{"id":506,"date":"2012-07-31T00:01:45","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T04:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/?p=506"},"modified":"2018-06-19T21:49:48","modified_gmt":"2018-06-20T01:49:48","slug":"cyborgs-sewers-and-the-sensing-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/2012\/07\/31\/cyborgs-sewers-and-the-sensing-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyborgs, Sewers, and the Sensing City"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cities have long been seen as the antithesis \u2013 or, at least, the absence \u2013\u00a0of nature. Yet in recent years, environmentalists started rethinking their long-held prejudices against urban areas. The rise of neighborhood-based environmental justice movements<\/a>, beginning in the 1980\u2019s, forced us to confront the human side of pollution and its relationship to urban poverty. The evolution of green building standards<\/a> and advances in sustainable design helped us imagine an environmentally enlightened future for our offices and homes. The growing number of city-dwellers across the planet may have played the biggest role in our shifting perceptions of cities and nature. Moving \u201cback to the land\u201d and \u201cliving off the grid\u201d could never be a tenable option for three and a half billion people. The result would end up closer to an explosion in suburban sprawl than a no-impact return to simpler times. Like it or not, we\u2019ve realized that cities will have to figure into our schemes for a sustainable planet.<\/p>\n

Despite this growing acceptance of cities within environmental circles, we haven\u2019t completely let go of all our negative associations and assumptions. Old habits die hard. Images of polar bears and pine forests still grace the homepages of large environmental organizations. Intellectually, we\u2019ve grown more comfortable seeing the nature in<\/em> cities and, at the same time, understanding cities as unique manifestations of nature in and of themselves. Yet emotionally, it still doesn\u2019t click. In New York City, Central Park seems categorically different from Grand Central Terminal.<\/p>\n

How might we start to intuitively feel what our minds have started to know? Matthew Gandy, the prolific British geographer, makes a compelling case<\/a> for seeing cities as cyborgs<\/em> \u2013\u00a0 \u201cbeings with both biological and artificial parts\u201d according to Wikipedia\u2019s definition<\/a> of this concept from the space age. Looking back, you might say that cities have always<\/em> been cyborgs, even if we didn\u2019t see \u00a0them that way. Even the earliest cities \u2013\u00a0both old world and new \u2013\u00a0were defined by the blended infrastructures and<\/em> ecosystems that made their perpetuation possible. The Aztecs built Tenochitilan atop Lake Texcoco and created canals and aqueducts to manipulate the region\u2019s hydrology. You\u2019ll still find Mexico City there today.<\/p>\n

Gandy suggests that the cyborg metaphor helps \u201cfire the imagination\u201d as we struggle to describe the complex interplay between urban infrastructure and ecology. The recent TNOC post, “Cities of Nature” by Eric Sanderson<\/a> of the Wildlife Conservation Society,<\/a> explores the difficulties we face in getting across what we mean, exactly, when we start talking about the \u201cnature of cities.\u201d Are we talking about parks and green spaces? Or are we talking about the whole city as an ecosystem all its own? Seeing cities as cyborgs may help us find ways to get on the same page.<\/p>\n

The cyborg metaphor may also help us avoid spinning that same old \u201ccities versus nature\u201d yarn. Cities undeniably transform landscapes \u2013 both near and far away. But any permanent human settlement is bound to change things. A zero impact city \u2013 a city without the artificial stuff \u2013 is a city that never comes into existence. To that end, if we still value cities for all of the many reasons humans have valued cities for millennia, we need to stop trying to make them more \u201clike nature.\u201d As James Howard Kunstler reminds us<\/a>, there\u2019s little good that comes from trying to solve urban problems with \u201cnature Band-Aids.\u201d The cyborg city doesn\u2019t need to be made \u201cmore natural.\u201d Nor, for that matter, does it need to be made \u201cmore artificial\u201d (the tacit goal of the Modernist City<\/a> with its own legacy of failure). Instead, the cyborg needs to be made more resilient<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> It needs to work better<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We can spend a lifetime debating what, exactly, it means for a city to work better<\/em> in light of all our different goals for ongoing human existence on this planet. Yet for many grassroots environmentalists, there\u2019s no time to waste. They\u2019re happy to shoot from the hip and just get started, growing gardens and tending street trees and sowing oyster reefs to clean polluted waters.<\/a> Others are going one step further. They\u2019re working to program the cyborg city to make it smarter \u2013 to make it talk back at us and tell us how our efforts are progressing. One of these cyborg ventriloquists is Leif Percifield, a recent graduate of the M.F.A. program in Design and Technology<\/a> at Parsons The New School For Design in New York City. A self avowed \u201ccreative technologist,\u201d Percifield\u2019s DontFlush.Me<\/a> project aims to help us interact more intelligently with one of the cyborg city\u2019s metabolic systems \u2013 its sewers.<\/p>\n

