Speculative proposal for a computer system detecting and facilitating patterns of activity amongst a ‘city’ area of 100,000 people. COMPUTOR CITY: A synthesised metropolis with electronic changeability.


The activities of an organised society occur within a balanced network of forces which naturally interact to form a continuous chain of change. A METROPOLIS is situated at the point of maximum display of interactive energy and shows the most complex field of forces.

In the COMPUTER CITY this energised field is synthesised at a much higher sensitivity and is programmed to respond to changes in activity. Time scales of change are fed into the computer so that reaction follows the natural cause at optimum rate. This area of COMPUTER CITY sustains approx. 100,000 people. The sensitised net detects changes of activity, the sensory devices respond and feed back information to programme correlators.

The Computer City is the shadow of the Plug-In City. The operating system, the networks, the invisible infrastructure, whose sensors are constantly monitoring the changing pressures (positive and negative) of the individuals and communities the city is designed to service. The gathered information feeds into the reactively tuned physical structure which can then respond sensitively to the demands of the society served by the urban environment.