MIT Technology Review 2021 05-06 v124i03

By ANDREW ZALESKI Photographs by Lucy Hewett HOW SOUTH BEND, INDIANA, CAME TO LEAD THE WAY IN SMART SEWER CONTROL 49

50 SOUTH BEND’S STORY OF In theory, the 1972 Clean Water Act prohibited OVERWHELMED INFRASTRUCTURE IS, cities (and other polluters) from sending their waste IN UNFORTUNATELY, ALL TOO COMMON . directly into rivers. But in practice, they kept on doing so. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates the city of South Bend, Indiana, wastewa- that between 23,000 and 75,000 such overflow inci- ter from people’s kitchens, sinks, washing dents take place each year in the United States. They machines, and toilets flows through 35 are also a major problem in Europe, where some neighborhood sewer lines. On good days, 650,000 take place annually, most in older cities. just before each line ends, a vertical throt- Starting in the mid-1990s, the US Department of tle pipe diverts the sewage into an inter- Justice sued cities including Atlanta, Los Angeles, ceptor tube, which carries it to a treatment Honolulu, Boston, Miami, Cincinnati, and Toledo on plant where solid pollutants and bacteria behalf of the EPA for violations of the Clean Water Act. are filtered out. It sought consent decrees—where local governments agree to binding terms to prevent tougher penalties— As in many American cities, those pipes are combined with storm drains—hence in many more municipalities. the term “combined sewer,” a design that Across America every year, became popular as a cost-saving measure in the 188 s. So on bad days, when heavy combined sewers dump 850 bil- rains or snowmelt overwhelms the capacity lion gallons of raw sewage into of the interceptor, the sewage goes straight waterways—about the same into the St. Joseph River. This is bad for amount of water the Mississippi many reasons. Bacteria in fecal matter make River annually carries into the rivers unsafe for swimming or boating. Gulf of Mexico. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria from hospital waste are released into the wild to multi- The EPA had warned the city ply. Pharmaceuticals, pesticides, plastics, of South Bend for years about heavy metals, and hormones get into the its habitual pollution problem. ecosystem. Perhaps worst of all, the influx In 2008, its worst year for storm of nutrient-rich organic detritus can fuel and wastewater overflow so far the runaway growth of algae. This can fill this century, 2 billion gallons of rivers and lakes with toxic sludge, endan- untreated sewage flowed past the gering wildlife and drinking water supplies. interceptor tube and into the St. Joseph River. Finally, in 2011, three days before Pete Buttigieg took office as mayor, the agency forced South Bend into a consent decree, ulti- mately demanding $863 million worth of sewer upgrades. The bill added up,with financing, to about $10,000 per resident in a Rust Belt city where the median house- hold income is under $40,000. South Bend’s story of over- whelmed infrastructure is, unfortunately, all too common. In the summer of 2011, about 250 miles to the east, a million acres of the surface of Lake Erie, the fourth-larg- est of the US and Canadian Great Lakes, had been covered in an algal bloom caused by combined-sewer overflows (along with agricultural and industrial runoff) from Toledo, Cleveland, and other cities. The New York Times reported “concentrations of microcystin, a liver toxin, [in the lake] that were 1,200 times World Health

51 Organization limits, tainting the drinking water for 2.8 a whole new network of separate sewers and storm Kieran Fahey million consumers.” drains. (This is generally seen as prohibitively expen- is in charge sive.) Another option is to build new infrastructure of South Two-thirds of America’s 800,000 miles of sewers to increase overflow capacity. That’s the approach Bend’s sewer are over 60 years old; restoring those pipes could being taken in London, where an enormous £4 billion control plan. cost more than $1 trillion, according to the American ($5.5 billion) tunnel is being dug under the Thames Water Works Association. The American Society of River, intended to carry sewage from 34 points where Civil Engineers estimates that utilities spent $3 bil- it commonly overflows to a treatment plant 16 miles lion in 2019 replacing pipes, which was $81 billion to the east, beginning in 2025. less than the group figured they should have spent. Both those methods fall into the category of mak- President Biden’s recently announced $2 trillion ing bigger holes in which to put bigger pipes. For infrastructure plan could go some way toward alle- cash-strapped cities, that kind of expense is often viating the situation, if it becomes law. As currently out of reach. Such was the case in South Bend, which written, the proposal includes $56 billion in grants embarked on a third route: making its sewers smarter. and low-cost loans to state and local governments to “upgrade and modernize drinking water, wastewater, In 2008, the city began installing a network of and stormwater systems.” devices that measured sewage depth and flow at doz- ens of points throughout its sewers. Then, in 2011, it Once the money problem is addressed, though, implemented a real-time control system, with valves there’s still the question of how exactly to go about that automatically open and close in response to the making the upgrades. One way to eliminate overflows sensor data. It wasn’t the first such system; Quebec would be to separate the combined pipes by creating

52 Cities City had put in a network in 1999. Copenhagen, Berlin, “SOUTH BEND BECAME THE POSTER CHILD intense rains, which sometimes caused overflows and Genoa, among other European cities, also began BECAUSE THEY REALLY before anyone could take action. installing real-time monitoring and control systems in the late 1990s. But South Bend is among the pioneers. OPERATIONALIZE IT.” The shift to a more systematic, detailed, and faster system for gathering data took years. It was set in “Most cities in the US have some aspect of con- motion by Michael Lemmon, a professor at Notre trol in their sewer system,” says Branko Kerkez, who Dame, whose campus sits at the city’s southern edge. researches smart-water systems as a professor of civil In 2001, he got a grant from the Defense Advanced and environmental engineering at the University Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to see what could of Michigan. “South Bend became the poster child be done with credit-card-size, radio-enabled micro- because they really operationalize it … they over- controllers. After the September 11 attacks, the proj- instrumented [the sewer] so they could see how the ect was commandeered to see if small sensors could whole thing changes in real time.” help find Al Qaeda fighters hiding in caves. Kieran Fahey, a tall and bearded Irishman, is in “I really was not very happy working on these mil- charge of the city’s sewage control plan. Before taking itary applications, even though it was important to the job in 2015—he followed his wife, who had gotten a job at the University of Notre Dame— do,” Lemmon says. “I was think- Fahey had worked for Ireland’s Environmental ing about some other ways we Protection Agency. He was the guy on the other could look at sensors.” side of the desk, telling communities what to do to conform with clean-water regulations. In 2003, Lemmon and a In South Bend, he has to figure out if there is group of fellow engineers and a way to keep the city from going broke while researchers at Notre Dame real- complying with the EPA’s mandate. ized they might be able to use them to do something about “We’re trying to find the sweet spot,” he South Bend’s routine sewer says. “Trying to not crucify the community overflows. In 2004, the research economically, but also trying to make sure the effort led to the formation of a river is taken care of as well.” company called EmNet. Luis Montestruque, an entrepreneur- Since the sensors went in, the sewer over- ially minded electrical engineer flow per inch of rain has dropped from 42.8 who had worked with Lemmon million gallons in 2008 to 6.9 million in 2020. on the DARPA project while If Fahey succeeds, those sensors might help finishing his doctorate, became cut overflows to zero. the company’s president. S outh Bend’s sensor network is a descen- EmNet pitched its idea to dant of control efforts dating back to Gary Gilot, then South Bend’s the 1960s. The difference comes down director of public works. Gilot to its sheer size and scope: it aims to is a soft-spoken, grandfatherly control overflows over 600 miles of under- figure, perennially fascinated ground pipes. by new ideas. (As Fahey puts it: “If you said, ‘I want to mea- Until the sensor network was put in place, sure every tree in South Bend a pair of city workers in South Bend used to drive because I feel like it’s able to around once a week, lift up manhole covers, and peer help us with climate change,’ down, using nothing but their eyes to estimate how Gary would say, ‘Let’s go ahead fast the sewage was flowing. If they saw gunk clog- and do it.’”) ging a throttle line, they hoisted it out with a hook. Gilot was intrigued; peering down opened man- During a storm, a city worker would have to drive holes in the middle of traffic to see if a sewer line across town to close an overflow valve. This worked, is overflowing already seemed backward to him. In to an extent, for prolonged storms—but not for short, 2005, he gave EmNet a section of sewer along one city street as a test, to see if real-time monitoring of sewage flows could work. There were problems from the outset. The envi- ronment in sewers is uninviting, to say the least.

Smart sewers 53 Kieran Fahey with a sensor used to measure water pressure and flow in South Bend’s sewers.

