A Map for the Heart
As I have written in the past, cities are more than simply a collection of buildings. Cities foster diversity of thought and belief and facilitate ongoing unscripted human interaction. Fans of cities have long known this, and now one scholar is attempting to put some data behind this view. Christian Nold, a London-based artist and lecturer, has devised an ingenious way to measure our emotional reactions to urban life: he outfits volunteers with GPS-enabled lie detector devices and tracks their responses as they wander through city neighborhoods. The data is then overlayed onto a map and the result is a fascinating depiction of a roller coaster ride of emotions. Not surprisingly, Nold’s work successfully highlights the human activity which underlies our attachment to our surroundings:
[P]eople tend to respond to social interactions much more than to buildings. In other words, encountering an accident scene or an attractive person is likely to register a response more than an architectural feature.
If you study some of the maps on Nold's website, you notice the range of experiences that arouse people in cities. The predictable rise and fall of reactions to the sights and sounds of the city, however, pale in comparison to the jump in emotion at busy intersections. While Nold’s devices don’t distinguish between positive and negative responses, the spikes on the maps associated with traffic crossings are a clear measurement of the jarring intrusion of cars on the urban landscape. This data is also useful reminder for developers of New Urbanism projects, who devote substantial energy to recreating the most pleasing aspects of urban architecture at the expense of efforts to promote the dynamic mixing of people that occurs in real cities.
The peaks and valleys of Nold’s biomaps might tell an even more fascinating story in the teeming cities of Africa and India. The most recent issue of The Economist, noting that for the first time in human history, more people live in urban rather than rural settings, explores the current state of cities. We are in the midst of the last stage in the urbanization of the planet, as millions migrate to the crowded cities of Africa and Asia. The mass influx is straining the large metropolises in those regions, creating a new class of slums to match the worst of Latin America:
The United Nations forecasts that today's urban population of 3.2 billion will rise to nearly 5 billion by 2030, when three out of five people will live in cities. The increase will be most dramatic in the poorest and least-urbanised continents, Asia and Africa. They are the ones least able to cope. Already over 90% of the urban population of Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda, three of the world's most rural countries, live in slums.
The bottom line to urbanization is not so black and white: substandard living conditions are often offset by dramatic gains in life expectancy and literacy rates. Slum dwellers are well aware that their living conditions are the trade off for access to economic opportunity that is non-existent in rural areas. Notes The Economist:
Striking, too, though, is the apparent contentment with which the inhabitants accept their lot. It falls short of cheerfulness: tension is constant in Kibera (a slum in the center of Nairobi, Kenya), and small incidents can quickly turn nasty. But most people are busy getting on with life. Churches abound, and schools too. Children play in the dirt or on the railway tracks that bisect the slum. Stall-holders sell their goods. Men, ragged or smartly dressed in dark suits, clean their teeth wherever they can spit.
What is also interesting from The Economist’s analysis is how slum dwellers, more so than their more affluent counterparts, understand the importance of living close to jobs and markets:
It may be a dump, but it is central. This means that anyone lucky enough to have a job, either in the offices or houses of the city, or in the industrial area nearby, can walk to work. Those who have to peddle goods or search for casual labour are equally well placed. Being able to avoid a time-consuming and expensive commute is a great benefit.
A more urbanized world necessarily demands that we devote more attention to creating livable, emotionally-sustaining cities. As the source of most improvements in human development and technology, cities are the key to prosperity for the developing world. In the U.S., unfortunately, we continue to retreat from the messiness of cities, and, in the process, neglect the innovation and investment necessary to maintain their vibrancy. We need to set a better example. The developing world may follow our lead, and the world can ill afford a billion households seeking a half acre on a cul-de-sac in the suburbs.
Photo Credit: Christian Nold