Seismic Decentralization

[Image: Tokyo at night, courtesy of NASA's Earth Observatory].

At the height of the Cold War, the sprawling, decentralized suburban landscape of the United States was seen by many military planners as a form of spatial self-defense. As historian David Krugler explains in This Is Only a Test: How Washington D.C. Prepared for Nuclear War, "urban dispersal" was viewed as a defensive military tactic, one that would greatly increase the nation's chance of survival in the event of nuclear attack.

Specially formatted residential landscapes such as "cluster cities" were thus proposed, "each with a maximum population of 50,000." These smaller satellite cities would not only reshape the civilian landscape of the United States, they would make its citizens, its industrial base, and its infrastructure much harder to target.

"This might seem the stuff of Cold War science fiction," Krugler writes, "but after World War II, many urban and civil defense planners believed cluster cities, also called dispersal, should be the future of the American metropolis."

These planners, like the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, imagined atomic firestorms engulfing American cities and advocated preventive measures such as dispersal. Just one or two atomic bombs could level a concentrated metropolitan area, but cluster cities would suffer far less devastation: enemy bombers could strike some, but not all, key targets, allowing the unharmed cities to aid in recovery.

Krugler points out that this suburban dispersal was not always advised in the name of military strategy: "Many urban planners believed dispersal could spur slum clearance, diminish industrial pollution, and produce parks. Not only would dispersal shield America's cities, it would save them from problems of their own making."

However, the idea that urban dispersal might be useful only as a protective tactic against the horrors of aerial bombardment overlooks other threats, including earthquakes and tsunamis.

Earlier this week, Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan was advised "to decentralize Japan" out of fear of "Tokyo annihilation danger." Indeed, we read, the recent 9.0 earthquake, tsunami, and partial nuclear meltdown at Fukushima together suggest that "the nation must reduce the role of its capital city to avert an even greater catastrophe."

Takayoshi Igarashi, a professor at Hosei University, explains: "I told the prime minister that nationwide dispersal is the first thing we need to do as we rebuild. We have no idea when the big one’s going to hit Tokyo, but when it does, it’s going to annihilate the entire country because everything is here." His conclusion: "The lesson we need to take away from this disaster is that we have to restructure Japan as an entire nation"—a seismic decentralization that relies as much on horizontal geography as on vertical building code. This could thus be "the nation’s biggest investment in urban planning in decades."

The idea that urban design might find a reinvigorated sense of national purpose in response to a threat in the ground itself is fascinating, of course, perhaps especially for someone who also lives in an earthquake zone. But the prospect of large-scale urban dispersal remaking the urban landscape of Japan—that Tokyo itself might actually be broken up into smaller subcities, and that future urban planning permission might be adjusted to enforce nationwide sprawl as a form of tectonic self-defense, from megacity to exurban lace—presents an explicit spatialization of Japanese earthquake policy that will be very interesting to track over the years to come.

(Spotted via @urbanphoto_blog).

Islands at the Speed of Light

A recent paper published in the Physical Review has some astonishing suggestions for the geographic future of financial markets. Its authors, Alexander Wissner-Gross and Cameron Freer, discuss the spatial implications of speed-of-light trading. Trades now occur so rapidly, they explain, and in such fantastic quantity, that the speed of light itself presents limits to the efficiency of global computerized trading networks.

These limits are described as "light propagation delays."

[Image: Global map of "optimal intermediate locations between trading centers," based on the earth's geometry and the speed of light, by Alexander Wissner-Gross and Cameron Freer].

It is thus in traders' direct financial interest, they suggest, to install themselves at specific points on the Earth's surface—a kind of light-speed financial acupuncture—to take advantage both of the planet's geometry and of the networks along which trades are ordered and filled. They conclude that "the construction of relativistic statistical arbitrage trading nodes across the Earth’s surface" is thus economically justified, if not required.

Amazingly, their analysis—seen in the map, above—suggests that many of these financially strategic points are actually out in the middle of nowhere: hundreds of miles offshore in the Indian Ocean, for instance, on the shores of Antarctica, and scattered throughout the South Pacific (though, of course, most of Europe, Japan, and the U.S. Bos-Wash corridor also make the cut).

These nodes exist in what the authors refer to as "the past light cones" of distant trading centers—thus the paper's multiple references to relativity. Astonishingly, this thus seems to elide financial trading networks with the laws of physics, implying the eventual emergence of what we might call quantum financial products. Quantum derivatives! (This also seems to push us ever closer to the artificially intelligent financial instruments described in Charles Stross's novel Accelerando). Erwin Schrödinger meets the Dow.

