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Application of computers to the problems of urban society
Socio-Econ.Plan. Sci. Vol. 1, pp. 209-203 (1968). PergamonPress.Printedin Great Britain
APPLICATION
OF COMPUTERS TO THE PROBLEMS OF URBAN SOCIETY
ADDRESS
BY
UNDER
ROBERT
C.
SECRETARY WOOD
Department of Housing and Urban Development, Normandy Buildings, 1626 K. St., N.W., Washington, D.C. (Received 11 December 1967)
Abstract-Now is a critical period in urban decision making -A computer oriented description of the urban environment -This generation will set the pattern for next century’s cities -Now is a right time for setting the pattern -An imbalanced but changing computer involvement Technology has a leading role in urban solutions -Urban problem can be solved in the classic systems manner -Model building is exciting and challenging Federal urban programs are geared to urban complexities -Emphasis is on experimenting and demonstrating -HUD orograms with systems and EDP orientations _ What it’s going to take -Your norm is complex and hard work -The power and insight of technology are our allies
As OF mid 1967 approximately 144 million Americans lived in urban areas, and of those nearly 68 million lived in 22 large urbanized areas containing more than a million people each. By the end of this month our population will reach the 200 million mark, becoming the fourth nation in history to reach that size. Before this audience passes beyond immediately influencing American decision making, or to put the fact beyond the constraints of ecology, by the year 2000 you will be living together with some 265 million Americans. That environment in the years to come will be a large, if not amorphous, urban complex: in the terms of your trade, an intense matrix of physical and social structures within which daily confrontations or hits between human beings are significant. Today we store tension, stress, and strain on the fixed length tape record of urban affairs; tomorrow the matrix calls for the recognized loading of a variable length disc. Philosophical debates over what the American city is, was, and ought to be, will not stop, although they compound the complexity of specifying the requirements. Yours is a profession that understands lead-time. You, among perhaps too few, comprehend that as a simple function of population growth and present trends, this generation needs to 209
210
ROBERT C. Wool
build cities on a scale beyond any past experience. In the next few years we will be deciding how these cities must be built; we will be patterning the shape of the country for the year 2000 and beyond. Several factors give us a unique chance to set the pattern now for urbania. First the public spotlight clearly has turned to urban affairs. Urban issues are at the forefront of public and private debate across the spectrum of the press, television, national and State legislatures, and civic and professional societies, made clear by your presence here today. Next, and partially as a result of this attention, we have flexible new legislative tools with which to work. Last year’s Housing Act gave us model cities, metropolitan development, expanding research, and new information services. 1 will come back to their specifics shortly. Third, our technical capability is enormous and increasing. In the effort to understand and modify our environment, we have a medicine chest worth advertising: new generation computers and languages, operations and materials research, systems theory, simulation, modeling, and communications to link it all. Post-war developments in computer and communications technology have revolutionized research in both the biological and physical sciences. Yet these technologies have never been fully exploited in dealing with urban problems. It takes only 16 min from the time a soldier is injured in the jungles of Vietnam, until he is under anaesthesia in a modern operating room, and yet the ambulances in our cities still crawl and howl their way through rush hour traffic. But we are marking a beginning. The Federal establishment, which I do not always ascribe as the model, has a growing inventory; some 2600 computing systems and about $1.3 billion estimated this year for ADPE and its associated operations. State and local quantities and investments in the field are harder to come by. The best oracles that I could find (who were willing to at least talk on the subject) seem to agree that today we have some 200 computing systems in being in State governments, and perhaps only somewhat better than 300 systems belonging to localities. And, we are just beginning to recognize the possible impact of computers. Just the other day I was reading in the Times that, starting this month, Sing Sing Prison will be offering a course to the inmates in computer