, going beyond the unholy alliance
of linear digital technologies and linear planning.
By non-linearity we mean that what we are dealing with is a sequence of states
at different points in time which are not characterisable in terms of linear
causal relationships. Instead they manifest a variety of complex, reciprocal
relationships and feedback loops. In mathematics, a system is understood to
be linear if there is a constant proportional relationship between changes in
one quantity and those in another. By contrast, behaviour within a non-linear
system cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. While the equations describing
such systems can sometimes be solved straightforwardly, making precise prediction
within the system possible, this is generally not the case. It may be possible
to make do with linear approximation and extrapolation (the traditional planning
approach), but such simplifications inevitably break down over sometimes quite
short time-frames. We are not proposing that it is desirable or even possible
to model mathematically the dynamics of cultural relations within the geographical
region we are interested in to the degree which would make a formal planning
"system" operational. What we hope to achieve here is to demonstrate
that we can gain insights from domains of non-linear dynamics where more formal
methods have proved to have some traction on problems of prediction and control.
In this spirit we want to explore issues and possibilities for digital technologies
to assist in a kind of revolution in one particular place, the spot on the planet
where the two authors currently live, Western Sydney. Western Sydney, like similar
regions, is "chaotic", highly complex and unpredictable, incomprehensible
without reference to multiple regional and global articulations, constituted
by countless internal networks, actual and virtual, which give it a distinctive
footprint in cyberspace itself. Our aim is not simply to describe this situation
but also to dream: dreams that are shaped by this particular place and time,
however much they also aspire to transcend them. (See Lally and Lee-Shoy, 2006
for an elaboration of this argument that the ‘postsuburban’ conditions of Western
Sydney require a multiscalar and network-oriented response.)
Within the planning regimes
of local government we focus on ‘cultural planning’. Cultural planning
is ambiguously related to the broader enterprise of planning in New
South Wales. It tends to be big on beautiful ideas and small in budget.
Cultural planners as a profession show admirable levels of idealism,
dedication and creativity on modest salaries with meagre resources,
striving to benefit their communities.
We hope to find new uses of
new technologies to help to enfranchise this valuable class of people
and their communities as digital citizens. This is also a useful site
for chaos-inspired interventions. In practice, cultural planning acts
as a residual category to contain all the issues left over from linear
planning. If it were less isolated from information resources, it might
play an urgently needed role in re-framing the planning process itself,
to cope better with what Law (2004) calls the ‘mess’ of social life.
Digital Utopias as Planning
Discourses of digitality are prone to euphoric, utopian claims about the brave
new world just around the corner or almost already here (see e.g. Negroponte,
1996; Gates, 1999). So is Big Planning. Both use linear thinking to project
a small number of features isolated in the present into a simplified future
constructed in their terms. Digital prophets have as bad a record at prediction
as Big Planners. But prediction is not the only intellectual use of utopias.
Thomas More invented the word in the 16th century to project an ideal country
to critique his own (1556/1999). Every utopia has this double face, both plan
and critique, apparently looking to a future which normally never comes, yet
also encoding critiques and guidelines for change. It is in this combination
of prediction and critique that we can begin to find more complex approaches
to digital planning. The complexity we are referring to tends to shift things
from the linear to the non-linear. Although the projection may seem linear in
the utopias involved, non-linearity often lurks in the critiques or dreams.
This complexity can be seen
even in the countless digital mini-utopias constructed by IT advertisements.
We illustrate with a typical example, a 2005 advertisement for Microsoft
Office. The picture shows an office with paper everywhere on a desk.
An old-style computer print-out runs onto the floor. Two men sit with
dinosaur heads stuck onto their bodies, one with arms crossed, the other
holding his head in frustration, both in evident despair. A brightly
coloured third dinosaur brings a pile of paper to one despondent dinosaur,
like a female secretary. The heading says: ‘The I CAN’T DEAL WITH
ALL THIS DATA era is over’. These dinosaurs are then challenged:
Microsoft® Office has evolved. Have you? Is information overload a daily
challenge for you and your team? Today’s Microsoft Office has improved screen
layouts, time-saving features and email management tools to help you better
manage your workload… It’s time to evolve the way you work. Discover how at Microsoft.com.au/office. (Daily Telegraph May
24, 2005:16)
The intended point is that
the latest version of Microsoft Office supersedes all previous versions,
but this point is complicated by the way the text uses the grand trope
of evolution, with digitality the marker of progress. This supposed
process plays itself out on different scales, producing complex and
contradictory concepts of evolution, which give different takes on digitality.
At the largest scale is the evolution of species, from dinosaurs to
humans in one mighty leap. This mirrors an implicit progression, from
the pre-digital era to the digital office, and now an evolution within
the digital era which is the focus of the advertisement.