54 Cities Michael Lemmon studies agent-based sensor- actuator networks at Notre Dame.

Smart sewers 55 Excessive humidity weighs down the air. Sulfuric “WHEN WE OPENED UP THE POWER BOX, IT WAS GONE P reventing a sewage overflow requires both acid is always forming. Temperature swings are DISINTEGRATED. THAT’S HOW HARSH THE ENVIRONMENT IS.” resources and knowledge. Before the sensors incessant and severe, as hot wastewater from show- came into use, the hydraulic models that admin- ers and washing machines mixes with captured rain- istrators like Gilot used had to assume uniform water. Methane and hydrogen sulfide, both highly rainfall across the whole city. But rain can be heavy on flammable and potentially explosive gases, are also one side of South Bend and light on another—meaning constant hazards. that while some neighborhood sewer lines are brimming, others experience hardly any flow. “The first device that we installed was this elec- With the sensors in use, Gilot’s department was tronic board,” says Montestruque. “When we opened able to determine that placing nine new throttle pipes up the power box, it was gone—disintegrated. That’s in neighborhood sewers could drastically reduce over- how harsh the environment is.” flows. Starting in 2010, EmNet began outfitting these new pipes with microprocessor-equipped valves that Protecting electronic equipment became the chal- automatically open and close in response to real-time lenge. Off-the-shelf devices to measure water flow calculations gauging the capacity of the inter- and depth, which EmNet decided to use to lower its ceptor line they feed into. installation costs, were tough In times of heavy rainfall, the valves along sew- enough to withstand the condi- ers where the flow of stormwater and wastewater tions. But they’re susceptible to is high will automatically open; where flow is low, malfunction. Some sensors, in the valves remain closed. This creates more room order to collect flow information in the interceptor pipe for the sewers that need it. based on pressure readings, In essence, Gilot and Montestruque had made the have to hang in the sewage; they miles and miles of sewer pipes throughout the city tend to be more accurate, but a into a makeshift storage tank: because the sewers wad of errant toilet paper could with low flow aren’t at risk of overflowing, untreated wrap around them, throwing off water can sit in those lines—not flooding into the a reading. river, not backing up into people’s basements, and not hogging space at the treatment plant. Eventually EmNet set up “We captured 23% more wet-weather flow just what it calls nodes on the under- by using the same sewer system we had, but with side of manhole covers. Each smart monitoring and control technology,”Gilot says. node includes a sensor, a micro- Load balancing is not always straightforward. processor, a radio, an antenna, If there is heavy rain in one part of a city but and a lithium-ion battery. The not another, the calculation might be relatively sensors were exposed to rushing easy—but what should a system do when it’s wastewater while the processor, raining everywhere? Even if the rain is concen- radio, and battery were housed trated in one area, it’s never certain whether the inside an explosion-proof box— storm will move or stay in the same place. And of both to protect against corrosion course, nobody wants a sewer pipe to burst from and to keep the electronics or excessive pressure, especially in a populated area. the battery from igniting sewer Montestruque’s solution was an agent-based gases. Attaching the nodes to model in which valves at overflow diversion points manhole covers meant mainte- “buy” capacity from the interceptor tube.The inter- nance crews could access them ceptor tube’s diameter varies as it goes through easily. the city, which complicates the task of figuring out its capacity for carrying waste to the treatment plant at On the strength of the data any given moment. The market-based approach has the from the initial pilot section, advantage of being computationally simpler than trying Gilot gave the go-ahead to expand the system, pay- to fully model the complicated fluid dynamics through- ing EmNet $6 million to install sensors citywide. It out the sewer system. officially went online in 2008, and EmNet continued Still, as Kerkez of the University of Michigan points installing nodes through 2010—150 in all. The sen- out, a smart array of sensors and gauges can’t turn back sors not only helped prevent overflows in the event of a storm but also served to detect obstructions in sewer lines that might otherwise have led to backups in residential basements.

56 Cities EmNet the clock on an aging sewer system. “Everything has a “The community was kind of up in arms with what founder Luis breaking point,” he says. “What real-time control has was being proposed,” Fahey says. “It was just not feasible Montestruque the potential to do is push the boundaries of that break- in South Bend. At the same time, we are putting sewage (right) ing point out further. But there’s no fail-safe solution.” into the river, and that’s not really allowable either.” and first employee Tim Even with the improvements that Gilot had made, One evening in 2016, Fahey met with Montestruque Ruggaber by the sewers were still overflowing too often for the for beers at a local gastropub. Fahey was curious to the banks of EPA’s liking—hence the 2011 consent decree. When see if the city could find ways to squeeze more gains the St. John Fahey arrived in South Bend, he inherited an optimized out of its sensor-laden sewer system. The two of them River. sewer system that was nonetheless pushing its limits. realized that the same sensor data they had been using for real-time control of their existing sewer infrastruc- An automatic To stop overflows, the EPAwas asking the city to build ture could also help them plan for the future. “We said, sewer valve seven underground tanks to store excess stormwater and ‘Listen, with all this data that we have, we should be actuator wastewater. Many cities with combined-sewer systems able to come up with a hyperaccurate representation that adjusts use this approach. The tanks could hold up to 8.7 million of how the system behaves,’” Montestruque recalls. flow to the gallons; once a big storm passes by, untreated water can treatment be pumped from the tanks into the interceptor pipe and to In designing a sewer system or planning for infra- plant (facing the treatment plant. The tanks Fahey was contemplating structure upgrades, engineers use models and make page). were expensive. What’s more, their proposed locations certain assumptions. They calculate what they think were based on old stormwater models predicting where might happen based on what-if scenarios governed by overflows were bound to happen.Two large, popular parks dozens of variables: the amount of rainfall in a year, for with mature trees would have to be sacrificed. example, or the amount of water that will stay in the

sewer system as opposed to overflowing into a river. THE IDEA OF USING THE DATA IS 57 But during the time the city has had a smart-sewer sys- TO BETTER UNDERSTAND JUST HOW STORMS TEND TO AFFECT tem, every kind of rainfall imaginable has fallen on South Over the last several years, the city of South Bend Bend. And because the sensors have been watching this THE FLOW OF WATER. has been hashing out its new infrastructure pro- happen all along, the city can look to the data to see how posal with officials at the EPA, who still need the sewers will react. “Instead of trying to predict what to give it federal approval. In addition to the could happen, we’re able to say what did happen, and four storage tanks, the plan also calls for green infra- therefore what will happen again,” says Fahey. structure, like rain gardens, and a promise to increase the capacity of the city’s wastewater treatment plant It was a municipal-scale internet of things project. from its current 77 million gallons per day to 100 mil- With EmNet’s help, Fahey parsed the sensor readings and lion gallons per day. found that the EPA plan calling for seven tanks at a cost EmNet, meanwhile, is installing sensor systems in of $863 million could be streamlined to a four-tank plan other cities. As of this year, it had projects under way in that would cost only $276 million. Part of the reason for Grand Rapids, Michigan; Dayton, Ohio; and Buffalo, New the large difference in cost comes back to those models. York. Its biggest project so far, after its work in South In any sewer model, Fahey says, engineers will add Bend, involved implementing a similar system in Kansas a bit extra to account for a leaking tank, a cracking City, Missouri, which was also line, a once-in-a-century storm. Eventually, so much feeling the strain of an EPA con- margin is added on that the final design is far more sent decree. Sewer lines in Kansas infrastructure-heavy than necessary. Sewer network City are close to 160 years old, and designers widely anticipate that climate change is the local government was strug- going to make their lives tougher by increasing the gling to prevent overflows into frequency of intense storms. The idea of using the the Missouri River. Now Kansas data is to better understand just how storms tend City’s sewers are equipped with to affect the flow of water through the complicated 300 sensors, which city manag- system of pipes in an urban network. ers expect will save the city about $1 billion in infrastructure costs. “The difference between the what-ifs and And, like South Bend, the city is the what-did-happen is dollars. That’s the big now trying to renegotiate its deal thing,” Fahey says. “You’re able to save all those with the EPA. dollars by designing specifically to your needs, As populations grow, smart as opposed to what you think you might need.” sensors can buy cities time until bigger pipes, bigger tubes, and bigger holes will be required. It’s not a perfect solution, of course. For one thing, introducing net- worked, real-time controls also means new vulnerabilities to soft- ware glitches and hacking.“You’ll never solve a problem with just smart infrastructure,” Fahey says. Still, as Fahey walked the banks of the St. Joseph River last winter, snow crunching beneath his feet, a thought was ever pres- ent in his mind. In previous years on such a day, with light snow and some melting, a few thousand gallons of untreated sewage would spill into the river. It would have been easy to see from where Fahey stood. But on that afternoon, the river was calm. It looked clean. And the sewers below weren’t rushing at all. Andrew Zaleski,a writer based near Washington, DC, covers science, technology, and business.

58 PORTFOLIO The images on this and the following pages are part of “Unequal Scenes,” a CITIES OF PEOPLE drone photography project intended to illuminate scars in the urban fabric. By Johnny Miller

59 Parts of Mumbai are among the mostly densely populated areas on the planet. In some places, more than a million people live in less than one square mile. Tightly packed buildings, largely made of gray concrete covered with blue tarps, protect against the monsoon rains.

