2.1 Enabling Mixed-Use City Centre Space
The architect Richard Rogers, again in his Reith Lectures, indicates how the 'soft' industries of the
information society could effectively enable the re-emergence of the city centre as a locus for
production, whilst still enabling the structures of consumption and residential zones which appeared
during the 1980s.
The goal of reinstating city-centre living can be enabled, as these industries do not impinge on the
livability of an area, in fact many of these new industries can effectively be conducted from home.
Why shouldn't these homes, and home-offices, be based in a culturally-resonant, pollution-free city-
centre?
This mixed-use planning reverses the zoning of previous planning initiatives, through utilising digital
media's immaterial nature In this case, the focus on city-centre living must stress the attraction of
living in the culturally diverse environment that only cities can attract. The city-centre in turn benefits
from producers and consumers residing there.
"Multimedia technologies and industries could end the division of the city into zones of
housing, offices and factories. Indeed, the distinction between office and home, work
and play, education and entertainment are themselves set to dissolve. This will give the
city a more diverse texture of overlapping activities, which will facilitate the emergence
of a more dynamic, greener, more community-based city."[14]
There are several benefits to this approach. Certainly the environmental impact of information
industries, whilst not insignificant, is much less than previous 'heavy' manufacturing industry. The
facility of teleworking means that work can be located in virtually any physical location, indicating a
certain freedom from previous capital-related constraints for architects, policy-makers and citizens.
The 'paperless office' is obviously something of a myth now, but by locating citizens within mixed-use
areas based on public spaces for 'work, rest and play', the crippling demand on the transport system
is likely to be reduced.
2.2 Revitalising Public Space
Rogers asserts that public space becomes even more important when a city's productive environment
is teleworking. The nature of teleworking is potentially isolating, due to its rejection of the
centralised office. It need not be so. However, this means that opportunities and spaces for physical
interaction with other people must be encouraged and developed. We therefore have real impetus
for the emergence of multi-function public spaces. As culturally diverse spaces for physical interaction,
for developing the cultural capital of cities, and for collective teleworking spaces as an alternative to
'the office'. Policy pertaining to urban regeneration has, in recent years, shifted from thinking in
terms of pure economic return, to realising that the quality of life is a fundamental function of cities.
These revitalised public spaces will be crucial to the livability of a teleworking city. This is alluded to
in Landry and Bianchini's work where emphasis on creativity is continued in their discussion on
how urban planning must change to consider less tangible, more ephemeral concepts to do with the
quality of life.
"... we must also address how people mix and connect their motivations, and whether
they take responsibility and "own" where they live and change their lifestyles
appropriately. It is increasingly recognised that economic development and quality of life
are inextricably interwoven. It is the livability of cities which will determine their
success."[15]
Public space can be re-invigorated by this focus on culture, and by a creative reworking of city centre
space comprising overlapping functions of residential and commercial areas and soft industry. By
enabling a fluid use of space whose function alters according to need from work to leisure.
2.3 Flexible Living and Working
Many cities are still working to a timetable from an industrial age, where 9-5 hours for 5 days a
week in a job for life applied. Public transport is overloaded for a few hours and then disappears.
Shops shut as people finish work. The licensing hours in pubs and bars are hopelessly outdated and
inhibiting. We are now living in postindustrial cities, where flexible working patterns apply, where
the working patterns of the cultural industries are seen as suitable models for organisational change
in general (Mulgan 1988). This means working at night, at weekends, on multiple projects
simultaneously, in offices and studios but also in other spaces such as the SoHo (Small-office / Home-
office), or meetings in café-bars, where the world of work seeps into the rest of your life. These
patterns are probably all too familiar. Information technologies can enable this flexibility by
dislocating information from a particular temporal or spatial location. Cyberspace effectively enables
information to become instantaneous and ubiquitous. In a fully-accessible city-centre information
culture, information can be retrieved within a variety of environments: in a studio, at home, in a bar,
and can be transmitted from these spaces to any other connected space in the world. The
instantaneity of digital media dislocates the information from any particular imposed timetable. This
could be useful in more advanced city cultures developing a night-time economy. So these
organisational transformations towards more fluid working patterns are mirrored by the fluid
rhythms of digital media, in which, speaking slightly idealistically, individuals are in control of the
information and their interaction with it, rather than pandering to an imposed corporate timetable,
tied to a desk in bland office culture.