In this two-stage progression,
stage 1 of digital evolution saw computers producing two kinds of problem:
failures at the interface with human users, and excessive data. The
productivity which seemed digital technology’s evolutionary edge over
print turned out to produce unexpected problems. Chaos and disorder
were paradoxical products of this symbol of order, desk top computers
and office software. By stage 2, human users have reclaimed control,
thanks to the latest Microsoft Office, though the claims are modest
and evolutionary. ‘Improved’ screen layouts help to ‘better’
manage workloads. This is not a new concept and certainly not a new
brand. This utopian vision of an office saved by Microsoft is carried
through images of its opposite, the frustrations of digitality as experienced
by the current generation of users. This critique of the limitations
of linear systems (of the past) comes not from an anti-digital Luddite
but from a major digital player.
Similar complexities can be
seen in more academic proposals for a digital utopia. Pierre Lévy also
uses the evolution trope as he proclaims a new stage in humanity associated
with digital culture:
The development of digitally controlled cognitive prostheses is transforming
our intellectual capabilities as clearly as the mutations of our genetic heritage.
The new technologies of communication through virtual worlds have altered
the formulation of the problem of the social bond. In short, hominization,
the process of the emergence of the human species, is not over. In fact it
seems to be accelerating. (1998:xxiv)
Lévy’s vision seems simple and positive, but some ambiguities lie in wait under
his words. 'Digitally controlled’ sounds fine, but who is doing the controlling?
In a stage-1 Microsoft Office office, workers wonder whether they are controlling
the ‘prostheses’ or are being controlled through them, whether digitality itself
to some extent controls them both. These bewildered workers have their capabilities
transformed, but not enhanced, even according to Microsoft. In stage 1 of the
digital, the ‘social bond’ is rendered problematic by this technology, with
only the female dinosaur performing her traditional gendered role, untouched
by evolution or distress. The linear acceleration Lévy claims in the rate of
hominization is complicated by an uncoordinated rate of change in the technology
that passes from one "era" to the next in a decade. If linear thinking
in the past produced unexpected complexity, what guarantee does Lévy have that
it will not do so in his future?
However, Lévy’s vision,
as utopian possibility, with its design features in a blueprint for
the future, again carries a critique of the present as much as a proposal
for the future. He calls the utopian possibility ‘collective intelligence’,
a capacity for individuals to share in the production and use of knowledge
on a greater scale than has been possible before.
First, we will have at our disposal simple and practical means for knowing
what we are doing as a group. Second, we will be able to manipulate, much
more easily than we are able to write, the instruments for collective utterance.
(1998:xxviii)
His language here as elsewhere
moves ambiguously between prophecy and proposal. What interests us here
is the implicit critique of the past and the limited parameters -
tending towards multiple forms of exclusion - it specifies for future
designs. His ‘we’ may be problematic, but here it is grounded in
the ‘group’ constituted by this broad and complex collective act
of knowing, which Lévy insists should be as inclusive as possible.
For these purposes, the vagueness involved is productive. The means
for knowing must be ‘simple’ and ‘practical’, but this is precisely
because the world to be known and the social structures of the knowers
have become more complex.
There is a paradox here so
crucial that instead of trying to eliminate it (as linear rationality
would dictate) we propose to include it in our basic design specifications.
‘Simple’ means for knowing must at the same time recognize and do
justice in a ‘practical’ way to the extreme complexity facing those
who seek to plan and act intelligently in the world today.
The Microsoft ad seems to be
about computer systems, but also carries surprising messages about digitality
and planning on the micro-scale, the dangers of mere linearity and the
need for these systems to be set in a more complex framework, in order
to deliver the claimed simplicity. Lévy’s vision is poor prophecy
but invaluable in setting goals for developments in digital technologies
and uses, as they serve multiple human purposes in a complex, chaotic
world. That is how we intend to use his ideas in our own more practical
project, to adapt existing digital technologies to serve the needs of
a single complex community.
Planning and Digitality in a Complex World
So far we have referred to chaos and complexity in everyday terms, as self-evident
properties of the modern world which is the object of planning, mediated and
acted on by digital systems. It is time to clarify how our approach to digital
planning relates to Chaos Theory more specifically. Chaos Theory is used in
a wide range of sciences, and has been widely expounded in popular science (see
e.g. Gleick, 1988; Hall, 1992), with some attempts to use it within the social
sciences (Hayles, 1990; Guattari, 1995; Gates, 1999; Coronado and Hodge, 2004).
"Complexity", a complementary term for a heterogenous set of ideas
related to Chaos Theory, has also proved popular (see especially Thrift, 1999;
Urry, 2003; Couldry, 2000; Law and Mol, 2002). But in the social sciences the
deployment of Chaos Theory and "complexity" remains problematic. There
is no orthodoxy to refer to, no consensus to fall back on.
As a symptomatic instance,
Lévy is aware of Chaos Theory, but sees it as a parallel development
in science, not a body of theory that is at the heart of understanding
his new world and its new forms of knowledge, its new species.
The deterministic chaos and fractal objects studied by the natural sciences
echo the fads, erratic behaviour and randomness that now characterize the
human world. (1998:199)
In footnotes he refers to the
ideas of Prigogine, Lorenz and Mandelbrot, which provide a good starting
point for our own brief inventory of concepts and analytic tools to
apply to digitality, to the subjects and objects of the technology and
to the planning process. We are not suggesting here that it is only
the precise methodologies (the mathematics for example) drawn from these
ideas that are useful to digital planning (although they might be).
