(2003-02-27) Emergence Vs Infrastructure

Adina Levin on Emergence vs Infrastructure. But looking at Greenwich Village as an example of ant-like emergent behavior misses a lot of the story. There is a large substrate of of social and cultural structures that enable these unplanned activities to create a pleasing and diverse order. The neighborhood has sewers and clean running water. Without these, the city neighborhood would harbor endemic infectious diseases. There is a Fire Department which protects the block if a single house catches fire. There are people with the technical and project-management skills required to design and repair plumbing, heating, and electrical systems. A colony of ants couldn't create Greenwich Village. Neither could a tribe of Hunter Gatherer-s. There are underlying levels of Infrastructure - some of which require Planning - in order to enable the higher-level decentralized behavior.

Why not? --2003/10/13 04:31 GMT
I don't see that this is true. Termite colonies can certainly build cooling systems in their mounds. And you can replace a sewage system with Composting Toilet-s or Septic Tank-s etc. It's true that a decentralized process is unlikely to construct the same infrastructure systems we currently have beneath our cities. But that doesn't mean they couldn't build equivalents under equivalent cities. --PhilJones

• I don't think a septic tank system would scale to a very high Population Density (how big a tank would you need for a 20-story building?). Then again, the nice parts of Greenwich Village aren't the 20-story buildings. --BillSeitz