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Leif Percifield attaches a water quality monitor to the bulkhead outside of a Combined Sewage Outfall in NYC. Photo Credit: Leif Percifield<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Percifield\u2019s goal with DontFlush.Me is straightforward. \u201cI want you to know exactly when your sewer pipe is connected to the river instead of a sewage treatment plant,\u201d he says. Deploying a network of D.I.Y. sensors and rooftop weather stations across the city, he believes he can do just that.<\/p>\n

Like most older industrial American cities, New York is built on top of a combined sewage system<\/a> \u2013 \u201cBasically just a storm sewer and a sanitary sewer meeting in the same pipe,\u201d Percifield explains. \u201cThe pipe where you flush your toilet and the pipe that collects the stormwater from the street all go to the same place.\u201d Throughout most of the city\u2019s history, sewage from this combined system poured directly into the rivers, canals, and bays that make up New York harbor, polluting its waters and silting up its shipping channels with human waste.<\/p>\n

Joseph Mitchell, the harbor\u2019s unofficial ethnographer during his tenure at The New Yorker<\/em>, described the state of local waterways by the 1940\u2019s and \u201850\u2019s: <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIn most places, [the Harbor\u2019s bottom] is covered with a blanket of sludge that is composed of silt, sewage, industrial wastes, and clotted oil. The sludge is thickest in the slips along the Hudson, in the \ufb02ats on the Jersey side of the Upper Bay, and in backwaters such as Newtown Creek, Wallabout Bay, and the Gowanus Canal. In such areas, where it isn’t exposed to the full sweep of the tides, it accumulates rapidly.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The city\u2019s first sewage treatment plants, built in the 1890\u2019s to improve water quality along popular beaches in Brooklyn, were quickly overwhelmed by New York\u2019s booming population. More treatment plants were added throughout the early twentieth century, but the city\u2019s desultory investments in infrastructure were no match for the volume of waste flowing from apartments, offices, and industry. By the time Mitchell started reporting on the harbor, the city\u2019s waters had mostly been left for dead.<\/p>\n

Large-scale efforts to treat raw sewage would only arrive with the federal Clean Water Act of 1972<\/a>, mandating widespread improvements in municipal water quality. During the next three decades, the city would build new treatment plants and expand capacity at facilities that were, in some instances, already operating for nearly a century. Water quality gradually improved, but sewage still makes its way into New York Harbor in the 21st Century \u2013\u00a0approximately 27 billion gallons per year, according to Percifield.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it rains, the volume of water quickly causes the combined system to be overloaded,\u201d he explains. \u201cCurrently, combined sewers are the number one source of pollution in New York harbor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through the city\u2019s fourteen treatment plants are designed to handle 1.3 billion gallons of sewage each day, even a small rainstorm can overwhelm the system with excess water. The rising slurry of human waste and street runoff bypasses the treatment plants and flows to the nearest \u201ccombined sewage outfall\u201d \u2013\u00a0an engineer\u2019s euphemism for open pipes that dump into the harbor. Right now, nearly 500 combined sewage outfalls<\/a> are scattered across New York City, each pouring untreated sewage from the Bronx River to Jamaica Bay and everywhere in between.<\/p>\n

The reasoning behind DontFlush.Me is elegantly simple: if New Yorkers knew exactly when an overflow was underway, they\u2019d think twice about loading the dishwasher, taking a long shower, or, even, flushing the toilet. Its the old \u201clet it mellow<\/a>\u201d logic, with a twist. Once the overflow is over, city dwellers will get the \u201call clear\u201d to flush once again. There\u2019s just one catch. Right now, the only way to know whether an overflow is happening is to witness it, first hand, at the tail end of a pipe. <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important thing is understanding when these overflows occur,\u201d according to Percifield. Yet it\u2019s unlikely that most New Yorkers will be standing around an overflow pipe in the middle of a downpour waiting to find out whether it is safe to flush the toilet back home. The cyborg city needs a better way of sensing itself.<\/p>\n