Rather we draw, sometimes loosely, sometimes more precisely, on the
principles involved in order to bring some significant innovations to
cultural planning.
Chaos theory implies an ontology
in which the world is characterised by significant non-linear complexity.
This makes the principles behind Chaos theory very useful within the
contemporary social world. Here there is a wide-spread sense that levels
of complexity today are rising in every aspect of the contemporary world,
in the social sphere and in the semiosphere of circulating meanings,
affecting and affected by events in cyberspace. Practices derived from
the principles of Chaos theory can therefore provide significant re-orientations
to the way planning is understood and carried out. Such practices can
perhaps begin to answer some of the dilemmas of planning, recognised
before the development of Chaos theory. For example, Ashby’s famous
Law of Requisite Variety (1961) is a salutary check on linear utopian
projects: a control system must have the same ‘variety’ as the system
being controlled. Given that a plan is a mechanism of control, this
implies that its supporting information system must incorporate the
variety of what is being controlled, a diverse society. This variety
minimally encompasses the three main elements that make up the planning
process: planners, the world they plan for, and the technologies they
use to understand and manage it.
In this spirit we will introduce
a brief tool-kit of concepts drawn and adapted from theories of chaos
and complexity which we have found especially useful in thinking about
key issues of planning and digital systems.
1. Far-from-equilibrium dynamics. Here the key theorist is Ilya Prigogine,
(Prigogine and Stengers, 1984) who proposes that natural systems (including
social and biological systems) exist in three fundamentally different conditions,
which have very different properties. Systems at or close to equilibrium have
simple structures, little or no movement, and are highly predictable. Chaotic
"systems" are so random that they are barely systems, though they
still have typical behaviours. Between these two extremes are systems which
are far from equilibrium but at the edge of chaos, not beyond. Systems in these
conditions are typically non-linear, and cannot be precisely described or predicted.
Causes can have disproportionate effects, and they can act over surprising distances.
One phenomenon which illustrates far-from-equilibrium properties well is the
so-called ‘butterfly effect’ proposed by Edward Lorenz (1995). According to
the metaphor, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in the Andes may "cause"
(or more precisely, introduce a tendency in a chaotic system whose outcome is)
a hurricane in Beijing. The point of the metaphor is not that Andean butterflies
should all be exterminated before they do more damage. It is that in a chaotic
situation, it is not clear till after the event just what might prove a decisive
input, or what its effects might be.
There are two major implications for planning and digitality. If Prigogine
is right, then the further from equilibrium a situation is, the more inadequate
linear planning will be, especially over time. The extrapolations common to
Big Planning and digital utopianism will be increasingly misleading. "Butterfly
effects’" will defy the predictions of linear planning. Yet they are not
alien to computers. On the contrary, they were first identified through computer
modelling.
However, Chaos Theory also offers a framework for more positive and constructive
responses to chaos. Prigogine is not pessimistic about far-from-equilibrium
conditions. He claims that all complex forms in sociology and biology emerge
in far-from-equilibrium conditions (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984: 13-14, 312).
Close-to-equilibrium forms are easy to predict because they are so limited in
scope and complexity. Far-from-equilibrium forms can be richer and more functional
than any reality projected by linear logic. They can also be planned for, using
a non-linear logic and a non-linear form of planning, based on a non-linear
analysis of non-linear data. Digital systems, suitably adapted, can contribute
to this kind of process. Although, because non-linear events are not predictable
in the same way as linear events, this significantly shifts our understanding
of the forms and assumptions of planning as a cultural process.
2. Fuzzy logic. Contradiction and indeterminacy are two basic features
of complex, far-from-equilibrium systems. The engineer Lotfi Zadeh devised a
new kind of logic to deal with situations which could not be resolved by classic
Aristotelian (binary) logic. Fuzzy logic is designed to deal with contradictions,
where an element may be classified as both A (in some respect or to some degree)
and not-A. Paradoxically, in the hands of engineers this logic leads to better
control systems, not less capable ones, and the same is true of planning. Computers
programmed with fuzzy logic can perform complex tasks better than with linear
logic (Kosko, 1984: 38-39). Zadeh connected his account of fuzziness with an
idea paralleling Prigogine’s, that different rules apply under different conditions
of equilibrium:
As the complexity of a system increases, our ability to make precise and
yet significant statements about its behaviour diminishes until a threshold
is reached beyond which precision and significance (or relevance) become almost
mutually exclusive characteristics. (1973: 28)
In other words, there are unavoidable
trade-offs between the precision with which we can describe the planning
context and the relative significance attributed to the various components
of that description. This observation has direct implications for planning
in complex situations, and for the form in which data must be encoded
to support it.
3. Complex, dynamic change. Another characteristic of the situation planners now face is greater
dynamism. Change is faster and less predictable than the simplifying
assumptions of linear planning can take account of. Tsoukas and Chia
(2002) argue that traditional approaches to organizational change have
privileged stability, routine, and order. Structuralist epistemologies,
they suggest, have a blind spot about change, and as a result, change
has been treated as exceptional rather than inevitable:
It is now realized, across scientific fields, that we are lacking the vocabulary
to meaningfully talk about change as if change mattered--that is to treat
change not as an epiphenomenon, as a mere curiosity or exception, but to acknowledge
its centrality in the constitution of socio-economic life (2002: 569).