It's financial science fiction: when the dollar value of a given product depends on its position in a planet's light-cone.

[Image: Diagrammatic explanation of a "light cone," courtesy of Wikipedia].

These points scattered along the earth's surface are described as "optimal intermediate locations between trading centers," each site "maximiz[ing] profit potential in a locally auditable manner."

Wissner-Gross and Freer then suggest that trading centers themselves could be moved to these nodal points: "we show that if such intermediate coordination nodes are themselves promoted to trading centers that can utilize local information, a novel econophysical effect arises wherein the propagation of security pricing information through a chain of such nodes is effectively slowed or stopped." An econophysical effect.

In the end, then, they more or less explicitly argue for the economic viability of building artificial islands and inhabitable seasteads—i.e. the "construction of relativistic statistical arbitrage trading nodes"—out in the middle of the ocean somewhere as a way to profit from speed-of-light trades. Imagine, for a moment, the New York Stock Exchange moving out into the mid-Atlantic, somewhere near the Azores, onto a series of New Babylon-like platforms, run not by human traders but by Watson-esque artificially intelligent supercomputers housed in waterproof tombs, all calculating money at the speed of light.

[Image: An otherwise unrelated image from NOAA featuring a geodetic satellite triangulation network].

"In summary," the authors write, "we have demonstrated that light propagation delays present new opportunities for statistical arbitrage at the planetary scale, and have calculated a representative map of locations from which to coordinate such relativistic statistical arbitrage among the world’s major securities exchanges. We furthermore have shown that for chains of trading centers along geodesics, the propagation of tradable information is effectively slowed or stopped by such arbitrage."

Historically, technologies for transportation and communication have resulted in the consolidation of financial markets. For example, in the nineteenth century, more than 200 stock exchanges were formed in the United States, but most were eliminated as the telegraph spread. The growth of electronic markets has led to further consolidation in recent years. Although there are advantages to centralization for many types of transactions, we have described a type of arbitrage that is just beginning to become relevant, and for which the trend is, surprisingly, in the direction of decentralization. In fact, our calculations suggest that this type of arbitrage may already be technologically feasible for the most distant pairs of exchanges, and may soon be feasible at the fastest relevant time scales for closer pairs.

Our results are both scientifically relevant because they identify an econophysical mechanism by which the propagation of tradable information can be slowed or stopped, and technologically significant, because they motivate the construction of relativistic statistical arbitrage trading nodes across the Earth’s surface.

For more, read the original paper: PDF.

(Thanks to Nicola Twilley for the tip!)

Advanced Style Dolls and Drawings

When I was a kid I used to make drawings and dolls of fancy ladies. I went home to San Diego not too along ago and found a book of these drawings. People ask me how I came up with the idea for Advanced Style, but if you look at the drawings below,its as if the ladies I used to draw have come to life in my photographs.

A few years ago I started to draw again. Here are some more of my latest creations

My friend Debra Rapoport has been making wonderful dolls based on the drawings!

Shades Of Gold

The ladies of Advanced Style always seem to have the best shades. Whether you want to stand out with a golden pair like this or go more classic like Mary, sunglasses are a great way to accessorize an outfit. Can you see me in the reflection?

Color Code

[Image: Arc en Ciel by Bernard Buhler Architects].

Here's some eye-candy for a Tuesday evening: Arc en Ciel, a new building in Bordeaux, France—part residential, part office—by Bernard Buhler Architects, spotted via Architizer.

[Images: Arc en Ciel by Bernard Buhler Architects].

With a building as eye-catching as this one, it's quite difficult to imagine a rationale behind adding graphics to the exterior glass windows—like children's drawings, or some vague gesture toward "street art"—which looks both kitschy and unnecessary.

[Images: Arc en Ciel by Bernard Buhler Architects].

After all, the graphics-free windows look fantastic—but c'est la vie.

[Image: Arc en Ciel by Bernard Buhler Architects].

Successfully, to my mind—based entirely on a scan of some photographs on the internet—the colored exterior glass works not only to vivify the building's urban site but to bring a constantly changing series of hues, like a colored bar code, onto the interior walkways. I would love to see this place lit from within at night, a sight the available photographs don't offer.

