People, places, technology, and such

When some time ago I wrote about the pervasive use of CCTV in the UK, my thoughts were based on a few observations while walking around and sightseeing in London (doing the typical touristy thing…), so there was always the doubt about how representative were those observations. I read today in the Spanish newspaper El País a data point that seems to confirm my observations: in England there is a surveillance camera for every 60 habitants (should I say citizens?)…

This datum is part of a review of a series of conferences and seminars that have been going on in Barcelona about the topic of The architecture of fear. Terrorism and western urbanism. The central topic of these conferences was the impact that the security concerns, raised specially after the terrorists attacks to New York, Madrid, or London in the last few years, have had on urban design, architecture, and the development and use of security (meaning anti-terrorism) related technology.

In Spain we are currently in the middle of the local elections campaign, and the topic of security has become central in the discourse of some political parties (mostly, but not limited to, right wing parties). Waving the fight against crime/terrorism flag has always been a political resource, and also a way to prioritize certain technological developments, such as automatic (intelligent?) surveillance.

In paleontology and archeology the location of fossils or artifacts in different layers provides historical and timeline clues. Looking carefully, layers can also be found in the infrastructure, specially in the case of urban landscape.

In this image (taken in the Brick Lane area of East London) different layers are visible: the elevated train bridge structure dates from the industrial revolution era, the street sign in English and Bengali denotes the immigration flux in the second half of the twentieth century, the one-way signal indicates the necessity of traffic regulation related to street congestion, and the graffiti and stencils the current process of trendification (the phase prior to gentrification?) of the area.

The chronological relation between these layers may not be as straightforward as in the case of geology or archeology, where, basically, deeper means older; but there are also time cues, such as the rust in the Bengali street sign that can be read to understand how the different layers relate and overlap in the historic evolution of the city.