60 On the eastern side of False Bay, in sub- urban Cape Town, South Africa, a pros- perous beachside neighborhood, the Strand (right) is set off from subsidized government housing in Nomzamo (left) by rows of informal set- tlements (center).



62

6633 In northwest Long A pawn shop on Beach, California Minnehana Avenue in (left), houses abut Minneapolis (above) storage tanks used was destroyed by by the many oil refin- fire during the unrest eries in the area. following the killing of George Floyd.

64 With more than 2 billion users, Facebook has built a global empire of wealth and influence. A homeless encampment sits in the shadow of its headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

65



67 The Moinho favela in central São Paulo is sandwiched between an overpass and rail- road tracks. It has no public water, electric- ity, or sanitation.

68 Cities GUTTER CREDIT HERE

Feature headline 69 ANCIENT HIGH-TECH TOOLS ARE HELPING CITIES US UNDERSTAND THE PAST. ARE BY ANNALEE NEWITZ MADE ILLUSTRATIONS BY MAX-O-MATIC OF CONSTRUCTION WORKERS discoveries in the coun- DATA try and is now a national in New York’s Lower monument. Manhattan neighborhood were breaking ground for a Joseph Jones, an anthro- new federal building back in pologist at the College of 1991 when they unearthed William & Mary and one hundreds of coffins. The of the site’s investigators, more they dug, the more told me that the science they found—eventually matured even while his uncovering nearly 500 team was still excavating. individuals, many buried At the start of their dig, they with personal items such analyzed skeletal remains as buttons, shells, and using the same techniques jewelry. Further investi- that archaeologists had gation revealed that the used for almost a century, remains were all between measuring the size of bones 200 and 300 years old, and and looking at damage to they were all African and them to infer details of peo- African-American. ple’s lives. Today, though, the team is using modern This discovery came at techniques that previous an inflection point in scien- generations of research- tific history. Breakthroughs ers only dreamed of: using in chemical and genetic lasers to slice micro-thin analysis allowed research- pieces of tooth enamel so ers to figure out where the isotopes trapped within many of these people had can be analyzed; sequenc- been born, what kinds of ing ancient DNA to connect physical challenges they people who died centuries faced, and even what route ago to their descendants. they took from Africa to get to North America. The site, The African Burial known as the African Burial Ground was uncovered at Ground, became one of the a moment of cultural dis- best-known archaeological covery as well. Historians GUTTER CREDIT HERE

70 Cities were investigating the role Sometimes called “data his team would never have drinking water. Strontium from enslaved people played in archaeology,” this kind of high- known where people in the older landmasses has a slightly building northern cities, while tech exploration is well suited cemetery came from if they different chemical signature Black scholars like Henry Louis to the study of urban history. hadn’t been able to do several than strontium from newer Gates Jr. and authors like Toni By using remote sensing tech- kinds of chemical analysis on ones, so looking at the isotopes Morrison were centering the nologies like lidar, researchers their tooth enamel. Because in people’s tooth enamel lets roles of African-Americans in can uncover an entire city grid, this enamel is built up in layers researchers determine roughly US history. giving us a better picture of as humans mature, chemists where they lived throughout what it would have been like can study a cross-section of their lifetimes. Scientific analysis at the site to walk through neighborhoods the tooth and learn what sub- added persuasive data to these and peek into shops. This kind stances people were exposed Studying this, explained social movements and changed of data makes accurate digital to as children. It’s a bit like Blakey, allowed his team to the way many Americans re-creations possible, which analyzing tree rings, where discover that some of the viewed their nation’s found- means historians can turn a each layer of enamel rep- people buried in modern-day ing. It revealed that enslaved remote, inaccessible site into resents a period of the per- New York had spent early child- people from Africa built many something that anyone can son’s life. hoods in Africa but then lived of the cities that Americans still visit online. for some time during adoles- live in today—in the North and Immediately, they found a cence in the Caribbean, where the South. And it showed how This data democratizes sharp dividing line between enslaved men were often sent we went from being a nomadic history, too: scholars can now people born in Africa and peo- for “seasoning” or, as Blakey species that traveled in small examine hundreds, if not thou- ple born in the Americas: lead. put it, “breaking down.” The bands to sharing tightly packed sands, of remains and process Though African civilizations shape of diaspora was revealed habitats with millions of other large data sets to gain insight worked with a range of metals, in a single tooth. people. into the experiences of ordinary lead was almost exclusively people—not just the lucky few used by Europeans, for things Archaeologists have since The African Burial Ground who owned land, emblazoned like pipes and pewter dishes. used this technique to explore project was among the first their names on monuments, or Anyone who had lead in child- how cities have developed to use a new constellation of held public office. hood tooth enamel was almost throughout the world. As a “bioarchaeology” tools that certainly born locally. result, we now know that went way beyond the tradi- TOOTH TELLING ancient Rome was full of immi- tional pickaxes and brushes. As the science developed, grants from across Europe and But this was simply the first Data archaeology is partic- Blakey’s group also used a North Africa. stage of a much broader ularly good for historians technique called strontium archaeological revolution that studying cities because urban isotope analysis to learn more In the Americas, archaeolo- brought scientists and human- places often hold the stories about where people had come gists are looking at how indig- ities scholars together to gen- of immigrants who might be from. When people eat and enous cities like Cahokia in erate data about our ancestors. otherwise difficult to trace. drink in a specific area for a today’s southern Illinois were Today, researchers supple- Bioarchaeologist Michael long time, their teeth absorb settled by people born else- ment bioarchaeology with 3D Blakey, who has led the a small amount of strontium, where. Even a 9,000-year-old photography, lidar, satellite African Burial Ground proj- an element that leaches out of city like Çatalhöyük in central imagery, and more. ect since the early 1990s, said the rocky ground into food and Turkey was populated by peo- ple who came from afar. TOOLS OF THE TRADE GROUND- DNA SEQUENCING PHOTOGRAMMETRY ISOTOPE ANALYSIS PENETRATING RADAR has revolutionized involves captur- can trace the his- uses high- archaeology by ing 3D information tory of an item. By frequency radio allowing for detailed about a location or looking for chemical waves that pass analysis of remains object with a range signatures in made through the Earth’s that can reveal a of techniques, objects and organic surface, and bounce person’s family including radar and material, such as the off objects and history and migra- sonar. It can also bones at the African structures below. tion patterns. include lidar, a laser Burial Ground, it A receiver records Imagine at-home system that uses can determine these patterns. genetic tests, but reflections to judge an item’s age and for bones. distance. provenance.

WILL U.S. TECH FIRMS FACE TAXING TIMES ABROAD? Make decisions that make a di erence with the Financial Times. Read more at ft.com/newagenda

