誰能"擋住"智能化城市的腳步

This week London hosts a jamboree of computer geeks, politicians, and urban planners from around the world. At the Urban Age conference, they will discuss the latest whizz idea in high tech, the "smart city". Doing more than programming traffic, the smart city's computers will calculate where offices and shops can be laid out most efficiently, where people should sleep, and how all the parts of urban life should be fitted together. Science fiction? Smart cities are being built in the Middle East and in Korea; they have become a model for developers in China, and for redevelopment in Europe. Thanks to the digital revolution, at last life in cities can be brought under control. But is this a good thing?

本週倫敦請來世界各地的計算機極客，政治家和城市規劃者搞了一個大聚會。 在城市年代會議上， 他們將討論最新的高科技專家的建議 -關於’智能城市‘。在智能城市裏， 計算機不僅管理交通，而且能夠規劃辦公室和商店如何分佈最有效率， 人們在什麼地方睡覺最合適，以及城市生活的各個方面如何有機地結合在一起。 聽上去像科幻小說嗎？ 實際上在中東和韓國，人們已經開始建造智能城市了，在中國智能城市也成爲了開發者的樣板，對歐洲的重新開發也是這樣。 由於數字革命，城市生活終於變得可控了。 但是這算是一件好事嗎？

You don't have to be a romantic to doubt it. In the 1930s the American urbanist Lewis Mumford foresaw the disaster entailed by "scientific planning" of transport, embodied in the super-efficient highway, choking the city. The Swiss architecture critic Sigfried Giedion worried that after the second world war efficient building technologies would produce a soulless landscape of glass, steel, and concrete boxes. Yesterday's smart city, today's nightmare.

即使不是浪漫主義者的人也會對此存有懷疑。 在1930年代， 美國城市規劃專家Lewis Mumford 預見到了’科學規劃‘ 所連帶的交通災難- 超級高效的高速公路把城市堵塞起來。 瑞士建築批評家Sigfried Giedion 擔心在二次大戰後的高效建築技術會產生出一批毫無生機的玻璃，鋼鐵和水泥盒子。 昨天的聰明城市已經成了今天的噩夢。

The debate about good engineering has changed now because digital technology has shifted the technological focus to information processing; this can occur in handheld computers linked to "clouds", or in command-and-control centres. The danger now is that this information-rich city may do nothing to help people think for themselves or communicate well with one another.

關於何爲好工程的辯論今天已經改變了， 因爲數字技術已經把技術重點轉移到了信息處理方面； 這一點表現在手持電腦與’雲‘，或者是命令與控制中心相連。 現在的危險在於， 這種信息豐富的城市可能對於幫助人們爲自己考慮或者人們之間的良好溝通並方面毫無作爲。

Imagine that you are a master planner facing a blank computer screen and that you can design a city from scratch, free to incorporate every bit of high technology into your design. You might come up with Masdar, in the United Arab Emirates, or Songdo, in South Korea. These are two versions of the stupefying smart city: Masdar the more famous, or infamous; Songdo the more fascinating in a perverse way.

想象你自己是一個總規劃師， 面對一個空白計算機屏幕，從零開始設計一座城市， 可以在規劃中包含各種高新技術。 你可能會設計出阿聯酋的馬斯達爾，或者韓國的鬆島。他們是兩個令人瞠目的智能城市版本， 馬斯達爾更出名或者更不出名， 而鬆島以一種反常的方式更令人着迷。

Masdar is a half-built city rising out of the desert, whose planning – overseen by the master architect Norman Foster – comprehensively lays out the activities of the city, the technology monitoring and regulating the function from a central command centre. The city is conceived in " Fordist" terms – that is, each activity has an appropriate place and time. Urbanites become consumers of choices laid out for them by prior calculations of where to shop, or to get a doctor, most efficiently. There's no stimulation through trial and error; people learn their city passively. "User-friendly" in Masdar means choosing menu options rather than creating the menu.

馬斯達爾是在沙漠上建起的半完工城市， 由總設計師Norman Foster 主持規劃， 包羅萬象地涵蓋了城市的功能，有一箇中央控制中心來監控和規範整個城市。 整個城市是按’福特主義者‘來構思的 - 也就是說， 每一種活動都有個適當的地方和時段。 按照先前計算的最佳結果來選擇去什麼地方購物，去什麼地方看醫生。 沒有了試試看之後的興奮和刺激， 人們對城市的瞭解是被動的。 ‘用戶友好’ 在馬斯達爾意味着在現成菜單上做選擇，而不是創造菜單。

Creating your own, new menu entails, as it were, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In mid 20th-century Boston, for instance, its new "brain industries" developed in places where the planners never imagined they could grow. Masdar – like London's new "ideas quarter" around Old Street – on the contrary assumes a clairvoyant sense of what should grow where. The smart city is over-zoned, defying the fact that real development in cities is often haphazard, or in between the cracks of what's allowed.