programming. Among other things the training will help to qualify the men for job openings in banks, insurance companies and manufacturing companies upon parole. This kind of multiplication of our information processing capability presents challenges but also signs of caution. It affords us opportunities to base our urban decisions on realistic assessments and predictions. Until the last decade or so, decision-making for the city was largely a matter of ‘seats-of-pants’ judgment, of political intuition. But now with the use of computers and mathematical models, we can begin to move from this intuitive judgment to more rational decision-making, and decisions can be made on the basis of thousands of units of actual data. If we can proceed from a rational, problem-solving stance, urban problems can be examined in the classic scientific manner. The phenomena are identifiable; alternative approaches can be found; testing and experimentation are not impossible. The city is, in fact, singularly adaptive to the approaches of science and technology. But we must be cautious not to rely solely on the mere existence of this “Hardware”. The measure of real progress depends not so much on the fact that we possess the necessary
Application
of Computers
to the Problems of Urban Society
211
“Hardware” but instead on how intelligently and systematically we use this “Hardware”how we employ it in our problem solving. Thus, our first and most difficult task is not developing urban technology. The task is not even getting more money, although proper research, as we all know, is expensive. As we move to make use of our considerable capacity for modifying our environment, the analysis of what its shortcomings are and how they great need is for rigorous analysis: relate to one another; analysis of what we are trying to accomplish and what the obstacles are to doing so. We need to use people trained in many disciplines to confront these obstacles in fresh ways. We need to make our goals clear, to explore their implications, to be willing to take risks. When we talk about applying systems analysis to metropolitan planning, we are not trying to add another layer of academic sophistry to an already jargon-laden process. We are describing a way to make planning work by relating it to what is really happening, by making it realistic and precise. When we talk about viewing the city as a system, we are not trying to hasten the arrival of 1984, we are emphasizing the intricate, but not indecipherable, relationships among all of the institutions and processes which make up a modern urban center. A city can be seen as a total network of internal systems-systems for assuring people’s health, mobility and cleanliness, fighting fires, enforcing laws, providing shelter, educating children and so forth. One enthusiast for this approach, architect John Ebergard, suggests dividing a city’s sub-systems between “hardware” and “software”. He compares a city’s hardware systems to those of the human body: -the metabolic system-“the network which provides for the ingestion each day of huge quantities of water, supplies, food, and fuel and the consequent production of waste in the form of sewerage, garbage, trash, and air pollutants;” -the cardio-vascular system-“the horizontal and vertical paths of movement and the objects which move along them, like subways and trains, highways and automobiles, sidewalks, stairways, and people.” -the nervous system-“the information-communication network of the city which makes it possible for its many parts to keep in touch, for it to be (at least potentially) managed as an entity, or for signals to be emitted at the proper time in order for the other systems to remain under control ;” - “the enclosure system-“the combination of skeletal subsystems . . . which surround the hollow places of the city in which the life of the city goes on.” The “software” of the city could be similarly grouped he suggests, around the economic, the political, the education, and the life supporting systems. The usefulness of this or any other list lies not in the categories chosen but in the degree to which they facilitate analysis and fresh insight. The techniques of systems analysis offer certain special contributions to urban problem-solving. These include the following: First, the emphasis on considering total processes rather than individual units; Second, the emphasis on the relationships-“intersections’‘-between various processes; Third, the emphasis on the use of models and/or field experiments to examine the effect of changes at different intersections or at different points in a given system; Fourth, the emphasis on an interdisciplinary approach, on communication not only between various engineering specialities, but between engineers, planners, computer
212
ROBERT
C.
