Program as thesis

the program as code

post-fordist program

Program in this thesis operates as the indifferent, open-ended, multi-authored, and unscripted material code or logic to the spatial development of the city. In the past, planning and architecture have coveted it as a righteous tool to maintain their supposedly autonomous disciplines’ intellect and its practices. Such endeavors though have often served to marginalize the public face of these professions and failed at fully exercising their agency. This is due to their lack of anticipation, let alone their lack of recognition of the capacity for other entities to program the city. For every entity that interacts with the program as code brings their town set logic or rule making abilities to the table. The code is self-reflexive of this and reflects it back onto the urban fabric. Thus, program is not completely neutral, as it is has always been under the influence of the last entry of code. If anything, it is more of an impressionable conduit than a container for facilitating the development of the city’s spatial make up. No other entity understands this better than the organizational logistics of multi-national corporations, as they have been most successful into programming the city.  As ephemeral as this whole process maybe, program inevitably leaves behind its organizational logic in disparate physical formats of building envelopes, zones, and into the book stacks of codes and property lines.  Thus thesis as program concerns itself at the urban scale and its possible implications on the regional level.

the client as player

 Outfoxing Urbanism

If program is a set of conditions for various entities to respond, we the “client” are more than witnesses or accomplices but active participants.  We exercise varying levels of agency at various turns.  In fact, the client is but a short-cited social-construct of advanced capitalist mythology into consumerism.  We are all players in the game of re-programming the city, like it or not.  Do nothing if you like, but skipping one’s turn in this game is just as much of move that is reflected in the urban fabric.  Within this context, one might think that the player to benefit the most are those with a hacker's relentless mentality of making, bending, breaking, mending, and navigating around all the loopholes of program.  Logistical entities are analogous to this as various types of storage spaces form critical set-pieces for their regional campaign.  This is true, but consider program just as much of an agent as the client.  Over time, program as code inevitably change as it interacts with the players and it becomes impossible for even greatest hacking operation to exist on the the scape.

the brief as campaign.

Wallmart's Logistical Briefing of Vermont

If logistics is the savy and relentless player that is most likely to affect the urban form, than much of its data-driven approach to regional expansion campaigns will be reflected in an checklist itinerary.

Total Area of a Logistical Entity (U.S. Wal-Mart) vs. Manhattan

First, logistics must confront the limits of his own urban moves and spatial distribution: the various types and routes of its regional/global physical network, energy/fuel costs, distribution radii, and transport capacity.

Second, logistics must anticipate the various rules to be engaged.  This is especially true for a densified urban area.  Entities at play are much more complex and perhaps better organized in factors such as labor and construction.  Besides more explicit spatial rules such as urban planning and land use rules, logistics must also consider implicit rules such as real estate catchment areas and tax rates.  If logistics is not adept, their logic quickly breaks down with the scale and density of urban spaces.   This is due to the fact that many logistical entities were designed for the greenfield or agricultural parcels at the edge of suburbia.  As a result, the logistics of accessing sites and moving goods are complicated.

Third, logistics must make a reconnaissance of potential sites and buildings that are up for play:  registered and unregistered properties, empty lots, abandoned properties, brown fields, green fields, drainage basins, landfills, highway spaces, rail depots, grain silos, ports, shipping yards.  As logistiscs inventories all of its potential set-pieces, it must be aware of its presence at it steps in to overlapping political-jurisdictional zones. Its goal is to collect all the pieces in play, and use them as bargaining chips as it encounters other entities. If logistics plays its moves well, it can make any overlapping boundaries of contention into mere technicalities as it makes its inroads to the city.