This reasoning can be illustrated through the example of Saussure, writing
about the relation between "synchronic" (same time) and "diachronic"
(across time) structures. In a famous argument he claimed that ‘never is the
system modified directly. In itself it is unchangeable’ (1917/74:84). That is,
change happens all the time, but never synchronically, ‘in language’, only from
a point of view outside language, in diachrony. Linguistic and other systemic
forms of change cannot be studied by structuralist methods
Saussure recognised this as a dilemma for structuralism, a problem he bequeathed
to later structuralists. In 1926, in a different field, Werner Heisenberg both
recognized and pointed to a resolution of this dilemma, in his ‘Uncertainty
principle’. This mathematically demonstrated, for conditions at the quantum
level, that ‘it is not possible to describe both momentum and position of a
particle at the same time, with a given degree of precision’ (1989). Scientists
typically limit the application of this principle to the processes of measurement
within the quantum world. However, the principle may have a wider application.
Ilya Prigogine (Prigogine and Stengers,1984:222-4) has famously suggested that
Heisenberg’s proof applies to all cases where two dimensions can be
shown to be interdependent. This happens often under far-from-equilibrium conditions,
when change of position is rapid, and direction and momentum are unpredictable.
The case of Saussure illustrates how widely applicable the principle is. By
making synchrony and diachrony radically interdependent he was bound to find
it impossible to be equally precise about diachronic and synchronic facts, though
linguistic change demonstrably happens in everyday space and time.
Applying the principle derived
from Heisenberg to planning, we can conclude that whenever structures
and change processes are radically interdependent, as they typically
are in complex conditions, there is an unavoidable trade-off between
the precision with which the current state of things and their rate
and direction of change can be described. The paradox is that, traditionally,
both must be described for planning to be effective. In practice, this
means that some degree of fuzziness in interdependent dimensions is
essential to an effective planning process.
4. Against binaries. Binaries play an ambiguous role in digital thinking in relation to planning.
On the one hand basic digital code is binary, yet the power of computers
can create highly complex structures out of these basic binary forms,
in which simple binary forms can no longer be recognized. At the same
time, the binaries that shape so much planning do not come from digital
binaries but from pre-digital traditions. As Derrida (1976) amongst
others has shown, potent binaries have their roots in a past which more
often than not pre-dates the digital. Threeness has a venerable history
of disrupting this common dualism. A proposal within Chaos Theory that
can help to counter dualism comes from work of the French mathematician
Henri Poincaré on what he called ‘three body systems’ (1943). Poincaré
demonstrated that a system of three bodies in an interdependent system
(he had in mind the sun, the earth and the moon) is inherently unpredictable,
so that over infinitely many repetitions the system never settles down
to a stable, predictable state. A lesson from Poincaré is that as soon
as more than two complex, inter-related but independent factors come
into consideration, precise prediction becomes impossible. This principle
can be applied in the design of planning information systems, to guard
against falling into the trap of binaristic linear thinking, by forcing
the consideration of the interplay between at least three independent
but inter-related dimensions of whatever problem is under consideration.
5. Scales and fractals. The issue of scale constantly confronts planners,
who typically find it difficult to cope adequately with a reality which exists
on many scales simultaneously, where sometimes structures on the largest scale
seem to influence all others, but where those influences constantly meet and
interact with structures and events on lower levels, any of which can spawn
unexpected "butterfly effects". In the planning domain, the co-existence
and interaction of policies and programs at different levels of government -
international, national, state, regional and local at least - illustrates the
difficulty. Similarly, planning processes are inherently political, and governments
can change overnight. The often hotly contested interaction of issues and priorities
at different levels of scale, from the global down to the neighbourhood, can
offer seemingly intractable challenges to planning in geographically localised
domains.
The mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot’s
fractals (1992) provide a powerful model for certain kinds of multi-scalar
processes. Although multi-scalability is not always, strictly speaking,
fractal, there is still much to be learnt in principle from Mandelbrot.
Mandelbrot's version of fractals existed first in mathematical space,
and then on computer screens, but they have been seen to have many real-world
applications. Fractals are ‘self-similar’, usually irregular shapes
reproduced at different scales in a manner that can be analysed mathematically.
Fractals - at least the general principle involved, in that although there
are always important relations between different scales, these do not always
involve self-similarity - can be used to provide a richer understanding of strategies
of zooming across different levels. Zadeh has suggested that fuzziness is itself
produced by movement across scales, requiring what he calls granularity of description
(optimum precision for a given structural level). Fractals at more than one
level above or below a given level may be only perceivable fuzzily. Within the
domain of information architecture, the concept of "granularity" is
used in a similar way, to denote the way that digital objects are often nested
(files within folders, for example) (Hagedorn 2000: 4). In describing the development
of a classification scheme to make the work of nurses more visible, Bowker and
Star (1999) illustrate how hierarchical classification schemes or thesauri,
as socially constructed informational structures, must negotiate the sometimes
difficult politics of clarification and ambiguity at different levels of granularity.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty
principle suggests that the seductive clarity and beauty of a single
fractal (computer-generated examples of which have become hugely popular)
may be less illuminating than fractal momentum, a trajectory through
different levels of fractality. Applied to planning, the articulation
between levels may be impossible to describe with the same precision
as that with which discrete levels are able to be described. Yet these
relational characteristics remain critically important. For instance,
Lévy’s description is at the global macro-level. For planning purposes
we need descriptions at intermediate levels that finally make contact
with virtual communities formed around local sites, not only comparisons,
but also a dynamic picture of possible movements across them.
