Dancing in New York: Emergent Behavior from Ants, to Subways, to Cities
Posted on November 22, 2016Dancing in New York: Emergent Behavior from Ants, to Subways, to Cities
There is something different about walking cities – cities similar to New York where people are forced to come into contact with each other on a daily, even hourly basis on the streets, sidewalks and subways. There is a rhythm to the interactions in such a city, an underlying dance that populations engages in. New Yorkers may be horrified if you told them they were dancing with each other – this would imply actually looking at, or physically interacting with each other, which is seemingly undesirable – but perhaps they are, or perhaps they are dancing around each other, together in some ways and separate in many others.
In Steven Johnson’s book “Emergence”, he starts thinking about these types of interactions using the example of ants. Johnson, with the help of a biological scientist, Deborah Gordon dispel the myth of the ant queen as a ruler of an ant colony. This idea of top down organization is pervasive, perhaps due to its simplicity: “when we see repeated shapes and structures emerging out of apparent chaos, we can’t help looking for pacemakers”. Through the exploration of the ants, it becomes clear that there is no pacemaker. The ants communicate with each other, and coordinate activity by recognizing the patterns of behavior of their fellow ants. The interactions and collisions between the ants structure the activities that specific (adjacent) members of the colony are engaged in. This bottom up, sensory based activity which Johnson calls emergent behavior can be found in human interactions to.
For example, emergent behavior can be neighborhoods of small and large cities around the world. “Neighborhoods are a way of measuring and expressing the repeated behavior of larger collectivities – capturing information about group behavior, sharing that information with the group… small shifts in group behavior can quickly escalate into larger movements”. The neighborhood emergence described here can be used to explain the gravitation of certain professionals to certain areas (artists live near artists, and bankers near bankers). It can also be used to explain the generation of neighborhood norms; “bright shop windows, attract bright shop windows”, this phenomenon is echoed in the increased participation in various community activities building on the momentum and snowballing effect of a founding group. On a gloomier note, emergent behavior can lead to negative externalities, for example; limited community engagement, leads to even more limited engagement, ultimately resulting in isolation.
In the book “The Experience of Place”, Tony Hiss provides an incredibly visceral description of his experience of Grand Central Station, and paints a verbal picture of the dance I alluded to at the beginning of this blog post.
“…I noticed once again, that no one was bumping into anyone else – that every time I thought I myself might be about to bump into the people near me, both I and they were already accelerating slightly, or decelerating, or taking a little side step, so that nobody ever collided… The weightless sensation in my head gave me the feeling that I could look down on all this movement, in addition to looking out at it. I had the sense that the cooperation I was a part of kept repeating itself throughout the vast room around me, and the vaster city beyond it.”
How do the examples of emergent behavior, and bottom up organizational structures found between the ants, and the residents of the neighborhoods, differ from the behavior found in Grand Central Station? In some ways, the fact that the people moving through Grand Central Station, dance around each other, rarely colliding and almost never interacting is what sets the experience apart. Steven Johnson and Deborah Gordon show that emergent behavior is strongest when communities are brought into close contact, and forced to collide with each other. The ants pass on information that stimulates behavior through their interactions with one another, as do the businesses and residents of the neighborhoods (albeit in a more indirect way). Although, at a superficial level, subway stations seem to provide an ideal platform for these types of collisions, the perfunctory nature of mass transit discourages both physical and social interactions. As a newcomer to the city, it was easy to feel incredibly isolated while surrounded by thousands of people for this very reason. Emergent behavior and community ties seem to be more limited at the macro scale of New York as a city. Or perhaps, similar to the gloomy neighborhood example above, emergent behavior is taking place, in that reduced engagement has led to wider spread reduced engagement, leading to a social norm that reenforces limited human interaction.
This exploration of emergence, led me to ask myself; to what extent is the type of emergent behavior discussed above enhanced or diminished by the design of the place where it is found? And perhaps more importantly; when and why does emergent behavior result in positive or negative outcomes, and when can both positive and negative outcomes be seen as a result of the same behavior? I looked beyond the text book examples above, to my own experiences of life in Kenya.
My former home in Nairobi, where large portions of the population move around the city by car or public transport did not make me feel part of a dance. In fact, leaving the comfort of my home or vehicle and stepping on to the sidewalk left me feeling discombobulated – as though I had joined a dance class but everyone began rehearsals a month before me. Furthermore, the positive social ties and cultural norms developed in neighborhoods where people come into close contact with each other were not found in my adult version of Nairobi either. Increased crime, inequality and the resultant insecurity had led to walls and gates being built between neighbors. Running around the neighborhood as I had done in my childhood, interacting with others doing the same, was rare in my adulthood. Neighborhoods were increasingly defined by socioeconomic status, and cultural diversity dwindled.
The social ties lacking in Nairobi, however could be found between the farmers I worked with in rural Kenya. Close knit communities, that relied on collective bargaining and cooperation to grow their businesses, often came into contact with one another on a daily basis. The sense of a cultural identity within these communities was often strong. In turn, stronger bonds seemed to result in greater social and economic enrichment for community members.
So finally; what do these lessons and examples of emergent behavior mean for designers and strategists? Scale seems to play a role in the extent to which interactions are a significant driver of community or system organization. However, in cases where interactions do not shape organizational structures, they may be a driver of social norms instead. Ultimately, questions around emergent behavior have policy and design implications that bridge sectors ranging from urban design, to democracy and governance among numerous others. Topical issues such as religious radicalization, refugee integration, and community activism provide examples of where emergent behavior has an elevated importance in the potential interventions to be explored. Intervening in these complex systems and tackling these multidimensional issues requires transdiciplinary participation, and direct community engagement.
Understanding emergent behavior however, is but one facet of understanding the broader system forces that interact. These system forces are often the foundation of the topical issues mentioned above. Furthermore, developing strategies that leverage emergent behavior is only one tactic that can be used to create a preferred state. I am constantly struck by how challenging the task is for designers and strategists not to oversimplify. I constantly have to remind myself to try and think in systems, to not become overwhelmed, and to not forget the dancing that may be part of what ties it all together.
– Emma Eriksson