WOOD
systems analysts, biologists, psychologists, politicians and anyone else who can contribute to understanding how the system works; Fifth, the emphasis on identifying goals and balancing them off against other goals as possible courses of action are examined. The application of these techniques to aspects of our urban environment is virtually open ended. As one example, the use of models is both exciting and challenging. How appropriate this technique is in determining the optimal size, composition, location, and spacing of enclaves of new housing within the inner city. Or, how challenging is work that is being done in models of cities’ housing markets where symbolic expression of rules replicates behavioral and economic motivations of interacting private decision makers. Federal urban programs that are now, or will be, operating have themselves been cast in the modeling mode. Their emphasis is on experimentation and real world demonstration. We have in being some 120 Federal programs oriented towards urban aid. As a point of emphasis, the Bureau of the Budget indicates that around 50 of these programs are or have been used for the development of information systems, with principal activity at local levels. Innovative, demonstrating programs only reach their accredited values when the how, when, where, and why of success, and lack thereof, can be readily and quite uniformally reported. Here again the computer, as part of the total system, provides the leg- up we need. The new Model Cities program provides ample challenge to your growing technology. Its data base must include flexible, compatible, retrievable data for specific neighborhoods within a city, covering social and physical development, health and education, and new construction and rehabilitation. In the past few years the Department of Housing and Urban Development has supported the development of information systems through Community Renewal programs, and through our Urban Planning Assistance, Renewal Demonstration, and Planning Research and Demonstration Programs. Last year’s metropolitan DeveIopment Act authorized a new program for helping to solve urban problems specifically through pro-, grams of urban information and technical assistance. This new program, known as Title IX is aimed at information systems but can provide hardware support. Title IX, 50 per cent Federal grants to States for help to the so-called small communities of less than a 100,000 people, is oriented towards gathering together and making information available to help solve urban problems. One significant parcel of information that should be, but is not always, retrievable is the bank of actual Federal, State, as well as local sources of assistances that are available to help in urban probIem solving. Title IX was needed to help organize systematic ways of spelling out local needs and for keeping track of physical, socia1, and economic trends. A related area that is challenging enough even for this audience is much the result of your own contributions-the explosion in information. We do not have in any one central repository, reliable and complete information about where all of the varied and specialized coilections of urban development information are located. Even if we did, and we someday soon must and will, could we integrate, abstract, and afford to disseminate it? Here the future holds out potentials for a rather massive information exchange network supporting the Title IX State networks. A further manifestation of Congressional interest in this area is a joint resolution recently introduced by Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts. This resolution, which HUD supports, would have the Advisory Commission on Inter-governmental Relations study
Application
of Computers
to the Problems of Urban Society
213
the construction and means of operating an overall information exchange system to help State and local governments participate more effectively in federally assisted programs. It is no small problem for States and localities to sort out and decide which programs could help most. Since 1955 these Federal aids have quadrupled, rising from some $3.1 billion in 1955 to an estimated $14.6 billion this year. We live in an era where history is being shaped: in the last 5 yr alone, twice as much Federal aid has been made available as in all the previous years, going back to 1789. HUD currently is supporting a study on Urban and Regional Information Systems which has quite some significance for all of us here today. The theme of the study is “how the availability and accessibility of information for planners can be improved through the application of ADP.” I know that I add emphasis by telling you that two of your key speakers this morning, Dr. Hearle and Professor Harris, served as members of the study’s Advisory Committee. We expect that the final report will be produced for national distribution early next year. Its principal focus is upon metropolitan planning, and we anticipate some good “spin-off” for municipal systems activities. The report, we trust, will help to fill a guidance vacuum on what the criteria for a planning-oriented Urban Information System are. It will also give insights on data base specification, development, and utilization; data acquisition strategies and data compatibility; as well as focus on the data processing system itself, and problems of data release. We tried to hedge our bets for a discriminating audience by asking the authors for a universal survey, to be appended, outlining all Urban and Regional Information Systems that exist or are planned throughout the country, showing the agencies, individuals, and programs involved. I understand that this facet alone has almost convinced the authors that they should give up EDP work and open a missing persons bureau. In spite of, or perhaps because of, our medicine chest of new instruments : technology, the refreshing press of public opinion, and enduring new legislation that I’ve spoken of, one more ingredient to be added to urban problem solving could be labelled plain hard work. Normally, I might close with the familiar epic, but this audience needs no such admonition. The careers that you have put into conceiving, building, testing, and debugging both hard and softwares tells me that hard work is your mode. In this effort, our most important allies are not just common sense, long experience, more money, and hard work. They are the power and insights of science and engineering and technology-uncommon sense, unique solutions to new problems, and new sources of energy. As Theodore H. White reports of the late Robert Oppenheimer, “FOLKWISDOM," that great scientist said, “can cry out in pain, but it can’t provide solutions.” You are the ones who can.