Bruce Tognazzini, designer of the Apple Macintosh interface and now working for Sun
Microsystems, envisages this instantaneous information infrastructure:
"The only time the physical location of our computer and your information will mean
anything will be when the hardware fails and you have to fix it or grab someone else's.
When it's working, you'll be able to access your personal information space wherever
you are, from computer environments similar to your office, and as commonplace as pay
phones ... You'll feel as if your information is always with you. And, except for security,
the boundaries of where your computer ends and the universe of networked information
begins will be wonderfully blurred."[16]
Shearman (1994) has identified how information and communication technologies have enabled
more flexible forms of organisation, particularly small to medium-sized enterprises (or SMEs) in city
economies, which are seen as more responsive to the modern industrial culture of contracting out
and flexible specialisation. Her work indicates that SMEs in the information sector may be well-
placed to capitalise on these industrial shifts, by working in networks of large and small companies,
using advanced information and communication technologies. Similarly, Rogers sees these "networks
of small-scale companies" as "the driving force of the future".[17]
2.4 Cultural Industries
Since the mid-1980s, postindustrial cities have been pinning their hopes on 'culture' to regenerate
their deindustrialised wastelands. Initially, the role of culture was to reimage the city - to present a
new face to the world, acting as bait for capital investment. However, contemporary cultural policy
recognises the direct economic significance of the cultural industries (Wynne et al 1989). Here,
Featherstone (1991) indicates the relevance of the cultural industries:
Hamish McRae, writing in The Independent, sees cities as having a clear advantage in the sector of
cultural production in the communications and entertainment industries due to having "the critical
mass to generate the buzz that attracts creative people."[20] This metropolitan edge is invaluable in
establishing a creative and innovative milieu, from which quality cultural production can emerge.
McRae sees the new digital cultural industries in particular as providing the future economic base for
cities.
"The awareness that culture industries such as publishing, recorded music, broadcasting,
and tourism generated by arts and cultural institutions, can play a growing role in
national and local economies has grown alongside the general expansion in the
production and consumption of symbolic goods in contemporary Western
societies."[18]
For example, the music industry was recently hailed as one of
Britain's leading export performers[19],
with gross overseas earnings of over £1 billion, and contributing £571 million to the trade balance,
which is roughly equivalent to the steel industry's net flow. The scope of these cultural industries has
recently been expanded by the emergence of the new dimension of cyberspace. Our post-industrial
culture must be able to produce as well as consume - it must be an information industry. This means
virtual workspaces as well as virtual shopping malls. The emphasis on cultural production in city-
centre communities was further emphasised by the recommendations of the City Centre Research
group (1994) in their consultancy document on the Northern Quarter of Manchester city centre.
2.5 Digital Public Art
For a deindustrialised city, a key attraction of focussing on culture is their reimaging. As O'Connor
and Wynne (1995) have pointed out, cities are not competing on a national scale, but as the
importance of the nation-state shrinks and the ability to compete globally increases, cities are 're-
presenting' themselves to a world market. This means aspects we have already discussed, but the
'postmodernization' of the city also includes seriously focussing on the image of the city
(Featherstone, 1991). This can be enhanced in a number of ways - digital media facilitates events and
festivals through its networking capabilities, but also as a creative tool for imagining and producing
spectacular multimedia events, such as Stormy Waters in Glasgow earlier this year.