72 Cities From this research, we now discovery of a rare, intact cer- older structures below. By first landscape. With lidar maps, understand that immigrants emonial chariot that would scanning those upper layers, archaeologists could at last ver- have been building and living have been used in parades scholars can make it possible to ify that Angkor had been home in cities for as long as cities have and helped model what traf- virtually revisit any structures to nearly a million people at its existed. Some, like the enslaved fic would have looked like on that had to be destroyed. height—a claim that had been people in New York, came Roman streets. widely disputed. against their will. Others came VIRTUAL VISITS on their own, seeking work or a Ground-penetrating radar Virtual Angkor used these better life, the same way hopeful can also reveal multiple levels Data from photogrammetry maps to create a detailed grid immigrants do today. of history. A recent survey of a also provided the backbone of the city’s downtown, com- palatial house at Pompeii, for for the award-winning Virtual plete with pictures of modest DODGING DAMAGE example, showed that it was Angkor project, which re-cre- neighborhoods where man- built on the foundations of a ates the city that was the cap- ual laborers and immigrants While bioarchaeological data much older building. ital of Southeast Asia’s Khmer would have lived. Because can reveal a lot about who lived Empire for 500 years until it these people lived in wooden in a city, sophisticated sen- This suggests that the was sacked in 1431 CE. A col- houses that decomposed long sor data can illuminate exactly neighborhood was an enclave laboration between Monash ago, it was hard for past gen- where they lived and what kind for the wealthy even before University’s SensiLab, Flinders erations of archaeologists to of work they did. That’s where Romans occupied the city University, and the University know where—or even if—peo- ground-penetrating radar, or starting around 89 BCE. A of Texas at Austin, Virtual ple lived in the areas surround- GPR, comes into play. One of look underground revealed Angkor uses 3D scans from ing Angkor’s stone palace. But the great tragedies at many bur- that workers rebuilt the house, areas around the Buddhist tem- thanks to the lidar surveys, ied sites is that digging often enlarging its gardens consider- ple of Angkor Wat to create today’s archaeologists can now destroys the layers in between ably after a massive earthquake breathtaking visualizations— see many hectares of neat foun- the surface and the deepest in 62 CE. According to Cornell some video, some still—of dations lined up along roads. objects—even though they may classicist Caitlín Barrett and what ordinary people would be valuable in their own right. her colleagues, their findings have seen when they visited Photogrammetry can tell Like traditional radar, GPR “promise to rewrite the history the city in the 1300s. us about the Khmer Empire’s emits radio waves and mea- of one of the oldest and most art and architecture, but lidar sures how they bounce back in politically prominent neigh- Virtual Angkor was also tells us about the lives of the order to locate objects, shoot- borhoods in Pompeii.” made possible by another break- people who built this legendary ing them at the ground to help through in archaeological data metropolis. By using advanced avoid unwanted destruction. Unfortunately, not all gathering. For hundreds of technologies to develop new archaeology can be done with years,Angkor’s layout remained kinds of data sets, archaeol- At Pompeii, for example, remote sensing. Because most hidden beneath the jungle.That ogists at the African Burial researchers recently used this cities are built in layers, with changed in the early 2010s when Ground also centered the lives type of radar to help target areas older structures gradually bur- Damian Evans, an archaeologist of city builders. And the iso- for exploration in a section of ied beneath the new, excavators at the French School of the Far tope analysis that revealed New the city that has remained bur- must destroy the upper layers East, and his team used heli- York’s forgotten past has also ied under ash for 2,000 years. to reach further back in time. copter-mounted lidar to map shown us the immigrants who Only two-thirds of Pompeii has That’s why photogrammetry, around the temple enclosures. built ancient Roman cities. been dug up over the past three the practice of capturing 3D What they found changed the centuries, and for most of that information with sonar, lidar, world’s understanding of this When we look out over the time, the job was done with and digital cameras, is now de tropical city. gleaming skyscrapers and vast pickaxes. But researchers are rigueur at almost every major sprawl of today’s megacities, approaching the final third of excavation site. Lidar works by bouncing it’s easy to forget the old bones the city with as many high-tech laser beams off the surface that lie beneath. But the more tools as possible. Using these methods, of the ground and back to a science advances, the closer we researchers can record details receiver; the timing of those get to appreciating who built In early 2021, their care of a structure down to the mil- reflections indicates how our world, and what their lives paid off: scholars uncovered a limeter and use software to far the light traveled before were really like. beautifully preserved bar where re-create them. it hit something. It was the workers would have enjoyed perfect tool for revealing the Annalee Newitz’s latest a quick meal and some wine. This is especially important roads, house foundations, and book is Four Cities: A Even more stunning was the at sites like Çatalhöyük, where pools that once covered the Secret History of the researchers must dig through an Urban Age. upper layer of the city to reach

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Banham takes pains to refute the “common RE 75 mechanistic misconception that everything in Los Angeles is caused by the automobile.” —P. 76 VIEW Books, arts, and culture in perspective ANDREA DAQUINO COLIN MARSHALL os Angeles is vast and practically formless, a city L so unlike any other that it can hardly be called “A humming, smoking, ever-changing a city at all. That, at least, is the impression the contraption” past few decades of writing on the Southern California metropolis has tended to offer. Hardened into received How three mid-20th-century visitors saw Los Angeles wisdom, this presumption is now repeated even by astute as a machine. contemporary observers. But there’s more to LA than that tired critique suggests. To see Los Angeles clearly, one needs to go half a century into the past, when three writers came to take the measure of what was then the fastest-growing

76 Cities LA INTERPRETED city in the rich world. Though each Los Angeles: The breaks all the rules,” as he later said Scarcely anyone in 1971, of brought a distinctive and formida- Architecture of in a television documentary. course, could have realistically ble stock of world experience and Four Ecologies conceived of just how great an historical knowledge, all came to By Reyner Unlike Rand, who resented hav- expansion of computing capac- understand postwar Los Angeles Banham ing to drive, Banham embraced the ity lay ahead. More plausible to by recognizing how technology automobile. “One can most prop- Banham than the automation of gave the city both purpose and ALLEN LANE, 19 1 erly begin by learning the local lan- the Los Angeles freeway network possibility. guage; and the language of design, was its obsolescence, given that The World: architecture, and urbanism in Los “it is inconceivable to Angelenos “All modern cities are machines, Life and Travel Angeles is the language of move- that it should not be replaced by but LA is even more of a machine 1950–2000 ment,” he wrote. Therefore, “like an even better system nearer to the than the others … it is a humming, By Jan Morris earlier generations of English intel- perfection they are always seeking.” smoking, ever-changing contrap- lectuals who taught themselves tion,” Christopher Rand wrote in his W.W. NORTON, 2005 Italian in order to read Dante in Another oft-repeated percep- 1967 book Los Angeles: The Ultimate the original, I learned to drive in tion of Los Angeles holds that it City, which began as a three-part order to read Los Angeles in the was “built for the car.” For all his series in the New Yorker. The lack original.” enthusiasm about driving, however, of water and threat of earthquakes Banham takes pains to refute the made this place particularly depen- As stimulated by the task as “common mechanistic misconcep- dent on technology, he argued. Rand was irritated by it, Banham tion that everything in Los Angeles Cities, since the very beginning, saw driving as a form of “willing is caused by the automobile as a had relied on water management, acquiescence in an incredibly way of life.” but the complexity of LA’s water demanding man/machine system.” system, fed by a giant aqueduct Within this system a host of “moral, As much a historian as a critic, that diverts water from the Owens governmental, commercial, and Banham shows how, though Los Valley some 200 miles to the north, mechanical” authorities “direct the Angeles may have accommodated was far greater than anything that freeway driver through a situation the private car more readily than had come before. so closely controlled” that “he will older cities, it could do so only hardly notice any difference when because of a preexisting distinc- Rand also pointed out that while the freeways are finally fitted with tion: the now-dismantled Pacific LA was known for the film indus- computerized automatic control Electric and Los Angeles urban try, aerospace in fact dominated systems that will take charge of railways had already allowed it to the city’s economy. The industry the car at the on-ramp and direct be built out and subdivided on the was diminished with the end of it at properly regulated speeds and mechanical rather than the human the Cold War, but decades later, correctly selected routes to a pre- scale. “If there has to be a mech- SpaceX, the world’s most valuable programmed choice of off-ramp.” anistic interpretation,” he allows, privately held company, is based “then it must be that the automo- there. “As our technological force But even as Banham envisioned bile and the architecture alike are manifests itself in Los Angeles, this self-driving future, he won- the products of the Pacific Electric it seems to have many question- dered whether “the marginal gains Railroad as a way of life.” able things about it. The aerospace in efficiency through automation industry, for instance, seems sur- might be offset by the psychological Deeply invested in both archi- rounded by a cloud of false public- deprivations caused by destroying tecture and technology, Banham ity,” Rand wrote in 1966. the residual illusions of free deci- had made his name almost a decade sion and driving skill.” earlier with Theory and Design in The Ultimate City went out of the First Machine Age, a treatise on print years ago. But Los Angeles: Collectively these illusions the aesthetics of European built The Architecture of Four Ecologies, constitute a kind of software, he environments as reimagined by by the English architecture critic wrote, and “however inefficiently movements like Futurism and the Reyner Banham and published in organized, the million or so human Bauhaus as well as by theorist- 1971, remains a fixture on “under- minds at large on the freeway sys- practitioners like Adolf Loos and Le standing Los Angeles” reading lists. tem at any time comprise a far Corbusier. This positioned him well Banham thought of LA as a city that greater computing capacity than to critique a city like Los Angeles, “makes nonsense of history and could be built into any machine which was home to an architectural currently conceivable.”

