Observation
When Ohio State University started erecting its buildings around the campus, the planners carved out a prominent green space centered between all the main campus buildings.
They had not intended on paving any roads but instead wanted it to remain an open plain. They would later improvise after learning that the students inadvertently disagreed with their intentions.
As the student body grew and the campus expanded, an interesting phenomenon occurred. This empty parcel of grass in the middle of campus became filled with information: how students were getting from Point A to Point B.
The planning staff observed the walking paths etched into the grass and decided to design the campus sidewalks accordingly. The result was something natural, beautiful, and most importantly, useful.
This phenomenon would become known as desire paths, a cultural habit emerging from the collective unconscious that translates to, “This is what we want.”
Indeed, desire paths will play an increasingly important role in this new approach to city planning and community engagement, but it’s not the only factor.
Assumption
Looking to past actions as an indication of future needs is a decision based on observation.
In other words, we observe something to be true enough that we decide to make it the foundation on top of which we build our future.
Just like the earth was flat—until it wasn’t.
An adjacent path to decision through observation is decision based on assumption. This approach says, “Build it and they will come.”
We assume we know what people want and then try to build it for them to the best of our ability.
When Steve Wynn started building integrated casino resorts in Las Vegas, he led with the idea that it’s the development that makes the location, not the other way around.
Thus Sin City was built off the backs of assumption and observation; first seeing what people wanted (a place to gamble), then basing future creations on assumptions about the evolution of those desires (a place to gamble and also do everything else).
Assumption is not only restricted to the producers, though. Consumers also assume that they know what they want. Hence Henry Ford’s comment to the critics: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would’ve said a faster horse.”
A necessary and reasonable gamble, we must leave room for assumptions in the creative process, but they should not be the predominant factor driving decisions about what and how to build things.
Discovery
A third approach to decision is discovery.
This happens when we learn to embrace the unknown while being relatively detached from the outcome.
Burning Man is an example of discovery-driven decision-making. Thousands of people gather around a common theme limited only by a loose set of rules. They live life on their own terms, albeit for a short blip of time. They decide what work and play is, how entertainment is defined, and the value of everything within a closed-loop economy.
Creation and consumption within such a community is effortless, unbounded by the confines of assumption. In effect, this model takes the approach of finding out “What happens if…”
There are, of course, some things that people can expect after having experienced this in past years (observation) but there’s still an infinite amount of room for novelty.
Ever since Peter Diamandis was little, he had dreams of traveling space. His interest in space exploration led him to start asking questions without needing to know the answer.
This is how X-Prize was born, a kind of crowd-sourced problem-solving platform.
“What happens if we simply define the problem or objective,” he asked, “and incentivize everyone to participate without any idea of what the answer will be?”
Teams of all shapes and sizes, from all different backgrounds, have been competing for the last three decades based on a shared value for discovery. The path is determined but the result is left to human ingenuity and the clever use of resources.
James Carse relates this to a shift in play, from finite to infinite games. He says, “To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself.”
A Synthesized Approach
Savvy Cities will be defined by all three of these approaches: observation, assumption, and discovery.
Such cities won’t be master-planned by some high-level executive committee or board of directors. The development company and city government won’t be battling it out over height restrictions. Rather, the plans and conversations will emerge from those who intend to be a part of it.
The citizens, both permanent and transient; the workers, both paid and volunteered; the leaders, both elected and appointed—everyone has a part to play, and everyone has something to offer.
Similar to an employee-owned-and-operated business in which every producer is also a consumer of that which is being produced, Savvy Cities will arise from the integration of observation, assumption, and discovery not only on the front end of its creation but also on the back end of its consumption.
The creators and producers become one in the same, simply changing hats as the situation requires.
Building bottom-up is the balance of knowing what we want while also knowing that we’ll be wrong about that, and creating space for the real answers to blossom from seeds of the unknown.