City as a Grid

Introduction

This transversal article is a mere attempt to isolate items of the emerging shapes of a globally, distributed p2p-oriented city model.

It is intended as a placeholder for resources linked to a hypothetical City-as-a-grid model, where resource creation and distribution are done in such a way that the city is stable on local/proximity scale, yet scalable in a global, virtual scale.

Based on such a model, there seems to be a need for separating the local-scale variables from the global ones, the global one using the Internet or similar network to have reality. While reducing transportation costs and enforcing local manufacturing, it also is easier to maintain autonomy on local scale.

Being citizen in such a city would mean having two lifes: the local one, and the global one. The local being represented by the workforce needed for local autonomy, and the global for telework-powered immaterial, high level activities.

This model shares similarities to the Global Villages and Multi-local Societies, yet aims to have a more applied insight: trying to draw a draft.

Notions such as a part-time chore concept (citizen local participation), peer to peer learning, alternative currency models or the implications of 3D replication/printing technologies or of immersive telepresence (enabling telework) will be studied keys.

A wider goal for this project is to study the dynamics of the needed resources in conjunction with population evolution, of the local cost of the infrastructure per inhabitant, and to try estimating the progressive adoption potential.

Ultimately, the use of virtual worlds based technologies or role plays as simulation basis might help compare the discerned approaches and notions impacts.

Local flows

Amongst resources, primal needs generation and distribution (food, energy, chores, computing, essential jobs...), commonly needed dispenses (tools sharing, maintenance fees, ...) and critical skills (medicine, teaching) would be distributed in a geographical way, allowing slow and progressive, renewable expansion.

* local needs
 * primal needs
 * essential skills
 * community expenses
 * community chores
* local resources
 * community decision making
 * power generation
 * essential food generation
 * natural resources
 * community buildings
  * hardware manufacturing facilities
  * hardware storage: common goods lending store, post office
  * elementary school
  * associations buildings
  * farms

Global flows

* global needs
 * critical hardware manufacturing
 * infrastructure robustness (e.g. to natural disasters)
* global resources
 * teleworking
 * telelearning

Categories of distributive vectors

All these categories represent a component in the city life that may be distributed:

* currency models
 * trade model
 * ownership model
 * reputation model
 * incentive model
* overlay networks
 * community transportation and goods delivery
 * smart energy network
 * communication network
 * professional network

IdeaPad

• Cell: atomic entity representing the smallest, partially autonomous system.
• Progressive bootstrapping : every new home should be bringing enough resources to counter-balance it's consumption at the cell scale. This can be seen as a community giving

P2PFoundation Links

• P2P Social Currency Model
• Interconnected Energy Network: Distributed Power Generation Community_Water-Management_Systems P2P Energy Grid Green Grid
• Distributed network infrastructure: Wireless Commons
• Geographical dematerialization: Geography category Relocalization Global_Villages Multi-local Societies
• Overlay production: Co-Creation Cooperatives Virtual Cooperatives
• Peer to peer learning: Education category
• Eco-Housing: Open Farm Tech
• Local food production:
• Decision making: Citizen Dialogue and Deliberation [1]
• Mutual ownership: Peer_Property Why Peer to Peer Currencies will Grow Mutual_Home_Ownership
• Material goods conception and distribution: 3D Printing Open Hardware Product Hacking

Related resources

1. Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy envisions a composite (both manufacturial and culturally segmented) society model emergence during Mars' terraforming and colonization