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Leif Percifield explores some of NYC\u2019s sewers with Steve Duncan. Photo Credit: Steve Duncan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Percifield\u2019s solution is a mix of off-the-shelf gadgets and a good deal of hacking, tinkering, and tactical appropriation of the city\u2019s existing sewer infrastructure. Percifield has asked the NYC Department of Environmental Protection (the \u201cDEP\u201d) for permission to install water quality sensors at a handful of sewage outfalls, and this spring he worked with a team of like-minded technologists to test the equipment at an outfall on the notoriously nasty Gowanus Canal<\/a>. The sensors broadcast information about water quality and create a stream of data that can warn New Yorkers when an overflow is taking place.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese alerts can encourage people to do point-source conservation,\u201d Percifield claims, drawing inspiration from voluntary electricity conservation programs that kick into gear during heatwaves. \u201cCon Edison [the local utility] can contact commercial customers that have signed up and say, \u2018We need you to reduce your power for a period of time.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the DontFlush.Me sensors have yet to be installed, the alert system is already up and running. Percifield designed this first iteration of the system to tap into publicly available weather data and make a best-guess at the likelihood of an overflow in each of New York City\u2019s five boroughs. Real-time updates are available as emails and text-messages, and you can follow DontFlush.Me on Twitter. <\/a><\/p>\n

As part of his graduate thesis at Parsons, Percifield designed a colored LED light bulb with a direct connection to the Internet \u2013\u00a0and, of course, the DontFlush.Me datastream. Plug the light bulb into any electrical socket and the color of its glow tells you whether or not it\u2019s O.K. to flush. \u201cI think it\u2019s the beginning of a future where things will provide you with feedback about their impact,\u201d Percifield says. \u201cIt\u2019s a piece of infrastructure that can engage people more actively in their daily lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Floating up to a Combined Sewage Outfall chamber in New York City. Photo Credit: Leif Percifield<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Percifield admits that DontFlush.Me is just one part of a comprehensive strategy to clean up New York\u2019s waterways, making them safer for swimming and fishing<\/a> \u2013 and, potentially, for any creature that would thrive in cleaner waters. DEP is making significant investments in bricks-and-mortar infrastructure to upgrade the sewage system. At the same time, community groups are planting trees, rain gardens, and green roofs to trap stormwater and prevent it from overwhelming the city\u2019s treatment plants. In the process, they are creating habitat and transforming urban ecosystems. Both halves of the cyborg are being tweaked here and there to better work together as a whole system.<\/p>\n

Our knowledge of what works in managing rural places doesn\u2019t always port over to the living systems we\u2019re fostering in the city. Robert Sullivan tells of ecologists at the NYC Parks Department<\/a> discovering that roofing material and plywood \u2013 illegally dumped in the city\u2019s out-of-the-way open spaces \u2013 make great habitat for snakes. So, sometimes, they leave it alone. If the snakes like it, maybe it isn\u2019t such a big deal. Time will tell. \u201cSmart city<\/a>\u201d projects like Percifield\u2019s can help us practice a sort of minute-by-minute adaptive management<\/a> in these cases. New data streams can tell us whether or not we\u2019re doing more harm than good as we muddle through with our environmental initiatives. They may also welcome every<\/em> city dweller to participate in that adaptive management process, tweaking day-to-day interactions with urban ecosystems and immediately getting feedback on the results. DontFlush.Me may be connected to the sewers, but ultimately its about the relationship between New Yorkers \u00a0and the harbor estuary that surrounds their city.<\/p>\n

Since starting his project in early 2011, Percifield has only been down inside New York City\u2019s sewers twice. Once, he ventured down a manhole with Steve Duncan, an urban explorer with a penchant for wandering<\/a> into the forgotten\u00a0nooks of NYC infrastructure. Early in the development of DontFlush.Me, Percifield planned to install sensors directly in the underground pipes to monitor water volume (the idea was later nixed by engineers at the DEP). Though anyone can tour the sewers of Paris<\/a>, New York\u2019s subterranean waterways are off-limits to the general public, and Percifield has yet to pop another manhole cover.<\/p>\n

Another expedition took Percifield straight into the mouth of a large sewage outfall in Brooklyn. Rowing in a tiny boat, he floated under the bulkhead and into a cavernous concrete chamber. \u201cIn some places it\u2019s about 18 feet across and five or six feet high,\u201d he recalled. \u201cYou\u2019re talking about a space the size of a two car garage.\u201d On a rainy day, these massive outfalls create a frothy Niagara of sewage and street litter. It\u2019s a sight that few New Yorkers would willingly witness for themselves. Soon they won\u2019t have to. The cyborg is learning to speak, and it\u2019s telling us how to help it work better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cities have long been seen as the antithesis \u2013 or, at least, the absence \u2013\u00a0of nature. Yet in recent years, environmentalists started rethinking their long-held prejudices against urban areas. The rise of neighborhood-based environmental justice movements, beginning in the 1980\u2019s, forced us to confront the human side of pollution and its relationship to urban poverty. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":28954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[300,273,297],"tags":[28,34,89,33,32,62],"coauthors":[169],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay-art-and-awareness","category-essay","category-essay-science-and-tools","tag-design","tag-experiencing-nature","tag-pollution","tag-resilience","tag-smart-cities","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}