laying down roads to build the city

New road, lights, and palm trees awaiting further development in western Las Vegas. March 2009.

The coming of spring in Philadelphia and the subsequent enclosing of the landscape in foliage, heat, and humidity for the next six months has me thinking about the desert. The sky is a different blue in the aridity of Las Vegas, and the horizon much further away than in the northeast US.

The desert emerges as a flat ground, accepting this development without even having to clear the site of overgrowth or debris. Lay down the asphalt, run electricity, water, gas, and telecommunication lines alongside the road, and start building. (Oh, and don't forget the palm trees. It isn't Las Vegas without the palms.) This is the one layer of urban development at this ragged urban fringe where the Las Vegas butts up against the foothills. The infrastructure is put down and the buildings sprout from from it.

New construction at the western edge of Las Vegas, March 2009.

antenna and advertizing in Manhattan

On the Manhattan side of the Manhattan Bridge, New York City. February 2012.

The billboard in the photo above is washed out, but on the left side of it can be made out the AT&T logo, advertizing an aspect of AT&T's mobile communication services. The juxtaposition of cellular antenna and billboard advertizing mobile communication services is perhaps telling of the need for a blanketing layer of cellular connection at a high-traffic zone in Manhattan, and the value of a prime location for advertizing at a high-traffic zone. Some research on this location at the Antenna Search website did not indicate if the antenna on top of this building are for the AT&T cellular network.

tubes and wires

Sansome Street near the University of Pennsylvania. There appears to be a fire department connection, two drainpipes, and at least two telecommunication lines all interfacing through the same general space, in a building that likely pre-dates everything but the drainpipes.

Ubiquitous connectivity in the post-networked landscape

AT&T cellular network equipment near Norristown, alongside the Pennsylvania Turnpike. This infrastructure mediates between the user making a call as they drive down the Turnpike and the telecommunication network itself. The user only has to carry their iPhone, but to make that phone functional requires sites such as this to be spread throughout the landscape. The iPhone is pocketable, but the rest of the system is very much not. This location is adjacent to the Schuylkill River rails-to-trails bike route between Philadelphia and Valley Forge, for anyone is interested in looking at the setup firsthand.

This July I will be presenting at "From networked to post-networked urbanism:  new infrastructure configurations and urban transitions", a roundtable conference in Autun, France, organized by LATTS, the French technology, infrastructure and society research organization. Below is the outline to the paper I will present.

Ubiquitous connectivity in the post-networked landscape: Situating the infrastructure of mobile communication through boundary objects

Mobile communication is one example of a system central to the production of post-networked urbanism. As the mobile phone has become a core device of interaction and cultural exchange, what impact is the provision of ethereal and wireless, always-on connectivity having on the urban landscape itself? In this essay I will argue that situating the telecommunication infrastructure supporting mobile communication offers a means of understanding the new relationships to space and place in this post-networked urban landscape, relationships where proximity and distance are now a matter more of connection through a technological device than location itself. The use of mobile phones and Internet-enabled smartphones has become more and more central to the everyday experience of most urban dwellers, and an understanding of the impact these connective systems--cellular antenna and towers, colocation centers, buried fiber-optic cables, and the like--have on the urban landscape provides a means of comprehending what the development of a post-networked urbanism actually involves. Mobile communication is a product of the embedding of ubiquitous computing technologies in the landscape (Shepard 2011). These mundane, everyday systems foreground the connectivity for the individual user through objects of hyper-design such as Apple's iPhone, whereas the other end of the connection, the mobile telecommunication networks often fade into the visually cluttered urban background. Examining the impact of mobile telecommunication infrastructure on the urban landscape opens a path to exploring these post-networked urban spaces.
   
Using the infrastructure of mobile telecommunication in the greater Philadelphia region as a core example of the ubiquitous technological systems that are widespread in the post-networked urban landscape of the global north, this essay will investigate the impact these infrastructural spaces have on and in a city. I will apply the concept of 'boundary objects' (Star and Griesemer 1989) as a means of tracing the inter-connections between immaterial, digital flows of mobile connectivity in space, and of identifying the networks that stretch throughout the world, but can be located in specific places.
 