[Images: Arc en Ciel by Bernard Buhler Architects].

Anyway, the building looks cool; that's about all I have to say. I will add, however, that I'm struck by how extraordinarily better the actual, constructed building is, compared to its rendering, seen below.

[Image: Arc en Ciel by Bernard Buhler Architects].

All the more evidence that rejecting (or embracing) a building's outward formal characteristics on the basis of renderings is not necessarily a good idea.

See many more images over at Architizer.

Forensic Geology

[Image: The "Trevisco pit," Cornwall, from which the kaolinite used in space shuttle tiles comes from; photo by Hugh Symonds].

Photographer Hugh Symonds recently got in touch with a series of images called Terra Amamus, or "dirt we like," in his translation, exploring mining operations in Cornwall.

"The granite moors of Cornwall," Symonds explains, "were formed around 300 million years ago. Geological and climatic evolution have created a soft, white, earthy mineral called kaolinite. The name is thought to be derived from China, Kao-Ling (High-Hill) in Jingdezhen, where pottery has been made for more than 1700 years. Study of the Chinese model in the late 18th century led to the discovery and establishment of a flourishing industry in Cornwall."

You could perhaps think of the resulting mines and quarries as a landscape falling somewhere between an act of industrial replication and 18th-century geological espionage.

[Image: Photo by Hugh Symonds].

As Symonds points out, kaolinite is actually "omni-present throughout our daily lives; in paper, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, paints, kitchens, bathrooms, light bulbs, food additives, cars, roads and buildings. In an extraterrestrial, 'Icarian' twist, it is even present in the tiles made for the Space Shuttle."

Indeed, the photograph that opens this post shows us the so-called Trevisco pit. Its kaolinite is not only "particularly pure," Symonds notes; it is also "the oldest excavation in the Cornish complex."

Even better, it is the "quarry from which the clay used for the Space Shuttle tiles came from." This pit, then, is a negative space—a pockmark, a dent—in the Earth's surface out of which emerged—at least in part—a system of objects and trajectories known as NASA.

Of course, the idea that we could trace the geological origins of an object as complex as the Space Shuttle brings to mind Mammoth's earlier stab at what could be called a provisional geology of the iPhone. As Mammoth wrote, "Until we see that the iPhone is as thoroughly entangled into a network of landscapes as any more obviously geological infrastructure (the highway, both imposing carefully limited slopes across every topography it encounters and grinding/crushing/re-laying igneous material onto those slopes) or industrial product (the car, fueled by condensed and liquefied geology), we will consistently misunderstand it." These and other products—even Space Shuttles—are terrestrial objects. That is, they emerge from infrastructurally networked points of geological extraction.

[Images: Photos by Hugh Symonds].

In John McPhee's unfortunately titled book Encounters with the Archdruid, there is a memorable scene about precisely this idea: a provisional geology out of which our industrial system of objects has arisen.

"Most people don't think about pigments in paint," one of McPhee's interview subjects opines. "Most white-paint pigment now is titanium. Red is hematite. Black is often magnetite. There's chrome yellow, molybdenum orange. Metallic paints are a little more permanent. The pigments come from rocks in the ground. Dave's electrical system is copper, probably from Bingham Canyon. He couldn't turn on a light or make ice without it." And then the real forensic geology begins:

The nails that hold the place together come from the Mesabi Range. His downspouts are covered with zinc that was probably taken out of the ground in Canada. The tungsten in his light bulbs may have been mined in Bishop, California. The chrome on his refrigerator door probably came from Rhodesia or Turkey. His television set almost certainly contains cobalt from the Congo. He uses aluminum from Jamaica, maybe Surinam; silver from Mexico or Peru; tin—it's still in tin cans—from Bolivia, Malaya, Nigeria. People seldom stop to think that all these things—planes in the air, cars on the road, Sierra Club cups—once, somewhere, were rock. Our whole economy—our way of doing things. Oh, gad! I haven't even mentioned minerals like manganese and sulphur. You won't make steel without them. You can't make paper without sulphur...

We have rearranged the planet to form TVs and tin cans, producing objects from refined geology.

[Image: Photo by Hugh Symonds].

What's fascinating here, however, is something I touched upon in my earlier reference to geological espionage. In other words, we take for granted the idea that we can know what minerals go into these everyday products—and, more specifically, that we can thus locate those minerals' earthly origins and, sooner or later, enter into commerce with them, producing our own counter-products, our own rival gizmos and competitive replacements.