Cultural Planning in the Greater West
The region we are interested
in, Greater Western Sydney (GWS) in New South Wales, Australia, illustrates
many of the issues and problems facing cultural planners in the global
world today. From some points of view this region is well placed in
terms of cultural planning. The NSW Government’s Strategy for the
Arts in Western Sydney, released in November 1999, required Councils
to undertake cultural planning as a precondition for participation in
its funding schemes, providing a major impetus for cultural planning.
Of the 14 Local Government Authorities (LGAs) making up the GWS region,
over half already have a cultural plan in place, with the remainder
either developing or intending to develop one. In 2004, after extensive
consultation, this government issued its Cultural Planning Guidelines
for local government. These are plans for the planners, emanating from
above, though implementation is primarily the responsibility of lower
levels of government.
This planning process is good of its kind, but that kind is inevitably linear,
producing a utopian vision of a planning process. Yet the "Greater West"
has many characteristic structures and processes of a far-from-equilibrium situation.
The region for many years was neglected by planners, or viewed through negative,
inappropriate stereotypes, a crisp logic imposed from outside and above, unable
to see the forms of community that emerged over time. It is divided into Local
Government Authorities, (LGAs), 14 boxes, each with a crisp boundary around
it, in spite of the fact that rivers, roads and communication systems ceaselessly
cross all these boundaries, bearing people and things, images and ideas throughout
the region, connecting with other regions and the rest of the world. The functional
reality of the region is already a network of networks in constant process of
forming, not the static, autonomous entities shown on maps which form the basis
of the planning function. Not all these networks are fully represented in cyberspace,
but the forms of cyberspace already correspond better to a set of forces and
ways of understanding social forms and processes than any older, more static
map of LGAs and their boundaries. In this respect, Lévy’s vision of a digitally-formed
territory which is both a knowledge space and a complex social form is already
emerging.
The Australian economy has opened up, increasingly integrated into the "global"
market, accompanied by changes that impact on communities and people at many
levels, needing a dynamic, multi-scalar map, with fractal theories as a guide.
The fortunes of Sydney, as Australia’s "global gateway", have surged,
and with them tensions in the relation between the CBD and the West, and potential
costs or opportunities of this expansion. Western Sydney has the fastest population
growth in the state. Not only does infrastructure and service provision (including
cultural infrastructure and services) need to keep pace with this rate of growth,
but the planning environment has become especially volatile and unpredictable,
putting a far higher demand on information sources, requiring new strategies
for making forecasts, predictions and interventions. In popular terms, Western
Sydney is ‘hot’: some parts hotter than others. There are many markers that
this is a far-from-equilibrium situation, where planning must expect the unexpected.
Home to a diverse population of around 1.85 million people (over 42% of the
Sydney metropolitan population), the "Greater West" is now the third
largest economy in Australia (DSRD nd). Linear planning agendas developed from
the top down are inherently inadequate to manage the development of such a complex,
dynamic region, or even to understand fully what has happened. There is an especially
acute need to encourage the flow of ideas and initiatives vertically as well
as horizontally in and for the region. Without tapping creativity and knowledge
from below, the region will be unable to realise the positive potentials within
the inevitable transformations accompanying continued strong population growth
and the need for urban consolidation.
Over the past 10 years, cultural
planning has increasingly featured in local government planning in New
South Wales, but it still plays an ambivalent role. It is both enabled
and constrained by an ambiguity in the key term ‘culture’, which
is then framed by more or less linear understandings of social processes.
Previously ‘culture’ had a relatively crisp meaning, referring to
the arts, seen as a minority sector of community activities, mainly
viewed through the lenses of an elitist conception of the nature and
role of Art. It was seen in a linear, top-down way, as a good thing
which should benefit the ignorant populace.