Similarly, City Centre Research group, again in their report on the Northern Quarter of Manchester,
suggest the importance of public art and environmental improvement. There is considerable potential
for digital media to extend the scope of street art. The following quote from Roy Ascott indicates
how digital media could provide unprecedented levels of artistic expression in the built environment
when:
" ... whole walls of buildings can be digitally flooded with sound, colour and light,
images and texts flowing in endless transformations, when whole environments respond
to our body movements and the articulations of our voices."[21]
2.6 Democratising Public Decision-Making
A further aspect of digital media is it's inherent capacity for interaction. Any cultural policy
pertaining to stimulating a model of digital cultural production must be based on this touchstone of
interactivity. As we will see later, previous planning initiatives have often been well-documented
disasters, largely due to lack of effective public consultation. Steve Jones (1995) addresses this in his
book CyberSociety:
Fortunately, the intrinsic nature of digital media is interactive. Rather than policymakers providing
solutions for the masses, reinforcing anachronous hierarchical models of information provision,
widespread access to technology could facilitate effective public competition for architecture, design
and street art; could democratise aspects of public decision-making; could monitor use of public
spaces and services; and could enable a more interactive dynamic local political culture. The potential
for electronic democracy will be discussed later, along with a note of caution.
"The importance of the disappointment that engineered communities have brought
cannot be understated. We can no more 'build' communities than we can 'make'
friends..."[22]
2.7 Strong Digital Popular Culture
With the productive base of the city focussed on the cultural industries, it is essential that the city
possesses a strong and democratised popular culture to provide the creativity and innovation vital in
cultural production. We are fortunate in this city, this country, and indeed, in this continent, that the
embryonic digital media 'scene' may be particularly well-placed, as much of it is influenced by our
strong music and design industries. There is considerable cross-fertilisation between intermediaries
in urban dance music, youth culture, and the new techno-cultural industries. This may be responsible
for the experimental 'punky' attitude which much European digital media possesses. This, in marked
contrast to American cyberculture, whose influences seem to be principally apolitical libertarianism
and reconstituted hippy ideology. The background of digital expression in techno, ambient, jungle
and computer graphics may give our new digital cultural industries an edge over a tired attitude
focussed on regurgitated sixties culture, whose tedious figureheads are Timothy Leary, Alvin Toffler
and the Grateful Dead.
Furthermore, it could be argued that the locus of Europe's youth culture is the gritty yet vibrant reality
of the deindustrialised city. American cyberculture longs for the isolated telecottage in a sanitised,
hyperreal frontier, out of the reach of both the state and anything remotely resembling 'the other'.
Julian Stallabrass (1995) characterises all cyberculture as "the mix of New age spiritualism and New
Edge technophilia in which sixties political activism and social consciousness has been resolved into
'a particularly privileged, selfish, consumer-oriented and
technologically dependent libertarianism'"[23].
While it does seem that this is a true and accurate description of (much) American cyberculture, it is
hoped that the strength and attitude of much European popular culture may well resist these odious
movements, and, through its creative and innovative expression, may contribute to a rejuvenation of
the postindustrial city's production base.
[14] 'Building cities to move the spirit',
Richard Rogers, The Independent, 13 March 1995
[15] 'The lifting of city limits', Charles Landry and
Franco Bianchini, The Guardian, 21 February 1995
[16] 'In Your Interface', David Weinburger,
Wired, No.2.05, September 1995
[17] 'Building cities to move the spirit', Richard
Rogers, The Independent, 13 March 1995
[18] FEATHERSTONE, M. (1991), op cit., page 105
[19] 'Music industry wins ovation for its £1bn exports
performance', Chris Barrie, The Guardian, 10 February 1995
[20] 'Lucky to live in the eternal city', Hamish McRae,
The Independent, 27 April 1995
[21] 'Time for a Planetary Collegium', Roy Ascott,
Times Higher Educational Supplement, September 16 1994
[22] JONES. S, (1995), op cit., p.19
[23] STALLABRASS, J. (1995), op cit., p.10
Send email to: d.p.hill@mmu.ac.uk