Review 77 community that included European HOWEVER Travel 1950–2000. “It was one of prosper. There are craftsmen émigrés like Richard Neutra, a IMPRESSIVE THE the vogue words of the forties and everywhere in L.A., craftsmen in prominent modernist. In Banham’s TECHNICIANS fifties, now rather out of fashion. It electronics, in film-making, in lit- estimation, Neutra “[used] the EMPLOYED reflected a whole climate and tone erature, in social science, in adver- Californian opportunity to make BY THE FILM of American thought in the years tising, in fashion. Here Lockheed a European dream come true.” He INDUSTRY, of supreme American optimism. makes its aircraft. Here NASA observes that “the lightweight steel IT WAS It stood for skill and experience makes its space shuttle orbiter.” frame, the prefabricated panels, the AEROSPACE indeed, but it also expressed the suspended balconies, the conspic- THAT MOST certainty that America’s particular However impressive the techni- uously advanced mechanical spec- HIGHLY genius, the genius for applied logic, cians employed by the high-profile ification, the edgy detailing, look CONCENTRATED for systems, for devices, was inexo- film and television industries, it was like an attempt to realize a purely THE KNOW-HOW rably the herald of progress.” This aerospace that most highly concen- European vision of Machine Age OF MID-20TH- spirit characterized the prosper- trated the know-how of mid-20th- architecture.” CENTURY LOS ous and innovation-minded post- century Los Angeles. “In theory, Los ANGELES. war decades that Banham labeled Angeles is just another American “Midcentury modern” houses the “Second Machine Age.” In Los city, thousands of miles from the such as those Neutra built in Los Angeles, as Morris saw it in the nation’s capital,” Rand wrote a Angeles from the 1930s through the 1970s, “the lost American faith in decade earlier, “but in actuality it ’60s have become objects of near machines and materialism built its is itself a secondary capital, for tech- fetishistic desire, with price tags to own astonishing monument.” nological warfare.” He worried that match. Others experimented further “our great new technology, with toward a distinctively Southern Though by that time the city all its power to lead us along, is California architecture, whose rigor had a somewhat libertine reputa- up to now really beyond the scru- in materials and design took advan- tion, Morris points out that “it was tiny and control of our democratic tage of the area’s mild climate and not liberty that Los Angeles cher- institutions.” the “indoor-outdoor” lifestyles it ished in its prime, or at least not enabled. To be sure, this required absolute liberty. A spiritual culture The machine of the city itself architectural genius of the kind can be anarchical, a material cul- has only grown larger and more supplied by Neutra—or colleagues ture must be disciplined. Implicit complex in the decades since Rand, like Rudolph Schindler, Raphael to the promise of technological Banham, and Morris came to grips Soriano, and Craig Ellwood, all on fulfillment was the necessity of with how it works. There have been the cutting edge of postwar residen- system, and L.A. soon became a improvements, not least the alle- tial architecture in Los Angeles— firmly ordered place.” Those early viation of the smog notorious in but also an uncommon amount of streetcar systems “drew together the 1960s and ’70s. The freeways knowledge, skill, and experience in the scattered settlements of the still stand, but over the past 30 engineering and construction. Nor time, bringing them all into city- years a new urban rail system has was such skill required just to put ness.” Then came the freeways, also begun to make its presence up the houses themselves: Banham which like all complex machines felt. Increasing density and verti- and Rand both marveled at the tools challenge their users to master cality have even validated Rand’s and techniques employed to carve them. “There comes a moment,” premature-sounding observation the area’s mountainsides into level Morris writes, “when something that Los Angeles’s “preference for plots, though not without trepida- clicks in one’s own mechanism, and one-family houses seems to be on tion at the potential environmental suddenly one grasps the rhythm the way out.” These modifications consequences. of the freeway system, masters its have been performed more slowly tribal or ritual forms, and discovers than necessary, which is perhaps The buildings and infrastructure it to be not a disruptive element at to be expected: for better or for of Los Angeles, as the late travel all, but a kind of computer key to worse, Los Angeles is no longer an writer and historian Jan Morris saw the use of Los Angeles.” experimental urban prototype. Q them, embody an unusually high degree of know-how. “Remember Having acquired that key, Morris Colin Marshall is a writer in ‘know-how’?” she asked in a 1976 discovers that in Los Angeles, Seoul and the author of the essay on the city later collected in “behind the flash and the bragga- Substack newsletter “Books on her anthology The World: Life and docio, solid skills and scholarship Cities.”

78 Cities CITIES IN SCI FI THE cience fiction is full of S cities imagined from the JOANNE MCNEIL ground up, but an author Uncanny alleys who writes about a real place has to engage with real cultures and real Science fiction is reimagining cities in ways that feel both histories. It takes a special kind of familiar and strange. world-building skill to develop a city when its origins are already known. ANDREA DAQUINO The Membranes, a fascinat- ing new book out in June by Chi Ta-wei, meets this challenge. It presents metropolitan Taiwan in 2100 as utterly unfamiliar apart from its culture. In the novella, a young aesthetician named Momo dresses her clients in artificial skins that track their personal data and shield them from the elements. She is part of a “new Renaissance” of technology in T City, which is not quite future Taipei. The view from Momo’s salon reveals the difference: she can see “silver-indigo waves in the infinite depth” and “schools of cadmium yellow fish floating by in tidy regiments.” There is a “mem- brane” above, in the place where the reader might expect the sky to be. That’s because T City is part of New Taiwan, which contains the entire country’s population and is located on the ocean floor. Humanity has migrated to sub- aquatic domes to escape the lethal consequences of a vastly deteri- orated ozone layer. Tremendous advances in solar power have made this shift possible, and an android underclass provides maintenance labor. Sentient but without rights, they are manufactured with organs that can be harvested by humans. Gradually, Momo grows enlight- ened to the oppression of androids, connecting the dots between a surgery she had as a child and the disappearance of her childhood best friend. There’s an awful lot going on in this short work: new religions form in this future world, the

Review 79 Pacific Ocean territories are divided The Membranes but the New Yorkers themselves. As he begins experimenting on between countries like the United By Chi Ta-wei “Real worlds feature real peoples,” the vampires to discover the origins States and corporations like Toyota, she writes. “Therefore it’s important of the disease, I Am Legend poses and then there are the peculiar skin COLUMBIA that I not depict them in ways that a thought-provoking question: Is treatments at Momo’s salon. What UNIVERSITY disrespect or cause harm.” Richard the real monster in this grounds this overwhelming book is PRESS, 2021 new society? It is suspenseful and Momo’s addiction to digital media. The City We Became found a wide deservedly considered a classic, She spends hours on dial-up bul- The City We and enthusiastic audience when it but Matheson offers no real sense letin board systems and the early Became was released last year in the earli- of place. The other people have search engine Gopher, loves laser- By N.K. Jemisin est days of the pandemic. It intro- been stripped of their history and discs, and pores over “discbooks” duces superhero-like characters are little but bloodthirsty mutants; and “disczines.” ORBIT, 2020 who act as avatars of the five bor- their motivations and interests are oughs of New York, both protectors predictable and the culture of the The charming old-fashioned Invisible Planets and embodiments of their locations. city has no bearing on them. digital layer in the book clues the Edited by Ken Liu They battle entities reminiscent of reader into the real-world events H.P. Lovecraft’s monsters, with ten- Decades earlier, the polymath that inspired Chi. While the English TOR BOOKS, 2018 tacles and “fronds,” which are man- W.E.B. Du Bois took a rare stab at translation is new, The Membranes ifestations of threats New Yorkers writing fiction to show how social was first published in 1995, just The Sunken Land face: gentrification, racism, the hierarchies in a city can outlive its a few years after a decades-long Begins to Rise police. Jemisin’s research and care own people. His 1920 short story period of martial law in Taiwan was Again paid off; the book struck a chord “The Comet,” written in the wake lifted. It transformed the culture By M. John with readers as their own lives were of the flu pandemic, depicts a near with a “sudden flood of new ideas, Harrison radically altered. For people whose extinction event in New York City. A combined with the relative lack cities were experiencing a different Black man survives, and for the first of statutory oversight on a whole GOLLANCZ, 2020 test of resilience amid the covid-19 time in his life, he is able to visit a generation of youth,” as translator crisis, its characters felt true. restaurant on Fifth Avenue without Ari Larissa Heinrich explains in the worry. Jim fills his plate in the empty afterword. Chi was part of this gen- One way that science fiction building, thinking, “Yesterday, they eration, newly trading bootleg tapes authors have avoided research like would not have served me.” The and suddenly exposed to interna- Jemisin’s is by presenting famil- city of Los Angeles in I Am Legend tional films, surfing the web, and iar cities that are empty besides a could be anywhere, but New York delighting in media and technology. handful of survivors. I Am Legend, is clearly New York in “The Comet.” The disorienting exuberance of this the 1954 post-apocalyptic classic by In just that line, Du Bois provides a period is captured in the frenetic Richard Matheson, is set in a Los snapshot of what life used to be like spirit of the book: the wild future of Angeles that is recognizable by its before the Fifth Avenue restaurant T City was a funhouse-mirror image geography and street names, but a was abandoned. As Jim continues of Taiwan as Chi experienced it. pandemic has mutated its people— his journey, he comes into contact with the exception of one man— with a handful of other survivors The Membranes shows that even into shadow-dwelling vampires. and finds out that racism did not if a population has regrouped to a die when the event took place— city on the floor of the ocean, its The novel, an enormous influ- and that it will, in fact, persist to communities will continue to make ence on modern zombie horror, the end of the world. history from a common past. This channels Atomic Age anxiety by was a concern of N. K. Jemisin as depicting formerly bustling neigh- Present-day concerns about she worked on 2020’s The City We borhoods as newly desolate. The inequality shape how cities are Became. The book is set in New York last man on earth, Robert Neville, represented in recent fiction, too. City, where the author lives, but in rarely leaves his elaborately for- Folding Beijing, a novella by Hao the acknowledgments, she writes tified house. Instead, he lives a Jingfang that was recently published that it “required more research than cozy life, listening to piano concer- in the anthology Invisible Planets, all the other fantasy novels I’ve writ- tos and drinking alone. There’s no imagines the capital of China as con- ten, combined.” It wasn’t just the coordinated disaster response in trolled by a technical marvel: three infrastructure and landmarks that the novel. He doesn’t have to col- classes of people are segmented in Jemisin hoped to capture accurately, laborate or negotiate with his neigh- physical structures that rise up or bors on supply runs.

