AR and Smart Cards

Eyes on Streets and Glass Pockets

By John Taylor; 2009 Sep 18, Izzat 11, 166 BE

In these essays I am trying to show why, given a choice, everybody would choose to live in a hillside modular dwelling unit situated in a cooperatively run household courtyard.

 

Hillside Housing: full-service, communally owned hillside developments are designed from the ground up to offer a superior, more attractive option to our present system of proprietary, freehold dwellings, which are low-density, sprawling, inefficient, polluting and based on old technology.

 

As already discussed, households and families in a UCS development are organized and coordinated by a neighbourhood government with its own planning centre and broadcasting media, the LBC (Local Broadcasting Cooperative). Each community of about a hundred families elects a ruling counsel, with day-to-day executive and ceremonial tasks handled by a "first family," who are are either rotated or elected, or both. Similar schemes have worked in ancient times, as Aristotle noted,

"The example of the people of Tarentum is ... well deserving of imitation, for ... they divide all their offices into two classes, some of them being elected by vote, the others by lot; the latter, that the people may participate in them, and the former, that the state may be better administered. A like result may be gained by dividing the same offices, so as to have two classes of magistrates, one chosen by vote, the other by lot." (Aristotle, Politics, VI)

Aristotle here points out a major flaw of democracy as we presently apply it. It often happens that an otherwise unworthy person "grows into" office and performs spectacularly well while an apparently well-qualified individual inexplicably burns out. By having certain public services rotated randomly, the Tarentian system wisely allowed voters to choose from a large number of candidates with actual, recent experience in similar offices that were chosen on a rotating basis.

Another characteristic of hillside architecture in the post-peace UCS is that it gives farmers (that is, households whose business is agriculture) the power to control the crops, gardens and solar panels on the sunny side of the street. This allows even urban land to come as close as possible to a self-sustaining, local economy.

Whereas the sunny side of the street is dominated by the light of the sun, the shady side is dominated by the human eye, as Jane Jacobs slogan has it: "Eyes on the street." This describes the principle of vision upon which the populated, shady side of a hillside development operates. She explained that a well-designed street does not need to be heavily policed, since public areas, such as parks, playgrounds and promenades are under constant, close scrutiny by local residents and shopkeepers. A sense of community assures that the duties of security and maintenance are shared by long-term residents.

Following the "eyes on the street" model, households in these developments are each built around and share a central courtyard. Private bedrooms are on a second level overlooking the household's common area, with the shaded street visible in the background. This focuses every resident's attention on the local Res Publica, or public thing.

In turn, the entire neighbourhood, consisting of many "U" shaped households extending up the slope of the development, look out over the shaded street. The street is a shared public area with all eyes looking over it, while in the background loom the solar panels, greenhouses and gardens of the sunny side of the next neighbourhood hillside row or block.

Since the zoning in a hillside development is determinedly mixed-use, the eyes on the street model would increase security all around. Residents look over the shops, stores and other commercial establishments at night, while workers in shops and offices oversee residences during operating hours. Each type of building with its eyes on the same street at various times performs valuable services for the others.

But this is only the beginning.

Social networks are what make the "eyes on the street" model work so well. It uses only casual, volunteer observation by local residents -- the low-tech surveillance technique of simply looking out the window or standing at a balcony and examining one's street. This "eyes on the street" model can be enhanced by high technology.

Recent blog entries here describe how the invention of portable, high-tech, dynamic displays known as Augmented Reality (AR) allow a person walking down the street wearing a pair of special AR eyeglasses can see an annotated, multimedia view of the world outside, with inlaid information about places of interest. For example, arrows can show directions to a given destination, backed up by audio explanations. These supplements can be supplied and updated by announcers and tour guides from by the LBC (the LBC or Local Broadcasting Cooperative is a "narrowcasting" media network run by and for local households and neighbourhoods).

Pedestrians using AR need not be passive; communication can be multi-directional, semi-automated and interactive. We earlier discussed how visitors can actively negotiate usufruct as they stroll along such a street. With experience, a highly nuanced "right to roam" would come about for buildings and neighbourhoods through thousands of interactions with visitors and passers-by. An AR enhanced city block would soon become a highly sophisticated, open-sourced system of hospitality, commerce and public interaction.

Another saying that goes along with "eyes on the street" is "whatever is watched, always improves." By seeing to it that public property stays constantly in the public eye, the locally oriented "eyes on the street" design assures that the most important public property is visible, uppermost in peoples' minds, and therefore is always improved. This will extend to the largely invisible world of money and finance. AR displays will make expenses and revenue obvious to all who care to look. An obscure, hidden world will suddenly start to improve as it is put under constant public scrutiny.

Jane Jacobs also promoted the idea of creative taxation using the twin, complementary principles of subsidiarity and fiscal accountability. These allow cities, and in the UCS even neighbourhoods and households, to levy their own taxes as they see fit. This freedom permits managers who are closest to the street to maximize revenues and carry out initiatives where they are most effective.

Just as AR broadens and enhances the "eyes on the street" model, using smart cards as replacements for cash can enhance taxation, subsidiarity and fiscal accountability by making them visible and automatic.

A smart card is a computer chip embedded in a plastic card that automatically records and tallies purchases and other monetary transactions, replacing cash and acting as a tax collector at the same time. It can automatically assess and distribute not only income taxes but also any number of service fees, sales taxes and other cuts of the pie for institutions and levels of government each time it is used.

Smart cards have the advantage for consumers of showing where every penny went after each shopping trip. Since they are compatible with personal finance software, they feed into graphs and other displays of personal and family budgets. It also allows for any number of coupons and currencies to be used automatically. Combined with the AR display, they can also tally income and services rendered. For example, a local resident may perform for the neighbourhood a service, such as picking up litter, and be paid in local scrip, transferable at any local shop. Such local monetary experiments would encourage any number of social goals, including buying local in order to provide a stimulus to local industry and manufacture.

But smart cards are not just for individuals. Most residents are also members of a household, which issues special cards to its members. A household smart card can pool purchasing power of every individual member of that household, coordinating credit, profits, and paying for purchases in real time. The household can act as a small bank for its members, issuing credit, filling balances, lending and in some cases cutting off smart cards in real time.

Again, this allows for creative measures to be devised by both household and neighbourhood governments to encourage compliance to rules and by-laws, and to promote constructive behaviour on the part of member families and households. These financial powers permit households and other enterprises to broker spontaneous employment services. Any individual can perform a service as a free agent and be paid on the spot into their smart card, either in money or other reward points. Similarly, group networking allows a wealthy person to offer tips and charity simply by pointing their card at anyone they meet.

One unexpected benefit of having interactive services like AR and smart cards available will be to put the contributions of women as wives, mothers and homemakers onto the balance sheet for the first time in history. As heads of families, mothers and housewives are paid a manager's income, which is recorded on the books of that household. If that salary does not suffice, a homemaker can make a living from a wide variety of flexible income streams, including, as we have seen, just keeping an eye on the street.

::