APPLICATION
OF COMPUTERS TO THE PROBLEMS OF URBAN SOCIETY
ADDRESS
BY
UNDER
ROBERT
C.
SECRETARY WOOD
Department of Housing and Urban Development, Normandy Buildings, 1626 K. St., N.W., Washington, D.C. (Received 11 December 1967)
Abstract-Now is a critical period in urban decision making -A computer oriented description of the urban environment -This generation will set the pattern for next century’s cities -Now is a right time for setting the pattern -An imbalanced but changing computer involvement Technology has a leading role in urban solutions -Urban problem can be solved in the classic systems manner -Model building is exciting and challenging Federal urban programs are geared to urban complexities -Emphasis is on experimenting and demonstrating -HUD orograms with systems and EDP orientations _ What it’s going to take -Your norm is complex and hard work -The power and insight of technology are our allies
As OF mid 1967 approximately 144 million Americans lived in urban areas, and of those nearly 68 million lived in 22 large urbanized areas containing more than a million people each. By the end of this month our population will reach the 200 million mark, becoming the fourth nation in history to reach that size. Before this audience passes beyond immediately influencing American decision making, or to put the fact beyond the constraints of ecology, by the year 2000 you will be living together with some 265 million Americans. That environment in the years to come will be a large, if not amorphous, urban complex: in the terms of your trade, an intense matrix of physical and social structures within which daily confrontations or hits between human beings are significant. Today we store tension, stress, and strain on the fixed length tape record of urban affairs; tomorrow the matrix calls for the recognized loading of a variable length disc. Philosophical debates over what the American city is, was, and ought to be, will not stop, although they compound the complexity of specifying the requirements. Yours is a profession that understands lead-time. You, among perhaps too few, comprehend that as a simple function of population growth and present trends, this generation needs to 209
210
ROBERT C. Wool
build cities on a scale beyond any past experience. In the next few years we will be deciding how these cities must be built; we will be patterning the shape of the country for the year 2000 and beyond. Several factors give us a unique chance to set the pattern now for urbania. First the public spotlight clearly has turned to urban affairs. Urban issues are at the forefront of public and private debate across the spectrum of the press, television, national and State legislatures, and civic and professional societies, made clear by your presence here today. Next, and partially as a result of this attention, we have flexible new legislative tools with which to work. Last year’s Housing Act gave us model cities, metropolitan development, expanding research, and new information services. 1 will come back to their specifics shortly. Third, our technical capability is enormous and increasing. In the effort to understand and modify our environment, we have a medicine chest worth advertising: new generation computers and languages, operations and materials research, systems theory, simulation, modeling, and communications to link it all. Post-war developments in computer and communications technology have revolutionized research in both the biological and physical sciences. Yet these technologies have never been fully exploited in dealing with urban problems. It takes only 16 min from the time a soldier is injured in the jungles of Vietnam, until he is under anaesthesia in a modern operating room, and yet the ambulances in our cities still crawl and howl their way through rush hour traffic. But we are marking a beginning. The Federal establishment, which I do not always ascribe as the model, has a growing inventory; some 2600 computing systems and about $1.3 billion estimated this year for ADPE and its associated operations. State and local quantities and investments in the field are harder to come by. The best oracles that I could find (who were willing to at least talk on the subject) seem to agree that today we have some 200 computing systems in being in State governments, and perhaps only somewhat better than 300 systems belonging to localities. And, we are just beginning to recognize the possible impact of computers. Just the other day I was reading in the Times that, starting this month, Sing Sing Prison will be offering a course to the inmates in computer programming. Among other things the training will help to qualify the men for job openings in