80 Cities CITIES IN SCI FI retract below ground depending BY BLENDING thing nor a picture of a thing: they faded over centuries. But where the on the time of day. A minority live REAL PLACES seemed to be extruded from a space confused state of the characters in in the “First Space” and enjoy the WITH STRANGE that wasn’t quite in the world.” The Membranes is exhilarating—an most hours on the surface, while a CIRCUM- expression of liberation—the con- middle class lives in the “Second STANCES, ALL Balker, who used to sleep in fusion in The Sunken Land is laced Space.” But the majority of the city THESE NOVELS a doorway behind the British with melancholy and estrangement, are the laborers and maintenance AND STORIES Museum, is rounded up by an since it follows political retrench- workers in the “Third Space,” who OFFER SOLACE unknown official and given a clean ment and division. After Brexit, experience Beijing only from the FOR THOSE OF bed in the heart of the iGhetti’s lair. what even is this place that they hours of 10 o’clock at night to six in US WHO FEEL He’s now a canary to test whether call home? And who are these other the morning. Movement between SIMILARLY humans might safely cohabitate people in it? these partitioned classes is strictly ALIENATED BY with the silent invaders. Another regulated, and the ruthlessness of THE CITIES THAT Londoner who lives in a comfort- The Sunken Land introduces the architecture is reminiscent of WE CALL HOME. able flat forges a relationship with Shaw, a man in his 50s living in the movie Snowpiercer, where there Balker, and attempts to grapple WharfTerrace, a neighborhood with- is a divide between luxury train cars with the different ways they expe- out a wharf and “no evidence there for the elite and those who live in rience the city. had ever been one.” His mother has squalor in the caboose. dementia and he has no other fam- The story appears in Harrison’s ily. The woman he is dating has just When Lao Dao, part of the Third career retrospective collection, left London for the provinces. In Space, needs money for his child’s Settling the World, which was his crummy studio, his solitude is kindergarten tuition, he takes on a released last year. An early draft regularly disturbed by the sounds job smuggling a love letter from a was published to Harrison’s blog in of strangers down the hall. man in Second Space to a woman 2013 with the title “Welcome to the in First Space. The gig is risky and middle classes.” Several years later, Shaw takes a job off the books highly unusual, given how little its sting feels especially sharp given with a conspiracy theorist, and one cross-class interaction happens in the stark divide in cities between of the plots his boss peddles is that the city. The adventure Lao Dao essential workers and those who there are little green humanoid crea- undertakes—sneaking into trash worked from home through the tures in the water. The notion is chutes and crawling onto the city’s covid-19 crisis. so absurd and unlikely that eerie rotating parts—is representative of phenomena which might confirm the actual hurdles in Beijing soci- Harrison’s most recent novel, The it fail to register with Shaw. He has ety as Jingfang sees it. Beijing is Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, the sensible expectations of a man “divided into multiple groups,” the is also largely set in London, and it who must have thought Brexit would author told Uncanny magazine, was also released last year, becom- never happen, until it did. where the story was published in ing a breakout hit that won the 2020 2015. These groups rarely meet, she Goldsmiths Prize. The book cap- The Membranes, with its sub- said, and they have “completely dif- tures an era, like The Membranes, aquatic setting, found a place as ferent lifestyles, habits, and social- and is just as tricky to summarize. alien as life gets on planet Earth. izing spaces.” This novel about misread signals The green creatures in The Sunken and confusing relationships con- Land, on the other hand, conjure M. John Harrison’s “The Crisis” nected with readers in part because up the visceral fright of something is about another architected divi- it was published, like The City We slithering and unfamiliar brushing sion of three classes. In the story, Became, at a time when real cities past your skin when you enter a lake. London is split between people felt uncanny to their residents. By blending real places with strange with homes and those who live circumstances, all these novels and on the street, and again divided New York, as Jemisin depicts it, stories offer solace for those of us between human beings and a spec- is a tense new metropolis on stolen who feel similarly alienated by the tral race of aliens that has claimed land. London, in Harrison’s novel, cities that we call home. Q the Square Mile as its own. The is so old that its history can seem iGhetti, as they are known, resem- as though it comes from an entirely Joanne McNeil is the author of ble “stalks of fleshy, weak rhubarb” different land. He renders the city Lurking: How a Person Became a when visible. They are “neither a beautifully, as a place where neigh- User. borhoods have strange auras and the meanings of various landmarks have

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82 Cities UNPAIRED

83 Fiction BY TIM MAUGHAN ILLUSTRATIONS BY EMILY LUONG SOURCE PHOTOGRAPHS: UNSPLASH T hey drilled a hole in my skull I remember being surprised there was no roof to on the 43rd floor of an empty the medical tent. It was literally a façade. skyscraper in Lower Manhattan. One of those towers where they The last thing I saw was the scuffed vinyl told people to go and work from floor, through that hole in the massage table, as home and they never came back. they gave me the anesthetic and one of the tech- Floor-to-ceiling windows, beige and white walls, nicians counted down from 10. I didn’t make it spaces that felt impossibly big now that the cubi- past 6. Then I was awake again, sitting up in a cle dividers have vanished. One of those places wheelchair looking out over that influencer view where somebody pays to keep the lights on all of Brooklyn, as they shined an LED light in my night, every night, desperately trying to convince eyes and checked my reflexes. They gave me a the world outside that this all still matters. Gatorade and a Kind bar and made me read some news stories out loud from an iPad while they When I googled the place, I got the usual sto- squinted at my reactions on the laptop. A cou- ries of illicit high-rise raves, the usual lifestyle ple of hours later they made me get up and walk content from the usual young influencers—sorry, around, and as soon as they were happy I wasn’t creators: photos of them dancing, wide-eyed and going to have a seizure they gave me a blister ecstatic, rich off selling their own lives, silhou- pack of antibiotics and put me in an Uber home, etted against the dawn sun creeping up over the which made me laugh. They paid for it, obviously. Brooklyn skyline. But when I got inside, it was There’s no way they would have got the irony. just startups squatting in random corners, and a bored security guard who scanned my face and As if on cue, my phone decided I was hungry. It the temperature of my skin before silently point- pushed a map of the surrounding neighborhood to ing me toward the elevator. the front of the screen. Places I didn’t recognize, or at least hadn’t eaten in for a couple of years, They drilled the hole in my skull in a medical were highlighted with slowly pulsating pale blue tent squeezed into what used to be a server room. dots. Two Chipotles, a gyro truck, some taco place There were empty racks still bolted to the walls. I had a vague memory of, a soup and sandwich They walked me in and laid me down, face first, joint that actually looked new, and of course a on what I’m pretty sure was just a massage table, Whole Foods Go. All of them were Amazon affil- and fed me into a surgical robot that looked like iates. I sat in the front of the truck and thought a giant sewing machine. There wasn’t much else about how I was going to have learn the city all in there: a couple of laptops hooked up to a big over again, build myself up a new mental map of touchscreen, an industrial air scrubber. Everything places I could easily go, lunches I could afford was plumbed into a mess of power and network to eat. Or maybe I didn’t need to bother. Maybe cables that disappeared up into square black I could just let my phone and the data brokers holes left by displaced polystyrene ceiling tiles. take care of it all. I only saw this briefly, but I remember it, because