Established means of critical analysis do not offer a suitable language for exploring post-networked urbanism. Tracking the multitude of assemblages that make up a post-networked city can be done by harnessing actor-network theory and assemblage urbanism (Farias and Bender 2010; McFarlane 2011). When proximity and distance are reconfigured through the technological mediation of devices such as mobile phones, analysis that maintains the territorial, spatial boundedness of the object of study cannot offer an appropriate means of conceptualizing the entirety of a post-networked city. For infrastructure studies to begin to address the new interactive and responsive relationships with infrastructural systems that the digital mediation of everyday life has wrought will necessitate the continued elaboration of new methodological approaches that can stitch together the associations and interactions between the physical and immaterial as well as the metabolic and the digital, shifting between individual users and the post-networked landscape itself.

Keywords: ubiquitous computing; mobile phone; telecommunication; Internet; actor-network theory; assemblage; boundary object; Philadelphia


Sources

Farias, I., and T. Bender eds. 2010. Urban Assemblages: How Actor-Network Theory Changes Urban Studies. London ; New York: Routledge.

McFarlane, C. 2011. Assemblage and critical urbanism. City 15 (2):204-224.

Shepard, M. (ed.). 2011. Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space. 2011. Cambridge, MA: The Architectural League of New York and MIT Press.

Star, S. L., and J. R. Griesemer. 1989. Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology,     1907-39. Social Studies of Science 19 (3):387-420.

Farias, I., and T. Bender eds. 2010. Urban Assemblages: How Actor-Network Theory Changes Urban Studies. London ; New York: Routledge.

McFarlane, C. 2011. Assemblage and critical urbanism. City 15 (2):204-224.

Shepard, M. (ed.). 2011. Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space. 2011. Cambridge, MA: The Architectural League of New York and MIT Press.

Star, S. L., and J. R. Griesemer. 1989. Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39. Social Studies of Science 19 (3):387-420.

The Un(known) City

A piece of the infrastructural underground, underwater. Sierra Nevada Foothills.

 
A better understanding what Steve Pile articulates in the quote below encapsulates much of the work of this blog:

The development of the underground city involves a double-edged sword of progress (just as the unconscious involves the tension between opposing elements; just as the uncanny involves the play of the familiar and the strange): technologies capable of building the city underground are simultaneously destructive and creative. In order to enable the metropolis to function, to clean its streets, to rid it of disease, and to allow ease of movement of goods, information, and people, there are a vast array of underground systems. As much as progress was measured in the size and spectacle of large buildings, grand projects, wide boulevards, so under the streets lay railways, sewers, gas and water pipes, pipes for compressed air and telephone (telecommunication) cabling. As architectural and urban design render the city on the surface known and transparent through spatial practices such as urban planning, streets are repeatedly dug up, reburied, and scarred by the doctoring of the city's intestinal world. The city is indeed built on networks of information, money, and people, but these do not exist in cyberspace: they are encased in iron and plastic under the ground.

from: Steve Pile. 2001. "The Un(known) City...or, an Urban Geography of What Lies Buried below the Surface". in The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

wireless Internet broadcasting from a crumbling church

Re-use of an existing structure: Clear Communication 4G wifi antennas mounted on St. Peters Church of Christ, 47th Street and Kingsessing Avenue, West Philadelphia.