banks, insurance companies and manufacturing companies upon parole. This kind of multiplication of our information processing capability presents challenges but also signs of caution. It affords us opportunities to base our urban decisions on realistic assessments and predictions. Until the last decade or so, decision-making for the city was largely a matter of ‘seats-of-pants’ judgment, of political intuition. But now with the use of computers and mathematical models, we can begin to move from this intuitive judgment to more rational decision-making, and decisions can be made on the basis of thousands of units of actual data. If we can proceed from a rational, problem-solving stance, urban problems can be examined in the classic scientific manner. The phenomena are identifiable; alternative approaches can be found; testing and experimentation are not impossible. The city is, in fact, singularly adaptive to the approaches of science and technology. But we must be cautious not to rely solely on the mere existence of this “Hardware”. The measure of real progress depends not so much on the fact that we possess the necessary
Application
of Computers
to the Problems of Urban Society
211
“Hardware” but instead on how intelligently and systematically we use this “Hardware”how we employ it in our problem solving. Thus, our first and most difficult task is not developing urban technology. The task is not even getting more money, although proper research, as we all know, is expensive. As we move to make use of our considerable capacity for modifying our environment, the analysis of what its shortcomings are and how they great need is for rigorous analysis: relate to one another; analysis of what we are trying to accomplish and what the obstacles are to doing so. We need to use people trained in many disciplines to confront these obstacles in fresh ways. We need to make our goals clear, to explore their implications, to be willing to take risks. When we talk about applying systems analysis to metropolitan planning, we are not trying to add another layer of academic sophistry to an already jargon-laden process. We are describing a way to make planning work by relating it to what is really happening, by making it realistic and precise. When we talk about viewing the city as a system, we are not trying to hasten the arrival of 1984, we are emphasizing the intricate, but not indecipherable, relationships among all of the institutions and processes which make up a modern urban center. A city can be seen as a total network of internal systems-systems for assuring people’s health, mobility and cleanliness, fighting fires, enforcing laws, providing shelter, educating children and so forth. One enthusiast for this approach, architect John Ebergard, suggests dividing a city’s sub-systems between “hardware” and “software”. He compares a city’s hardware systems to those of the human body: -the metabolic system-“the network which provides for the ingestion each day of huge quantities of water, supplies, food, and fuel and the consequent production of waste in the form of sewerage, garbage, trash, and air pollutants;” -the cardio-vascular system-“the horizontal and vertical paths of movement and the objects which move along them, like subways and trains, highways and automobiles, sidewalks, stairways, and people.” -the nervous system-“the information-communication network of the city which makes it possible for its many parts to keep in touch, for it to be (at least potentially) managed as an entity, or for signals to be emitted at the proper time in order for the other systems to remain under control ;” - “the enclosure system-“the combination of skeletal subsystems . . . which surround the hollow places of the city in which the life of the city goes on.” The “software” of the city could be similarly grouped he suggests, around the economic, the political, the education, and the life supporting systems. The usefulness of this or any other list lies not in the categories chosen but in the degree to which they facilitate analysis and fresh insight. The techniques of systems analysis offer certain special contributions to urban problem-solving. These include the following: First, the emphasis on considering total processes rather than individual units; Second, the emphasis on the relationships-“intersections’‘-between various processes; Third, the emphasis on the use of models and/or field experiments to examine the effect of changes at different intersections or at different points in a given system; Fourth, the emphasis on an interdisciplinary approach, on communication not only between various engineering specialities, but between engineers, planners, computer
212
ROBERT
C.