I was thus astonished to read that, in fact, specifically in the case of silicon, this is not actually the case.

In geologist Michael Welland's excellent book Sand, often cited here, Welland explains that "electronics-grade silicon has to be at least 99.99999 percent pure—referred to in the trade as the 'seven nines'—and often it's more nines than that. In general, we are talking of one lonely atom of something that is not silicon among billions of silicon companions."

Here, a detective story begins—it's top secret geology!

A small number of companies around the world dominate the [microprocessor chip] technology and the [silicon] market, and while their literature and websites go into considerable and helpful detail on their products, the location and nature of the raw materials seem to be of "strategic value," and thus an industrial secret. I sought the help of the U.S. Geological Survey, which produces comprehensive annual reports on silica and silicon (as well as all other industrial minerals), noting that statistics pertaining to semiconductor-grade silicon were often excluded or "withheld to avoid disclosing company proprietary data."

Welland thus embarks upon an admittedly short but nonetheless fascinating investigation, hoping to de-cloud the proprietary geography of these mineral transnationals and find where this ultra-pure silicon really comes from. To make a long story short, he quickly narrows the search down to quartzite (which "can be well over 99 percent pure silica") mined specifically from a few river valleys in the Appalachians.

[Image: Photo by Hugh Symonds].

As it happens, though, we needn't go much further than the BBC to read about a town called Spruce Pine, "a modest, charmingly low-key town in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina, [that] is at the heart of a global billion-dollar industry... The jewellery shops, highlighting local emeralds, sapphires and amethysts, hint at the riches. The mountains, however, contain something far more precious than gemstones: they are a source of high-purity quartz." And Spruce Pine is but one of many locations from which globally strategic flows of electronics-grade silicon are first mined and purified.

In any case, the geological origin of even Space Shuttle tiles is always fascinating to think about; but when you start adding things like industrial espionage, proprietary corporate landscapes, unmarked quarries in remote mountain valleys, classified mineral reserves, supercomputers, a roving photographer in the right place at the right time, an inquisitive geologist, and so on, you rapidly escalate from a sort of Economist-Lite blog post to the skeleton of an international thriller that would be a dream to read (and write—editors get in touch!).

And, of course, if you like the images seen here, check out the rest of Symond's Terra Amamus series.

Anti-Flat

[Image: By Gerry Judah].

Artist Gerry Judah's paintings are massively and aggressively three-dimensional, piling up, away, and out from the canvas to form linked cities, ruins, and debris-encrusted bridges, like reefs.

[Images: By Gerry Judah].

They are perhaps what a tectonic collaboration between Lebbeus Woods and Jackson Pollock might produce: blasted and collapsing landscapes so covered in white it's as if nuclear winter has set in.

[Image: By Gerry Judah].

As the short film included below makes clear, Judah embeds entire architectural models in each piece, affixing small constellations of buildings to the canvas before beginning a kind of archaeological onslaught: layering paint on top of paint, raining strata down for days to seal the landscape in place and make it ready for wall-mounting.



And then the paintings go up, sprawling and counter-gravitational, like ruins tattooed on the walls.

[Image: By Gerry Judah].

For more work—including pieces executed in red and black—see Judah's website (including his bio, which suggests larger architectural and theatrical influences).

(Thanks to Jim Rossignol for the tip!)

"Sunglasses Are Better Than a Facelift"

I always have a blast with my pal Mary. At 71 years old she knows the secret to fooling mother nature, she says, "Sunglasses are better than a facelift, they hide the ravages of time, and let you spy on people." Mary keeps her style chic and classic, but when it comes to glasses she says,"You can break the rules once in a while, I'm not ready for a convent or anything so I can wear leopard glasses." Check out some more of Mary's many shades below.

A Serendipitous Meeting

Yesterday I was walking around the Upper West Side when I saw this beautiful woman. I asked if I could take her photo and handed her a business card. She took one glance at the card and exclaimed, " Advanced Style, you took my photograph about two years in Battery Park." I love running into people I have photographed before and this was surely serendipitous as I hoped that we would meet again some day. I am so excited to have a new Advanced Style muse to share with everyone. At 82 years old Claire not only has great style, but a wonderful spirit and zest for life.CLICK HERE to check out a great story about Claire and her best friend's in The New York Times and enjoy the video and photos below.

Claire in Battery Park Two Years Ago