This stone church, built around the turn of the 20th century, when West Philadelphia was initially developing into a streetcar suburb, has fallen into severe disrepair over the last number of years, but today it supports an antenna array for Clear's 4G wireless Internet. Here is Clear's coverage map. The church does not seem to hold services anymore. The roof is collapsing in many places. At least two trees are growing out of the structure itself. The stained glass on the west-facing wall has collapsed in on itself. At the same time, the turret broadcasts wireless connectivity throughout the neighborhood. I use it even, at my apartment a few blocks away. This church and its wireless connection to the Internet illustrate a central issue of networked urbanism: places can become connective nodes to the Internet or cellular networks, but be disconnected to their neighborhoods themselves. For Clear, this location provides a tall point in the neighborhood from which to site their antenna without having to build a tower. For Clear's customer, the Internet connection matter and the location where the network equipment actually sits is secondary, but the site--the infrastructure of Internet connection--has a relationship to the city as well. In this instance, the location exists in a state of disrepair bordering on abandonment, where the addition of Clear's antenna in the last few years are probably the only modification or renovation to the church in decades. The provision of wireless Internet connectivity flows through this place of worship falling into ruin; the network matters and, to a degree, the church and the neighborhood itself does not. If the turret crumbled apart, would Clear rebuild the stonework or just look for another location? I would imagine that Clear would move their antenna to another point in the area, as would any other Internet or mobile communication provider.

As wireless, mobile connectivity becomes still more central to how people move about cities such as Philadelphia, these situations will continue to emerge. Using mobile phones, accessing the Internet, and all the everyday gestures and actions that go on in a networked city require an infrastructural back-end to connect that mobile phone, and this infrastructure exists in or on top of places like St. Peter's Church of Christ in West Philadelphia. The New Aesthetic that James Bridle has been documenting prolifically and eloquently is not solely new things and places and the like. It is often the re-use of older systems, buildings, and technologies. This thick mixing of old, new, and near-future is the networked city, where the wireless connection to the communication infrastructure may be out of sight, but is still present somewhere, like on the top of an century-old, crumbling stone church.

 Detail of St. Peter's Church of Christ highlighting the tree growing out of the stonework as well as the dilapidated roof.

The western side of the church. Note the stained glass window has broken apart.

Two windows at street level, backlit from inside.

blue windows, a water tower, and cellular antenna

Creative re-use of a water tower as a mount for cellular antenna on Fairmount Ave. between 4th St. and 5th St. in North Philadelphia. February 2012.

The use of existing structures such as water towers and smokestacks as high-points to mount cellular antenna is common in Philadelphia. The post-industrial urban landscape is littered with sites such as the above one, a boarded up factory site advertizing its current tenant the 'Trans-Atlantic Co.' which according to their website is an importer of security and shelving equipment. Even if the water tower is still in use, which is unlikely, the Trans-Atlantic Company apparently has no need for windows, having boarded up and painted bright blue  every window in the building. What was likely a factory with natural lighting through these now-boarded windows has turned into a warehouse where windows are not needed, the lighting provided by electricity.

The building now provides a high point from which the ethereal, wireless connectivity is broadcast throughout the neighborhood, but, seen in the photograph below, the building's presence on the street is closed off, a canvas for a lovelorn graffiti artist to bemoan his or her love, apparently named Snicks, leaving Philadelphia. This site provides an example of b how the ubiquity of wireless communication is actually produced. Those signal bars on the iPhone come from somewhere, places like the antenna atop this building in North Philadelphia.

A frontal view of the Trans-Atlantic Company's warehouse, with graffiti atop blue-painted boarded up windows.

infrastructure of mobile telephony and the physicality of the Internet

An AT&T cellular tower sits between the playground for the Hawthorne Cultural Center and a block of two-story, brick row-homes at the intersection of Carpenter Street and South 13th Street in South Philadelphia. A flock of birds settled on the top of the tower just as the picture was taken. January 2012.