過去， 在錯誤的時間，去到錯誤的地方， 是創造你自己的菜單所必然要帶來的。 例如，在20世紀中葉的波士頓，新的‘大腦產業’在規劃者們完全沒有想到的地方開始成長。 與過去完全相反的是， 馬斯達爾像倫敦古舊街道周圍的新‘創意角’一樣， ，假設一種知道什麼東西應該生長於什麼地方的遙感術。 智能城市的分區過度智能了， 不承認城市中真正的發展經常是很偶然的， 或者正是從正式規劃的’縫隙‘中產生的。

Songdo represents the stupefying smart city in its architectural aspect – massive, clean, efficient housing blocks rising up in the shadow of South Korea's western mountains, like an inflated 1960s British housing estate – but now heat, security, parking and deliveries are all controlled by a central Songdo "brain". The massive units of housing are not conceived as structures with any individuality in themselves, nor is the ensemble of these faceless buildings meant to create a sense of place.

鬆島代表智能城市建築反常的一面 - 巨大，乾淨，高效的房屋在韓國西部山區中拔地而起， 就像1960年代英國住宅去的膨脹版，但是現在供暖，安防，停車和送貨都是受到鬆島“神經中樞’控制的。 巨大的房屋單元不是按照任何個性本身的結構設計，也不是那些毫無個性的只是爲了建個房子而已的建築羣。

Uniform architecture need not inevitably produce a dead environment, if there is some flexibility on the ground; in New York, for instance, along parts of Third Avenue monotonous residential towers are subdivided on street level into small, irregular shops and cafes; they give a good sense of neighbourhood. But in Songdo, lacking that principle of diversity within the block, there is nothing to be learned from walking the streets.

如果在地面規劃足夠有彈性的話， 上風格樣式一致的建築並不一定會造成一種死氣沉沉的氣氛； 例如在紐約，第三大道那些單調的住宅塔樓邊上有很多小型的，不規則的店鋪和咖啡館； 這些小店給人以很舒適的鄰家感覺。 但是在鬆島， 街區裏沒有這種多樣性的原則， 走在大街上看不到任何有意思的東西。

A more intelligent attempt to create a smart city comes from work currently under way in Rio de Janeiro. Rio has a long history of devastating flash floods, made worse socially by widespread poverty and violent crime. In the past people survived thanks to the complex tissues of local life; the new information technologies are now helping them, in a very different way to Masdar and Songdo. Led by IBM, with help by Cisco and other subcontractors, the technologies have been applied to forecasting physical disasters, to co-ordinating responses to traffic crises, and to organising police work on crime. The principle here is co-ordination rather than, as in Masdar and Songdo, prescription.

目前對於智能城市更聰明的一種嘗試正發生在里約熱內盧。 里約過去曾被毀滅性的洪水摧毀過，廣泛分佈的貧民區和暴力犯罪使得城市的狀況更加糟糕。 以前人們之所以能夠生存下來，要靠當地複雜的社區生活結構； 現在新的信息技術正在用與馬斯達爾和鬆島完全不同 方式幫助人們。 由IBM牽頭，在Cisco和其他分包商的配合下， 新技術被用於自然災害的預報， 協調交通事故處理，以及組織警察對抗犯罪。 這裏的原則是協調，而不是像馬斯達爾和鬆島那樣的發出指令。

But isn't this comparison unfair? Wouldn't people in the favelas prefer, if they had a choice, the pre-organised, already planned place in which to live? After all, everything works in Songdo. A great deal of research during the last decade, in cities as different as Mumbai and Chicago, suggests that once basic services are in place people don't value efficiency above all; they want quality of life. A hand-held GPS device won't, for instance, provide a sense of community. More, the prospect of an orderly city has not been a lure for voluntary migration, neither to European cities in the past nor today to the sprawling cities of South America and Asia. If they have a choice, people want a more open, indeterminate city in which to make their way; this is how they can come to take ownership over their lives.

但是難道這種比較不是很不公平的嗎？ 在貧民窟裏的人們如果可以選擇的話， 難道不是更願意生活在那種預先組織好的， 規劃好的地方嗎？ 無論如何， 鬆島市各方面都能正常運轉。 過去十年在像孟買和芝加哥這樣完全不同的城市中的大量研究表明，一旦基本服務到位，人們就不會再關心效率問題，而是希望有更高質量的生活。 例如，手持GPS怎麼也不可能帶給人們社區的感覺。 不僅如此， 井然有序的城市並不是吸引人們自願移民的誘因， 無論是過去的歐洲城市還是今天南美洲和亞洲那些蔓延發展的城市都是如此。 如果人們能夠選擇， 他們就會選擇更加開放，有更多不確定性的城市來開創自己的生活。 只有這樣他們纔是真正的擁有了自己的生活。

There's nothing wicked about the smart city confab London is hosting this week. Technology is a great tool, when it's used responsively, as in Rio. But a city is not a machine; as in Masdar and Songdo, this version of the city can deaden and stupefy the people who live in its all-efficient embrace. We want cities that work well enough, but are open to the shifts, uncertainties, and mess which are real life.

本週在倫敦召開的智能城市討論會並沒有任何惡意。 當技術被適當地應用時，能夠成爲一種偉大的工具，就像在里約那樣。 但是城市不是一臺機器，不能像馬斯達爾和鬆島那樣，那樣版本的城市會在高效中使得生活其中的人們變得死氣沉沉和昏頭昏腦。 我們希望城市能夠運轉良好，但同時充滿真正生活的那種變化，不確定性和混亂。