Dismantling the wall: the simplification of complex socio-technological systems and the implications for urban resilience
Creators: name: Richardson, Anthony
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 330411
subject: Urban design
classificationCode: 441007
subject: Sociology and social studies of science and technology
classificationCode: 500204
subject: History and philosophy of science

description: The study of urban and societal collapse has long been an area of scientific, historical and cultural interest. In recent years this interest in collapse, and its corollary resilience, has increased in line with growing scientific, political, cultural and general concerns over energy, food and water resources, social unrest, and the impacts of disasters and climate change on urban environments. This cross-disciplinary thesis should be seen as fitting clearly into this theoretical tradition of futurist ‘collapse studies’ and thus incorporates elements of the physical sciences and the history of science, complexity science and military theory into a more clearly social science concern with the promotion of urban resilience.<br><br>The purpose of this thesis is to propose the conscious simplification of elements of our contemporary complex cities to improve their resilience to both sudden disruptions and slower trends such as climate change and resource depletion. It takes a broadly thermodynamic approach, being based heavily upon Tainter’s work (1990) on the energy costs of social and technological complexity and the resultant tendency of such complex systems to collapse. It then contributes an original synthesis of Tainter’s dynamic of collapse with the Panarchy model of adaptive change (Gunderson &amp; Holling, 2002). Finally, it considers the fragility implied by such complexity in and of itself (such as the danger of cascading failures).<br><br>Importantly, this thesis acknowledges that any program of conscious simplification implies a philosophical, cultural and thus political (rather than technological) challenge. This is because it proposes a rejection of the Wall; the utopian/positivist technophilia which sees ever more complex socio-technological systems as the (eventual if not currently actual) solution for the challenges facing modern cities. Instead, this thesis suggests a more ‘humble’ approach to complex systems like contemporary cities, in which notions of ‘complete’ or absolute predictability or resilience are rejected. To this end, it briefly examines some of the philosophical debates in military theory around technological complexity and decision-making in environments of radical uncertainty. In the light of these discussions, this thesis makes six ‘humble’ recommendations for the simplification of particular urban systems.<br><br>After outlining its approach of conscious urban simplification, this thesis acknowledges the challenges such a program implies. Contemporary complex cities display a wide range of path dependencies (political, cultural, economic, organisational and environmental) which constrain them within orthodox narratives of development. However, this thesis takes a strongly social constructivist approach (Bourdieu, 1995) to urban path dependency, arguing that the promotion of heterodox narratives of urban development can overcome such inertia. Three such narratives are proposed: alternative modes of urban living, the narratives of dystopian science fiction, and a focus on individual self-interest.<br>