In cultural planning’s "new era", this understanding of "culture"
co-exists with "culture" as defined far more fuzzily, as something
more complex and amorphous, pervasive and inclusive, the meeting point for various
forces and interests from below ("the community") as well as from
above. This is "culture" as a non-linear formation, which allows "cultural
planning" to address some of the planning needs for the complex, non-linear
problems of regions like Western Sydney. The NSW Cultural Planning Guidelines
for Local Government, issued in 2004 in a glossy booklet, is a manifesto
for this concept of culture. It emphasises the scope of cultural planning as
being ‘culture in its widest sense’, that is, as ‘about what matters to people
and communities’ (2004:7). This definition gives cultural planning a broad brief:
it is ‘a strategic process which illuminates and gives significance to both
the material and values dimensions of culture in a community, in a way which
informs a council’s thinking, policies and programs’. In this form, cultural
planning seems a potential major player in local government planning processes:
When harnessed to local government’s strategic objectives, cultural planning
can help councils tackle social exclusion, contribute to urban regeneration,
create employment opportunities, build safer communities, improve community
well being, and encourage healthier lifestyles. (2004:7)
This discourse is as utopian
as Lévy’s, admirably complex in its scope. It reminds us of fractals
in that it mentions four strongly related levels of scale, from the
NSW State Government through local government authorities, their cultural
planners and communities, and includes more than three dimensions, society,
urban environments, employment and health. But for this vision to engage
with the far greater complexity of the many problems of the many communities
and integrate cultural factors into broader planning processes, it needs
explicit mechanisms of articulation, and rich, accurate, comprehensive,
user-friendly information about cultural, social and economic resources
across this region. Otherwise, the promise of inclusiveness, complexity
and responsiveness to communities will remain mere rhetoric.
Cultural planners have a significant
place in developing and implementing cultural plans in New South Wales,
but outside that narrow domain their role is limited. We illustrate
with the employment process for cultural planning, using a 2004 advertisement
for a Cultural Planner by one of the larger councils in Western Sydney.
‘[X] City Council is seeking an enthusiastic and highly motivated
professional to develop a city wide Cultural Plan.’ The successful
candidate will put together a Cultural Plan, following the NSW Guidelines.
The position is offered at Band 3, level 2, Grade 2, $AUD934.20 per
week ($US700.00). It is a contract position, for 18 months. Applicants
are assured that ‘flexible work arrangements would be considered for
the right applicant’.
This flexibility is typical
of the conditions of ‘precarious labour’ in the New Economy. These
terms contrast with the requirements of the plan that is to be produced,
which should cover 3 to 5 years. The selection criteria consist of 7
points, most with further dot points. The first 6 criteria create a
picture of the desirable attributes of the Cultural Planner: high level
communication skills, project management skills, negotiation and consultation
skills, high level skill in Cultural Planning, and ability to work in
a team environment. Item 7 in the skill set is ‘Demonstrated computer
skills’. It has two dot points: ‘Experience in a range of office
software, particularly Word’, and ‘Demonstrated competency in email
systems’.
This last item is a signal, especially revealing because so unconscious, of
the low value attributed to digital skills and resources for this position.
A "Microsoft Office dinosaur" would be well-qualified for this job.
X Council is not out of step, here. The NSW planning guidelines make no mention
of databases. The emphasis is on "consultation", using the old technologies
of speech and writing to gather up some more subjective data. These are indeed
important for a planning process that reflects and responds to the complex needs
of a diverse community: important, if the planners are able truly to take them
into account.
This creates a paradoxical situation for Cultural Planners. The "soft"
data they can provide are largely missing from the data sets familiar to urban
and land use planners who run programs at state and local levels. Yet in terms
of the dominant (linear, crisp) mind-set in the planning community, "soft"
data does not rate strongly compared to "hard" data. Figures on social
and economic data are now available electronically through the Australian Bureau
of Statistics (ABS) and other sources. Many of these are collected in linear,
crisp categories, and give only one dimension of the issues, well-adapted to
linear decision processes. However, there is already an increasing awareness
of the value of "softer", less linear data. The ABS is developing
statistics around such fuzzy concepts as "social capital", broken
down into some general categories such as gender, class and ethnicity, and even
place. At the same time, social, environmental and land use planners, in Councils
and Government, have access to all the hard data, but do not find it easy to
integrate it with "soft" data, whether what is currently available
or what they would need to collect themselves. Working at higher levels of geographical
scale and social aggregation, they do not attach great value to planners working
at more fine-grained and spatially differentiated levels, like our Council Cultural
Planner, who would have a better feel for the picture created by the "soft"
data. Neither kind of planner alone can plan across the complex intersecting
levels and strands that "new era" cultural planning demands, and already
proclaims itself able to manage.
The Cultural Planning utopia
of the NSW government can be interwoven with something like Lévy’s
digital utopia, expanding the scope of information and the scale and
complexity of the virtual community of planners and communities in each
locality. Two utopias in this case may be better than one, or none.
A third utopia might be even better, especially if all three were used
as the basis for critiquing the present, and mobilizing for the future.
Towards a Digital Cultural Atlas for a Chaotic
World
Our own utopian project starts
from one piece of digital technology, Geographical Information Systems
(GIS), using some ideas from Chaos and Complexity to push this technology
to be more adequate to the demands of cultural and general urban planning
for the Greater West. The exemplary user we have in mind is a cultural
planner, networked with other planners and with others in the vast,
far-from-equilibrium community they relate to. We wish to explore options
which exist virtually for such a class of persons, assuming only a realistic
level of skill, and access to computer technologies and the resources
of the Net.