84 Cities A week earlier, my phone would have rec- driving deliveries for Uber, just after Mayor Yang ommended the diner across the road, the one I got elected. He’d swept in with a 1.7% lead over was staring numbly at through the windshield. It the other guy, which is what Americans call a would have known I was heading for it as soon as landslide now, on a promise to solve New York I turned onto this block, and then probably tried City like a math problem. He’d promised every- to distract me with coupon codes for some other, one they’d get some money from the city every competing Uber-affiliated place. Now, it knew month to help us rebuild our lives and then, after better. It knew going in there would be futile the pandemic, from his Universal Basic Income and painful and awkward. And, most important, experiment. But you can’t solve a math problem it knew that going in there would be expensive. if you don’t know the numbers, and Yang didn’t I didn’t belong in there anymore. My phone was get to see them until he was in City Hall, and coming to terms with my changing life a lot eas- then it was suddenly very clear that they didn’t ier than I was. quite add up. So he had to turn to the big tech companies—Facebook, Google, Uber, Amazon, It throbbed again, pushed something else to its the rest of them—to help him keep his promise. screen. A text from Nakisha: where r u? everyone’s here! I started to compose a reply but stopped So it was decided: you could take your mea- myself. It was pointless—I had nothing to say. sly token UBI payments from the city, or you Plus, if I did, it’d be weird to text it, when I could could sign up with one of the tech giants and just cross the road and walk into the diner and say get a little more out of them. The big catch was it to her face. She was in there right now, with a that the companies didn’t even have to pay you bunch of other Uber drivers. We used to try to in US dollars, so instead every month you got a come here at least once a month, just to catch up little deposit of crypto into the wallet you had to and hang, chat shit and bitch about how fucked install on your phone. Amazon Coin. ApplePay. everything was. If I was honest, it was always a FB Libra. Google Play Credits. It seemed com- little tough for me—being around people felt like plicated, but you only really needed to remember a struggle at the best of times—but this was more one thing: you’d better spend as much as your about not being able to face any more goodbyes. UBI with the company you signed up with—or its affiliates—because it went a lot further there. I stared at the diner some more, guessing I mean, real numbers: we’re talking the kind of who would be inside. I tried to hold their faces savings that not only meant you might make rent in my mind, but one by one they all slipped away that month but made the poor old US dollar look from me, lost in the anonymous crowd. It was worthless. Which was why I’d just switched—the always there, a shuffling horde of familiar faces owners of my apartment building had just flipped dissolved into vague, generic sketches. Friends, to being Amazon affiliates, which meant that if I family, acquaintances, forever on the edge of my continued paying with Uber Money I’d lose the peripheral vision. Faces lost to me, swept away discounts that meant I could afford to live there. by the waves of sickness, death, change, and hard economics that had emptied out the city I once I stared at the diner, then back at the map dots knew. Faces it was a whole lot easier to just let on my phone, still pulsing blue as if they were fade away than to try and find again, or to mourn. trying to wake me up to the brutal truth. Forget this place. There’s nothing for you here. You don’t Nakisha’s face didn’t fade, though, as hard as even have the right money. The people inside have I tried to push it away, as much as I wanted it to no connection to you anymore. You’re not one of be absorbed into the crowd. Let me make this them. Time to move on. clear now, though, to avoid any misunderstand- ing: there was never any hint of romance there. I tapped its screen off, started the truck, and No unrequited this, no flirtatious that. There was pulled away from the curb. no obsession, not from me. Just fear and awk- wardness, and above all selfish guilt at not being One week later and I was back on the abandoned able to accept genuine kindness and friendship, 43rd floor, for a “calibration and orientation because I knew that one day they would also be appointment.” Same server room, but the med- ripped away. I hadn’t told anybody in there that ical tent was gone, and instead I was sitting at a I’d switched, not even Nakisha, and I was feeling desk that looked like something hastily dragged pretty shitty about it. I’d met her when I’d started in from some abandoned reception.

Fiction 85 They’d given me the iPad again. It was play- —and your data—uniquely valuable. Hopefully ing a seemingly random montage of images and we can get you a bit of extra coin.” clips—news headlines, Beyoncé videos, Tom Brady winning yet another Super Bowl, influencers I stared past her and out through the windows. smiling in pristine kitchens, a cat knocking pens My head was full of thoughts: first the beautiful off a desk, a cheeseburger. America. lifestyle influencers and high-rise raves, and then the possibility that I might make rent this “Well, everything looks great,” the technician month, and the app made my phone vibrate gen- said, peering at me from over one of the laptops. tly in my hand. “The implant seems to have taken root nicely. Getting a nice clear signal back—really clean, They told me to get out in the city, to enjoy myself. visible spikes.” To see as much as possible. That’s why they’d been recruiting gig workers—drivers and deliv- “Great,” I said, as though I understood her. erers: they needed a test population that was “So what’s it look like in there?” mobile, at a time when everyone else was still mainly working from home. They wanted to build She almost laughed. “Well, I can’t tell you a map of the new city, a guide to NYC’s greatest that exactly. But I can tell you’re probably pretty dopamine spikes. hungry right now, and you’re not much of a Patriots fan.” The problem was I didn’t know which new city they meant. The Uber-affiliated city or the She showed me a QR code, which I scanned Amazon-affiliated one? The city of gig workers or with my phone, which made it install an app, the city of high-rise ravers? I guessed they meant which then showed me how to pair it with the the city that never sleeps, the city with a rough implant. It was apparently no bigger than a grain of exterior but a heart of gold. But I was still stuck in rice—she kept saying this, no bigger than a grain the city where I’d heard nothing but ambulances of rice, like it had been drummed into her by a and birdsong for four months, where the NYPD marketing agency—and was wedged into the tiny crushed spirits and skulls to remind us who was hole the robot had drilled in my skull last week. in charge, where we all sheltered in place, scared Now it was sitting there, the skin grown back over to leave our apartments. All I could see was the the top of it, little hair-like sensors nudging the city where we let 50,000 people die and never surface of my brain, waiting and watching for my paused to mourn them. dopamine levels to spike. I didn’t know which city they meant, but I “There’s a lot of mythology around dopamine started to suspect I hated all of them. and what it does, and to be honest—like most things in the brain—we’re not completely sure For the first few days I was convinced the how it works,” she told me, as I prodded around implant wasn’t working. Either that or it was my the app on my phone screen. “But put simply: phone, an aging Samsung that had become even by watching how and when it spikes, we can tell more sluggish after I’d switched. Now every third when you like something. Or at least we can tell notification was an ad trying to get me to upgrade when something makes you feel happy or fulfilled.” to the latest Kindle model, Amazon’s ecosystem reaching out to assimilate me even further. The “And that’s going to give me an edge with the app was meant to give me a notification every time data brokers?” I had a dopamine spike, but there was nothing, and I kept finding myself obsessively checking “That’s the plan, yeah. We record your dopa- that the two were paired properly. Everything mine levels. They get sent to Amazon alongside looked fine. It was supposedly calibrated so that your usual everyday data footprint. Sync them up it didn’t go off when routine activities gave me a and we can see what’s really important to you, minor hit—like taking a shit or dropping a pack- what makes you happy.” She sighed, sank back in age off on time. Maybe the calibration was off. her chair slightly. “These companies, Amazon and Or maybe I just didn’t like anything anymore. Facebook … they can take all the data they want now, but it doesn’t make it any easier to under- I put in a support ticket, but they got back to stand. They’re making assumptions about your me saying the data feed looked fine, and I should behavior based on pattern matching and educated just push myself a little harder—take some time guesses. That’s really all machine learning is. to go find things I already knew I liked. Which I But this—this is different. This is real. It’s actual correlation. It’s real insight. And that makes you

