Question ONE
Designers, planners, architects, all of us, suffer from a number of well-documented cognitive failings that distort our ability to predict accurately.
Hey, it is the future. But this could be changing for two reasons:
First, we no longer believe that the unusual event is more salient, and we are less likely to dismiss evidence that contradicts the commonly adopted meaning.
Second, without doubt we know our capacity to build for the future does not include knowing what it will mean to people or their lives.
This leads to an inevitable conclusion. The marketing of "the firm" as a group of experts is loosing leverage rapidly. New competitors are building open database connectivity (ODBC) as the alternative. What that means is simple - we are all involved, we are all participants. ODBC business partnerships bring unbelievably accurate tools to analyze/improve the urban development process. This is a new kind of knowledge capital and it is already essential to:
1) supplementing the design decisions and/or,
2) a completely new framework for decision making in the design reform movement.
The Decline of Expert Discretion
In Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart, Ayres describes the replacement of the “expert” whose knowledge is built on experience and track record and by step-by-step procedures used by computers for data modeling. He argues that anything can be predicted. Just prior to the publication of Super Crunchers, an equally popular book entitled Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner illustrated how extensive analysis of databases reveal hidden causes, and new questions.
Both explore new business structures that replace the expert. They skillfully illustrate how quantitative analyses of massive datasets make hundreds of real-world decisions using algorithms for people asking better questions. The question regarding removal of traditional rolel experts from the policy framework is not when or if, but how quickly it becomes inevitable. Is there any solace in this truth? It seems the answer is yes. The remaining and most important human element is to guess. Guessing requires a test to discover the variables that should and should not be included in statistical analysis, in other words, to generate hypotheses remains ultimately human. To ask “what causes what” remains the most valid human act.
The reality of our present experience coupled with an increasingly dense urban environment is the exponential growth in the number of variables. These “sets” of information are now well beyond our “intuitive” abilities to use, let alone define problems. In addition, these tools are used much in the same way that putting telescopes in space or microscopes in laboratories force new questions. The selection of a series of statistical inferences capable of questioning stored datasets is a vital new tool.
It will help designers to see things never seen. Discovering novelty and asking questions will remain as vital source of human insight, but sources of data to establish commonality will define the ultimate decision making structure.
Consensus on Question One (September 2007)
The consensus on this question is therefore developing as follows: There is a lack of extensive knowledge regarding viable algorithms useful for defining the aesthetic of the urban life experience.
New questions:
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Who should be added to this group to develop the super-crunching urban design discussion?
How is end user experience data made a routine product for design and planning firms in the APA metro area?
- How is urban design data produced, made accessible, and used to alter urban design practices?
Two Books:
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Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
and
Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart
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