WOOD
systems analysts, biologists, psychologists, politicians and anyone else who can contribute to understanding how the system works; Fifth, the emphasis on identifying goals and balancing them off against other goals as possible courses of action are examined. The application of these techniques to aspects of our urban environment is virtually open ended. As one example, the use of models is both exciting and challenging. How appropriate this technique is in determining the optimal size, composition, location, and spacing of enclaves of new housing within the inner city. Or, how challenging is work that is being done in models of cities’ housing markets where symbolic expression of rules replicates behavioral and economic motivations of interacting private decision makers. Federal urban programs that are now, or will be, operating have themselves been cast in the modeling mode. Their emphasis is on experimentation and real world demonstration. We have in being some 120 Federal programs oriented towards urban aid. As a point of emphasis, the Bureau of the Budget indicates that around 50 of these programs are or have been used for the development of information systems, with principal activity at local levels. Innovative, demonstrating programs only reach their accredited values when the how, when, where, and why of success, and lack thereof, can be readily and quite uniformally reported. Here again the computer, as part of the total system, provides the leg- up we need. The new Model Cities program provides ample challenge to your growing technology. Its data base must include flexible, compatible, retrievable data for specific neighborhoods within a city, covering social and physical development, health and education, and new construction and rehabilitation. In the past few years the Department of Housing and Urban Development has supported the development of information systems through Community Renewal programs, and through our Urban Planning Assistance, Renewal Demonstration, and Planning Research and Demonstration Programs. Last year’s metropolitan DeveIopment Act authorized a new program for helping to solve urban problems specifically through pro-, grams of urban information and technical assistance. This new program, known as Title IX is aimed at information systems but can provide hardware support. Title IX, 50 per cent Federal grants to States for help to the so-called small communities of less than a 100,000 people, is oriented towards gathering together and making information available to help solve urban problems. One significant parcel of information that should be, but is not always, retrievable is the bank of actual Federal, State, as well as local sources of assistances that are available to help in urban probIem solving. Title IX was needed to help organize systematic ways of spelling out local needs and for keeping track of physical, socia1, and economic trends. A related area that is challenging enough even for this audience is much the result of your own contributions-the explosion in information. We do not have in any one central repository, reliable and complete information about where all of the varied and specialized coilections of urban development information are located. Even if we did, and we someday soon must and will, could we integrate, abstract, and afford to disseminate it? Here the future holds out potentials for a rather massive information exchange network supporting the Title IX State networks. A further manifestation of Congressional interest in this area is a joint resolution recently introduced by Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts. This resolution, which HUD supports, would have the Advisory Commission on Inter-governmental Relations study
Application
of Computers
to the Problems of Urban Society
213
the construction and means of operating an overall information exchange system to help State and local governments participate more effectively in federally assisted programs. It is no small problem for States and localities to sort out and decide which programs could help most. Since 1955 these Federal aids have quadrupled, rising from some $3.1 billion in 1955 to an estimated $14.6 billion this year. We live in an era where history is being shaped: in the last 5 yr alone, twice as much Federal aid has been made available as in all the previous years, going back to 1789. HUD currently is supporting a study on Urban and Regional Information Systems which has quite some significance for all of us here today. The theme of the study is “how the availability and accessibility of information for planners can be improved through the application of ADP.” I know that I add emphasis by telling you that two of your key speakers this morning, Dr. Hearle and Professor Harris, served as members of the study’s Advisory Committee. We expect that the final report will be produced for national distribution early next year. Its principal focus is upon metropolitan planning, and we anticipate some good “spin-off” for municipal systems activities. The report, we trust, will help to fill a guidance vacuum on what the criteria for a planning-oriented Urban Information System are. It will also give insights on data base specification, development, and utilization; data acquisition strategies and data compatibility; as well as focus on the data processing system itself, and problems of data release. We tried to hedge our bets for a discriminating audience by asking the authors for a universal survey, to be appended, outlining all Urban and Regional Information Systems that exist or are planned throughout the country, showing the agencies, individuals, and programs involved. I understand that this facet alone has almost convinced the authors that they should give up EDP work and open a missing persons bureau. In spite of, or perhaps because of, our medicine chest of new instruments : technology, the refreshing press of public opinion, and enduring new legislation that I’ve spoken of, one more ingredient to be added to urban problem solving could be labelled plain hard work. Normally, I might close with the familiar epic, but this audience needs no such admonition. The careers that you have put into conceiving, building, testing, and debugging both hard and softwares tells me that hard work is your mode. In this effort, our most important allies are not just common sense, long experience, more money, and hard work. They are the power and insights of science and engineering and technology-uncommon sense, unique solutions to new problems, and new sources of energy. As Theodore H. White reports of the late Robert Oppenheimer, “FOLKWISDOM," that great scientist said, “can cry out in pain, but it can’t provide solutions.” You are the ones who can.