GIS is currently capable of
representing information about the Sydney region according to a spatial
grid, in the form of a map. Many planning systems in local government
(apart from cultural planning) rely heavily on these tools for spatially
representing the matter they deal with. This visual form is a great
advantage of this technology, making information available to users
in a rich, human semiotic mode. It allows zooming from the regional
level to the level of particular buildings or streets, if these can
be located in the base maps, plus any other kind of data that has been
coded for location. The typical GIS interface organises information
in different layers. Layers can be readily added, and can be switched
on and off to avoid confusing the user with data overload. Layers may
be grouped into themes, enabling related data to be viewed together
without compromising legibility due to screen clutter. All these capabilities
are consistent with Lévy’s criterion, that complex information should
be communicated in ways that are ‘simple’ and ‘practical’ (for
humans not yet fully ‘hominized’).
We are currently undertaking an Australian Research Council Linkage-funded
project to construct a GIS-based information system for cultural planning which
builds on these capabilities for spatial representation, but goes beyond them
in ways that make the complexity and dynamism of local communities visible and
tractable for planning purposes. Our "digital cultural atlas" builds
on the traditional idea of an atlas as a series of maps, often giving multiple
images of the same spatial domain, along with related information on economics,
politics, demography, and indexed to allow ease of access to information. The
digital cultural atlas extends on this traditional model, however, in translating
the mapping capability to the digital domain of GIS, incorporating powerful
search and indexing modes, and linking to networked information (both spatial
and a-spatial, including the wider resources of the Internet).
In contrast to the traditional GIS with its 'bird's-eye" top-down view,
our interface design incorporates multiple panes, capable of representing both
quantitative and qualitative data, accessible via an information architecture
encompassing both spatial and semantic modes, so that different but related
data sources and formats can be present simultaneously. Hyperlinks connect GIS-accessible
data to other online sources, including text and non-text digital objects from
anywhere in the world via the global reach of the Internet. The global and local
can thus weave together on any scale, responding to the intelligent interest
of the searcher, whether cultural planners or those they seek to communicate
and collaborate with. This is "manipulation" in Lévy’s sense, in which
the difference between reading and writing is functionally blurred, as reading
processes immediately produce text, and traces of their own processes which
can also be communicated to others.
The ideas derived from Chaos
Theory we described earlier have been applied to the process of framing
and designing the system’s information architecture and user interface.
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty
Principle and Far from Equilibrium theory frames the use of these systems. GIS maps are synchronic, giving physical reality at a given moment in
time. In itself GIS is inherently ill-equipped to represent change.
As a planning instrument this is a crucial limitation, since plans deal
with a dynamic world which has already changed and will change even
more over the lifetime of the plan. The GIS is best at showing only
what cannot be planned, only what has to be planned around. Yet change
happens unevenly on different scales, and it is valid to include information
about things which change only slowly as though they do not change at
all.
Even though change is difficult
to display in itself, it can be represented through animation or other
signifiers of movement, which can help planners even when fuzzy and
simplistic. A sequence of maps, for example, can show the evolving spatial
distribution of population over time, or the changing locations and
service catchments of cultural institutions and other cultural infrastructures.
In a correlate to Heisenberg’s
principle, we recognise that it is inherently impossible to represent
time and change, with any degree of complexity, in a synchronic map.
It can, however, be done fuzzily through representing at least two systems,
each fuzzily readable alongside the other. Demographic data is available in readily mappable form via the Australian
Bureau of Statistics. The 5-yearly census collection, for example, provides
a spatially fine-grained and thematically comprehensive diachronic overview.
Comparison between variables is difficult, however, once more than two
or three variables are involved, as a glance at the tabular format in
which the ABS generally publishes its data will attest. A more sophisticated
understanding of the complex composition of local communities can be
gained by allowing the user to move readily between multiple and/or
composite views of different variables for the same area, such as different
dimensions of cultural diversity (place of birth, language spoken, religion)
and their interaction with socio-economic variables such as income and
educational attainment. Similarly, the same variables at different points
in time can be juxtaposed by showing them in different panes of the
same screen, or animating a sequence of them.
Another productive source of fuzziness is within the classification schemes
of the information architecture itself. In the discussion of granularity above
it was suggested that as system-builders we need to be mindful of the political
dimensions of information architecture. As Mitch Kapor has recently written,
architecture is politics (2006). The recent proliferation of social
networking sites such as CiteULike, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr and many others
gives a strong indication of the power of "tagging", or community-generated
classifications (also known as ‘folksonomies’) (Hammond et al, 2005). Within
our project, we aim over time to complement a formal categorisation structure
which articulates with standards-based classification systems (such as those
used by the ABS) by implementing functionality which allows users to tag or
annotate resources themselves. In this way, the fuzziness of naturally proliferating
and idiosyncratic user-generated semantic categories and terminologies can enrich
the system and provide a mode of resistance to the homogenising and hegemonising
tendencies of digital linearity.
Three body analysis suggests that it is productive to organize bodies of data into broad
themes, to avoid binaries or one-sidedness. A single-variable map is
attractive to planners precisely for the reason that it is likely to
be misleading, momentarily removing the multiplicity of factors that
drives every complex real-life system. A single map can represent different
aspects of physical space in a single frame (e.g. buildings, roads,
parks and natural features), but planning also requires an ability to
represent and manipulate the complex, undecidable interactions between
different orders of reality.
