Reporter Volume 26, No.5 October 6, 1994

[Editors note: Beth Tauke, clinical assistant professor of architecture at UB,
is the author of this essay, "IMAGinING the CITY," which wont the 1994
Faculty Eassy Competition of the National Institue for Architectural Education]

Is there some sense of connection with the material that gave the old
way a spirit that the new way doesn't allow for?...we have to ask
ourselves if what seems to be a great benefit really is.
	A second-year architecture student showed me an ad for the
updated version of SimCity, an "urban" computer game. The text read
like a trailer for an upcoming thriller:
	"Beneath the polished facade lies a seething cauldron of angry
taxpayers, broken water mains and other challenges that will take you
uptown, downtown, even underground. Now entering SimCity 2000 - the
ultimate city simulator....You get to terraform your landscape. You
get total control of a subterranean web of water pipes and subways.
And you get it all in gripping, eye-imploding 3 D."
	As the ad demonstrates, televisual technology has changed our
worlds into multi-dimensional, -contexted, -modal environments where
we can "be" simultaneously in many different "places" and in the
various times, scales, and distances that attend them. We now spend,
on the average, more than six hours per day paying attention to the
images of television and computer screens. As electronic interfaces,
networks, and virtual environments become more accessible, we can
expect to spend more time with and in technologies that mimic, parody,
and expand our everyday lives. These technologies challenge everything
we consider "real," our increasing success at imaging, modeling, and
replicating has imbued our "reality" with the potential for not being
"real" and has bestowed the possibilities of "reality" on our
representational technologies.
	My student proudly admitted that he was addicted to SimCity;
that it taught him more about urbanism and how cities work than any
course he had ever taken; that it was "real" to him, different than a
"real" of hanging out in Times Square, but "real," nonetheless. He is
evidence that ways in which the images of the televisual world are
perceived have challenged the status of "city," have challenged the
status that we have attributed to cities in the past, and have done so
far more powerfully than any other medium. They have become primary
mediators of "cities." And that televisual mediation implies, at the
least, a self-referential duality which includes the represented and
the representation, a duality that uses distancing and imagery to send
its messages. One of the results of such mediation is that our current
society is one in which cities are now support structures designed to
validate images and to sustain the authoritative status of the image,
e.g., the city is becoming one of many modes to affirm our beliefs in
celluloid, in pixels, in the represented world - the big business of
illusions.
	In addition, these mediated modes are self-referential, and,
therefore, always on the outside commodifying (and possibly
generating) other modes of represent-ation. As such, each city
represent- ation reinforces the other, commodifies the other, and
moves in and out of its own form in the process. While certain aspects
of each mode are maintained, the conceptualization of the city changes
as it moves through the various kinds of representation.
	Most designers have learned to live with (and some have even
thrived upon) the explosive increases in technologically driven modes
of representation. One could argue that we create these new
technologies to satisfy the desire for new representation and new ways
to represent, the desire to step outside ourselves and look back in
order to understand and extend. We will use whatever technologies we
have available to fulfill these desires. Adapting to new technologies
is the required passive response to survival. Simultaneous-ly
question-ing and designing them is a way to determine where we go as
individuals and as a species.
	Certainly, as critical makers of the built environment, we
need to examine the possible consequences of televisual technologies
and the representational states they foster in relation to the notion
of "city." Crossing the fluctuating boundaries between the hand-built
physical environment and the electronically built televisual
environment poses many questions, threats, and possibilities. Already
it challenges our concepts of space and time offering us the
possibility of instant multiple translocation. It erodes our security
in physical artifacts and place, allowing us to float through some
walls (constructed of electronically active materials) while bumping
into others (made of concrete). It permeates our privacy and instantly
duplicates with such ease that notions of ownership disappear into
infinite repeating patterns. It erases traditional boundaries with
fiber-optic travel, and replaces them with new oscillating boundaries
of information access. It shakes up the status of architecture as the
analog of our world and causes us to wonder what place the built
environment has in its coexistence with electronic technologies. 
	It reconditions "reality," by presenting the possibility that
the televisual is a substitute for the physical or that which we
consider "real." It reconditions "being" by setting up situations in
which we are electronically connected, but physically alone, thus
confronting our current notions of "citizen" and "community." It
reconditions "criticism" by influencing questions about how
institutional values are questioned or maintained. It asks what is
found and what is lost, who wins and who loses as modes increase, and
opens inquiry into notions about habits and changes in our senses,
perceptions, and states of being. It asks if "there are any
consequences of human significance in a purely artificial world, if
any actual living can take place in a world...where the laws of
gravity and decay can be adjusted to our convenience, where SimCity is
never destroyed no matter how many times it is blown up, but instead
always returns transformed into new and improved versions.
	Most importantly, crossing between the elusive boundaries of
these parallel conditions provokes questions about how to teach and
learn in ever-changing multi-conditions, conditions in which
technological advances will cloud the current physical and televisual
boundaries, merging them to produce yet another set of conditions.
	How do designers make intelligent decisions in these many
shifting labyrinths? And how can design education equip students with
the tools to actively participate in, change, and adapt to our rapidly
changing urban environments? Empowering students with the ability to
make conscientious moves and connections in somewhat unpredictable
futures requires shifts in our mindsets about learning. Pedagogies
framed upon linear, isolated, and absolute methods of learning are
becoming less valid and useful. The ideas of "good" and "bad," "right"
and "wrong" are blurred. As a result, the ability to understand issues
from as many points of view as possible is becoming crucial.
	Equally important is an ability to understand the "connectors"
between those vantage points. In this light, merits of the "hand"
versus the "machine" as methods of delineation and expression are
dependent upon the set of inquiries and contest within which a
designer is working. Understanding how various media can be used to
express, affect, and possibly enlighten the issues of a project
becomes critical in the decision-making process. Understanding the
fundamentals of moving and linking concepts turns into a primary
ability necessary to effectively act in the multiplicity of physical
and televisual environments.
	The makers of urban form and culture must be able to
transform, translate and travel between various modes of
representation if they are to challenge the meanings of design in
situations where traditional components are broken down and
reconstructed along other axes. Facility of these basic moving and
linking concepts affirms possibilities for positive action in new
structural modes of non-linear or non-sequential space; suggests
possible structures of thinking and experiencing in such open-ended
worlds, and allows design to take place in a state of continual
transition.