A key, ubiquitous communication node in a networked city like Philadelphia is the cellular antenna and cellular tower. In addition to connecting mobile phone calls, these cellular antenna create the ethereal link between an individual’s smartphone and the Internet. To check an email, find directions with Google Maps, interact with social media, or to access any number of other uses of the mobile Internet requires these ubiquitous, monotone rectangular boxes to be mounted atop high places throughout the landscape. The ‘always-on’ nature of mobile connectivity is created through the maintenance of these cellular networks. The individual device, such as an Apple iPhone, may fit in a pocket, but the background network is immense. Data centers house the servers which contain our digital footprint and a vast array of fiber-optic cabling transmits this information, and the final connection to the user is made through cellular antenna. While the design and utility of that iPhone is of particular concern to the user and to Apple, the design of the infrastructural support to that device often looks like a haphazard afterthought.
In a city such as Philadelphia, these antenna are typically situated three ways. Antenna can be mounted atop commercial or residential buildings, often on former industrial structures such as water towers or smokestacks. They can be located at the top of electrical transmission towers, or they can occupy freestanding towers dedicated specifically to providing mobile connectivity. Freestanding cellular sites in Philadelphia often occupy the interstitial margins of the city, wedged into an empty lot alongside a major roadway or towering over a residential neighborhood. The infrastructural aesthetic for cellular equipment seems to focus on presumptions of anonyminity as well as functional concerns placed before formal design. Muted colors such as whites and greys dominate, with little attention paid to the impact on connecting the design of the structure with the adjacent neighborhood. At the street-level, these towers and their attendant ground-level equipment are typically surrounded by a chain link fence displaying some information about who owns and operates the tower, such as AT&T, as well as one or more ‘No Trespassing’ signs. While these ‘No Trespassing’ signs are a legal necessity for practical reasons as well as safety reasons, it is worth considering how mobile communication, this system that provides connection to each other and to the Internet occurs through spaces that are separated from the urban landscape itself, sequestered behind fences while at the same time towering over the surrounding area.

As the individual device in the hand of the user becomes a normalized element in everyday life, the impact of mobile communication infrastructure in the landscape itself is overlooked. The hyper-designed object of an iPhone cannot function without the connective background provided by cellular antenna. While the utility of mobile telephony is contained on the screen of that iPhone, the impact of the network on the landscape itself is distinctively physical and visible, located in equipment like these cellular towers.

Everyday Structures at the 2012 AAG conference in New York City

Just south of the South Street Bridge, a quonset hut houses the Springfield Beer Distributors, soon to be relocated due to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's push across the Schuylkill River, with a single mast cellular tower in the background.

The Association of American Geographers annual conference is in New York City this year. On Saturday 25 February, at the early hour of 8am, I will be presenting research drawn from fieldwork in the Philadelphia region over the last year or so. Attending the conference requires a paid registration, but if anyone readers out there can make it, please say hello afterward.

Here is a description of the session, Geographies of the Internet: Situating information and communication technologies in the urban landscape

As ubiquitous computing, broadband Internet, mobile communication, and the related information and communication technologies become more and more embedded in our daily lives, there is a need to examine the spaces of connection and dis-connection through many analytic lenses. This session will utilize qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches to studying the geographies of the network society, from examining the spaces of mobile communication infrastructure in the metropolitan landscape to mapping the accessibility of broadband Internet. The goal of this session is to critically interrogate the places produced by and through the "Net": these ephemeral and often obscured systems that are at the core of our daily lives as scholars and citizens.

And here is the abstract for my paper presentation, Producing mobile communication: situating digital infrastructure in the urban landscape:

Contemporary urban life is closely linked to the digital telecommunication connection provided by mobile connectivity. While the ethereal presence of the telecommunication networks is visible in the signal bars on a mobile phone, the less-visible physical presence of this digital infrastructure is creating a new utility within the urban landscape that needs to be considered as a component of contemporary urban life. This presentation interrogates one of the primary components of ubiquitous computing: the digital infrastructure of cellular antenna and the like that produces mobile connectivity; this presentation also  examines the communication infrastructure's relationship to the street itself. Using the case of Philadelphia, I address how connecting individuals occurs in spaces disconnected from the street and urban public space in general. I will discuss how to apply a methodological framework from brought out of critical urban studies can be combined with concepts from science and technology studies such as boundary objects to consider the co-production of the urban today through the built landscape of the city itself as well as the ethereal spaces of mobile communication. I argue that spatializing the infrastructure of mobile connectivity and is an important and undervalued component of understanding the twenty-first century urban landscape.

flyover

Looking towards East Falls, below the Lincoln Highway/Roosevelt Expressway. Philadelphia. The modernist freeway project clashes quite strongly with the early industrial neighborhood it passes through and over.