With this in mind, our database
is organised in terms of three broad categories or modes, all of which
we understand as interdependent and crucial to any planning process
or decision: the socio-economic, the cultural, and the subjective, against
the background of the spatial. The socio-economic mode includes harder and softer data (demographic data, economic statistics etc.). The cultural mode includes a range of resources throughout the region, covering by the
broader sense of the term, and also its artistic forms. This kind of
information is relatively easy to collect and assemble, since councils
maintain directories of community resources and relevant databases such
as catalogues of public art or heritage collections. The subjective mode gives access to a multiplicity of diverse voices and perspectives,
available as video or audio streams, in transcripts, or in other digital
forms. This is the kind of information that is most often invisible
in planning, because it is hard to collect and manage and in the past
has been hard to integrate into planning processes. A rich source of
this kind of information, however, can be accessed through working with
the materials captured by cultural development organisations working
in close collaboration with diverse local communities. Western Sydney
hosts many such organisations, one of which is Information and Cultural
Exchange (ICE). This community-based new media organisation, working
with a range of emerging, refugee and minority communities, is one of
our partners in the digital cultural atlas project, and is providing
a model for knowledge transfer of the accumulated cultural intelligence
the organisation has generated over several years, as we evaluate and
selectively digitise their archival materials. In order to make these
levels of complexity available to direct perception by cultural planners,
a single screen contains panes providing representations in these three
modes.
Principles similar to fractality in the multiscalar landscape can be
incorporated and made perceptible for planning and cultural development purposes
through the GIS’s support for zooming in and out. A zoom juxtaposes images at
different scales, and can generate a loosely defined kind of fractality. Here
the "fractals" are patterns in the structures of cultural relations
within the region represented, more or less replicated at different levels (vertical
fractals) or the same level (horizontal fractals). For example, by mapping the
networks of the many collaborative partnerships and projects between Western
Sydney’s cultural organisations, the interactions and relationships between
these "cultural mode" resources can be demonstrated to have similar
structures at different levels of geographical scale, from the region-wide catchments
of the major cultural institutions to the locally-dense networks of organisations
working within a single LGA. Similarly, and productively from the point of view
of advocacy and planning, at each level of scale these "cultural mode"
network structures can be shown to be reflected in the richer qualitative structures
of the subjective mode, by demonstrating how the collaborations have built shared
cultural development knowledges and methodologies.
Available technology to add
spatial coding to diverse data sources is fairly intuitive to use. A
PDA or similar device which allows spatial location data to be collected
via GPS and linked to other information are now relatively inexpensive
(around AUD$1000), and allows metadata and annotations to be collected
by a roving cultural development worker. As an adjunct to the cultural
atlas infrastructure, we are currently implementing a mobile digital
multimedia infrastructure which will allow for custom data collection,
incorporating audio-texts and still or video images from community members
and organisations into the GIS database on an ongoing basis.
Conclusion
This article may seem caught in the same contradictions as it critiques. We
try to plan an instrument for planning, in an environment we claim is non-linear
and inherently unpredictable. We want to use digital technologies, in spite
of being aware of the systemic gaps between digital promise and accomplishment.
But these contradictions are only problematic in terms of a crisp, binary logic.
The problem we see is not with planning or digitality as such, but the taken-for-granted
linearity of current planning and digital paradigms. So we do not offer a single
grand plan for a Digital Revolution or a new planning millennium. On the contrary,
our propositions are highly local, looking at planning issues and digital resources
in a specific site. The process we propose involves participation at every step,
with different groups and interests, all of whom we value. We see it as essential
to incorporate the fears, desires and aspirations of many groups within a large,
diverse region, irrespective of whether or not they see themselves, now or in
the future, as members of a single virtual community. We work with a dialectic
between "planning" processes which already exist but could be different,
and technologies which likewise already exist but which equally could function
very differently.
We do not know what this complex virtual community might look like. Nor do
we know whether it can acquire the ‘collective intelligence’ Lévy talks of,
in any practical way. Nor do we know what new forms and uses of technology might
be driven by the evolving needs of these new users. But we do not despair just
because we cannot predict or control this future, these futures. One lesson
of Chaos Theory is that no-one else can, either. The will to predict is always
doomed and counter-productive. Life, whether social, cultural or digital, is
inherently complex. The best planning and most effective digital systems will
always reflect those two principles.
Authors' Biographies
Dr Elaine Lally is Senior Research Fellow and Assistant Director of the Centre
for Cultural Research. She researches in the areas of art and technology as
material culture, and the role of arts and culture in regional development (especially
in Western Sydney). She is currently undertaking two ARC-Linkage funded projects,
including the Digital Cultural Atlas. Dr Lally is author of At Home with
Computers (Berg 2002).
Professor Bob Hodge has a distinguished international reputation and is widely
published in the areas of social semiotics, cultural theory, postmodern studies,
and Latin American studies. He has been a Fellow of the Academy of the Humanities
since 2002, and was awarded a Centenary Medal for his contribution to the academic
fields of communication and cultural studies.
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