86 Cities tried—even taking the kind of route deviations It wasn’t until I got to the post-credits scene— that pissed off Amazon’s driver management AIs the one where the whole team is sitting around, just so I could check out some spot from the past. silently eating, in some nameless, unaffiliated NYC Some graffiti mural down in the Village, that one shawarma joint—that my phone started to vibrate. coffee place on Washington Square Park, the view back to Manhattan from DUMBO. I even I’m not going to lie: for a fleeting moment I tried wasting coins in non-affiliated food places was ecstatic. I couldn’t tell you if it was just the I really couldn’t afford—cannoli and an espresso dopamine spike or some joyful relief that the app on Spring, falafel from Mamoun’s, a slice from had actually registered it. I rewound the scene and Joe’s. Nothing. My phone sat there, unmoved, watched it again. Same spike, but with a slightly only buzzing to tell me I was running late for a lower peak, according to the app. Third time was drop-off, and that it was docking my payments. similar, but the results diminished again. Time to find more content. And then it hit me, when I was sitting in the truck watching some kids shooting hoops and At first I thought I’d have to watch whole mov- eating a too-expensive chopped cheese hero ies for it to have the same impact—like I needed from a Facebook-affiliated bodega. I turned to to build up some sense of connection with or the empty passenger seat to say something to investment in the characters before their friend- somebody who wasn’t there. ships had any personal weight—and started ear- nestly slogging through the entirety of the Marvel I caught myself doing it over and over again. Cinematic Universe. But a YouTube fluke showed I’d reach out to touch their arm to bring their me otherwise. Before I could stop it, autoplay attention to something, or feel the muscle mem- served me a clip from Ant Man and the Wasp ory of taking their hand as we stared at the view. where Ant-Man is playing with his daughter, I’d eat a plate of food and load up a perfect bite and my phone vibrated in my lap. Repeatedly. It on my fork to carefully feed to somebody, one was a fucking revelation. I didn’t even have to sit hand gingerly hovering below to catch falling through countless rubble-cities and the eternal crumbs, so I could watch the smile spread over melodrama and the endless wisecracking and the their face as they chewed it. I even found myself infinite polygons. Context was dead: all that mat- taking photos before realizing I had nobody to tered was fleeting, calculated emotional spikes. share them with beyond Amazon’s ad-tech algo- rithms or whoever might still be following my It’s not hard to find the content once you know long-neglected Instagram feed. where to look. Listicles are your guide—the real maps to dopamine city are called things like “The The implant was fine; it was me that was 10 Most Heartwarming Moments in the MCU” unpaired. I’d fallen out of sync with the city, and or “The MCU’s 12 Best Friendships” or “Relive I hated it for taking people away from me and These Feel-Good Moments from the MCU.” Start leaving me on my own. by searching Tumblr and Screen Rant and you’ll find them all. It’s even better and more efficient It’s safest to stay indoors: stay home. It’s the only if they give you the time stamps. Tony and James way you can avoid the awkwardness, the disap- sniping at each other in Iron Man (00:10:42). pointment, the fear. Delete Netflix and Uber Eats, Nick Fury buddy-copping with Carol in Captain install Prime Video and Amazon Restaurants. Stay Marvel (01:48:07). Peter Parker and Ned Leeds in at home and build your own city, make your own whichever Spider-Man movie that was (00:23:38). dopamine map. What’s the point of being lonely if you can’t do it by yourself? And then there’s the death scenes, which are perfect if you’ve also got some unresolved At first, I tried to watch only movies set in New societal-level mourning to work through. York, as though that had some significance. So the When Killmonger dies in Black Panther. When Avengers movies seemed a good place to start. I Quicksilver dies in Age of Ultron. Spider-Man in thought maybe watching the city being repeatedly Infinity War. Peggy in Winter Soldier. When Groot reduced to rubble at a whim—endless computer- says “We are Groot” in Guardians of the Galaxy 2. generated buildings demolished into nothing more than Technicolor pixel dust—might give me the After a while, of course, you don’t need to hits I needed. But the app barely registered a spike search it out; it finds you. Before too long, every for the first two hours and 22 minutes. ad on every web page was screaming at me about young-adult-oriented TV shows I never knew

Fiction 87 existed and Star Wars spin-off cartoons. My put me under. “You know how much work we had YouTube recommendations filled up with noth- trying to set the filters so they didn’t register a ing but fan-edited compilations of superheroes spike whenever someone jerked off? We basically weeping, or supercuts of every time Frodo and burned a whole round of funding on discovering Sam hugged. that—guess what—people like porn.” There was this whole culture I’d avoided, that I “And then there’s the people like you,” she said. thought I was somehow above, that wasn’t for me. “Me people like mean what,” I said, fighting An entire industry built to serve up comforting to keep my eyes open. dopamine hits to a population wracked by tech- “People that get hooked into the feedback loop. nologically mediated loneliness, and exhausted Where they’re chasing spikes on the app, not what by a society that felt like it was in constant, con- they actually find rewarding. I mean, it makes fusing collapse. People just like me, millions of perfect sense when you think about it, bu—” us, PTSD victims refusing to mourn those dead or left behind, and resigned to being steamrolled Then I was awake again, sitting in the wheelchair, by the decades of unease and disappointment still staring out toward Brooklyn. to come, as long as we could tap a screen to get a proxy emotion on demand, as if it were an Uber. I sipped Gatorade and nibbled on a Kind bar while I watched them deposit enough Amazon I’d been looping a fan edit of every furtive look Coin in my wallet to cover rent for at least four between Anakin and Padme for four hours straight months. It was hush money, basically—payment when the recall notification came through. I for signing a waiver that said I would never sue couldn’t ignore it—it paused everything else on them or talk about any of this to the media and my phone and splashed a message across the rival affiliates. screen. Bright white text on blue, telling me how the implant was being deactivated immediately They ordered me an Uber as soon as I felt and explaining how I should contact the install- I could walk, and on the way to the elevator I ers to have it removed. That was followed by a stopped and snapped a photo of the view on my reminder that I was still under an NDA and that phone. The city was laid out like a map in front of talking to the media about any of this could lead me, more inviting than I’d seen it in years. I was to legal action. transfixed. Watching it felt as though a pressure had been lifted. There was so much still to do, My first reaction was panic. Big “How the fuck but a start had been made. can they take this away from me” energy. I’d just got this together. I finally had some structure, Halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge, sunlight something that worked. My hand went to the strobing through its towering structure, I reached implant scar on my skull—it was little more than for my phone and pulled my gaze away from the a small bump now, but it felt hard at its center, Uber’s windows. In silence I deleted the Prime and weirdly hot? Video and Disney apps, and wiped my YouTube history. I pulled up the photo from the 43rd floor I slumped back on the couch, pulled up and stared at it again. On some unexplained whim, Gamora’s death from Infinity War on the TV, let I texted it to Nakisha. it run, hoping it would calm me. But the anxiety didn’t fade away as usual. It seemed to dwell there, Some minutes passed. My phone buzzed. growing, behind my eyes and in the back of my –whoooa, where the fuck are u? jaw. I stared at the phone in my hand, waiting –ha, long story. You wouldn’t believe me if I for the confirmation I needed, but it was lifeless, told you. unmoving. –try me. what about the diner, thursday? My hand trembled. I forced myself to breathe, They took the implant out on the 43rd floor, in scared more of the screen than the city outside the same server room, in the same medical tent for the first time in as long as I could remember. where they drilled a hole in my skull. –sure, see you there “Between you and me, it was always a fucking Tim Maughan is a journalist and author. stupid idea,” the technician told me before she His first novel, Infinite Detail, was shortlisted for a 2020 Locus award for best debut and chosen as the Guardian’s best science fiction book of the year.

88 The back page The city inside What is the ideal urban our heads environment? Throughout the decades the idea has proved to be fertile imaginative ground. MARCH 1941 JANUARY 1968 JULY 1982 From “Sir Thomas Gresham’s Picture”: The From “The Possible City”: We can expect From “Design as if People Mattered”: In 1970, solution to the problem of replanning metropolis to be the normal environment I formed a small research group, and began whole cities is of course very difficult; of the future: the realized desire of those looking at city spaces—to learn why some may be in the greatest sense beyond the seeking space, better services, and a home work for people, and some do not. The capacities of man. To do so demands very of their own. Present estimates are that project began by looking at New York City close study of postwar needs. It means a 80 percent of our population will live in parks. One of the first things that struck government of sufficient good will to do such regions by the year 2000 and that us was the lack of crowding. A few were the necessary. It means that planners must the largest of these will coalesce into four jammed, but more were near empty. Sheer be very close indeed to that government giant regions—on the Atlantic seaboard, space, obviously, was not itself attracting so that when the great flood of rebuilding along the lower Great Lakes, in Florida, children. Many streets were. It is often commences, it can proceed with an ordered and in California. The horror of critics assumed that children play in the street program. Cities have undergone a spectac- is unjustified: It doesn’t “eat up” land, because they lack playground space. But ular breakdown. The physical destruction nor will it cause the end of civilization. It many children play in the streets because offers opportunity for wholesome recon- frees large areas for rural and recreational they like to. One of the best areas we came struction. If this is not done, we may all uses. Urbanization can in fact be turned across was a block on 101st Street in East too soon return, and once and for all, to to our advantage—can be but may not be. Harlem. Adjoining stoops and fire escapes the fate described by Hobbes, with “no Metropolis has serious problems. Social provided prime viewing and were highly arts, no letters, no society, and, which is groups are increasingly segregated. There functional for mothers and older people. worst of all, continual fear and danger of is a lack of diversity. If you have no car, you Though we did not know it then, this block violent death, and the life of man solitary, are stranded. But none of these difficul- had within it all the basic elements of a poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” ties is inherent in the metropolitan form. successful urban place. MIT Technology Review (ISSN 1099-274X), May/June 2021 issue, Reg. US Patent Office, is published bimonthly by MIT Technology Review, 1 Main St. Suite 13, Cambridge, MA 02142-1517. Entire contents ©2021. The editors seek diverse views, and authors’ opinions do not represent the official policies of their institutions or those of MIT. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, MA, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to MIT Tech- nology Review, Subscriber Services, MIT Technology Review, PO Box 1518, Lincolnshire, IL. 60069, or via the internet at www.technologyreview.com/customerservice. Basic subscription rates: $80 per year within the United States; in all other countries, US$100. Publication Mail Agreement Number 40621028. Send undeliverable Canadian copies to PO Box 1051, Fort Erie, ON L2A 6C7. Printed in USA. Audited by the Alliance for Audited Media.

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