Planner

Most of us view the urban landscape as a built-in-place environment, and so its various infrastructural components (housing, offices, waste management, utilities, etc.), as a result, tend to be constructed, immobile systems. Populations that inhabit these spaces, however, spike and dip and change, often in unpredictable ways—as do local economies, technology, and all types of things that influence how people live and what they need to function. I, myself have moved three times in the last year, and I probably had different needs than the person who lived at each place before me and the ones who have moved in after me. It follows that a system of infrastructure that’s flexible and can be mobilized when the need arises would provide countless opportunities to deliver services more efficiently, sustainably, and inexpensively. From a planner’s perspective, this ability to acquire a temporary stock of supportive systems would also allow cities and regions to follow smarter patterns of permanent development in accordance with long-term trends.

In some sectors, the concept of mobile infrastructure has already taken root with generally positive results. Among these are mobile command centers used by emergency and law enforcement services to collect information and distribute orders during a crisis. A number of these were employed in San Diego County to map the leading edges of the 2007 wildfires, and to organize the influx of fire crews called in from throughout the southwest. Portable classrooms, food trucks, modular pocket parks (see “Growing the Sidewalk“), and even the port-a-potty also fit into this category of realized and integrated mobile infrastructures, but these are all relatively small-scale systems.

Hundreds of similar maps similar to this were drawn in real-time during the 2007 Cedar Fire by personnel in mobile command centers to assist with evacuations, and to focus defensive efforts around property and communities in the wildfire's path. This system was not fully in-place during the 2005 San Diego wildfires and the losses were much greater in that case.

Food trucks have become a common sight throughout the Bay Area. Some have stable locations, like the taco trucks along International Boulevard in Oakland, and some cycle through several locations or just roam like the Off the Grid caravan

 As a more theoretical exercise, it’s interesting to think about how the concept can be scaled up to address existing planning challenges. Massive sporting events like the Olympics and World Cup have become a recurring instance where a region must be able to accommodate and support a huge spike in population for a very limited time. The recent pattern has been for the host city to build up from nothing or redevelop an entire neighborhood of housing into a central village for the event, with the hope that it attracts permanent residents after the crowds are gone. Athens for example, constructed such an environment for the 2004 Olympics—an inland suburban development with the capacity for 10,000. Today it stands almost completely vacant and unmaintained, a largely useless addition to one of the world’s most historic and beautiful cities. Again, the 2010 World Cup in South Africa was overall a success for the Country, but even so, vacancies in the retail districts that were developed in Cape Town remain very high, and the residential property market is flooded, with a slow recovery projected. (As a side note and to its credit, the World Cup has recognized this issue and attempted to minimize overdevelopment of host cities by packaging up their smaller stadium venues after the event, and relocating them to parts of the developing world that can put them to regular use.)

These images are of the Olympic Village constructed in Athens for the 2004 Olympic Games, several years later. The development is quite dilapidated and underused, typical results of short-term planning.

The cruise ships that dock occasionally at the piers near the MK Think office prompted a conversation about these patterns of development, and suggested the solution of mobile supportive systems serving as modular city chunks. Shipping by sea is among the most efficient and simple ways to transport just about anything, and each of these cruise ships can accommodate several thousand people comfortably with all the amenities of a luxury hotel. Three or four of these parked on the coast of Rio in 2016 would serve the same function as a constructed residential and commercial village, but have the ability to move along to any number of places after the boom dies down unlike a permanent development. In between massive sporting events, a single cruise ship or similar vessel could serve as housing for seasonal or temporary industries in remote locations, such as oil drilling or mining operations. It could be customized as office space and parked near a city that would like to slow down or pause its downtown growth. Or it could also fill a more humanitarian role and provide shelter to displaced victims of natural disasters or war. The list of possibilities seems to go on and on, but the concept doesn’t quite mesh with most people’s idea of how cities grow or should end up looking. The fact is there will always be new planning challenges in the world, and not all of them will require a permanent solution so it’s at least worth considering leased or borrowed solutions with as many upsides as mobile infrastructures have. Thinking about and understanding space in this way may offer new means of addressing a variety of serious problems more quickly (and less expensively) than years of design and construction, while at the same time conserving resources otherwise spent on logistics, building materials, and energy.

The Queen Victoria docked at one of San Francisco's many piers. The piers have been put to alternate uses recently, but they're still perfectly suited to their original purpose.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, United States workers spent an average of 1,749 hours in the office in 2010, or nearly 30% of their waking hours.

Where does the MKThink team spend 30% of our time a year?

[1500 Sansome Street in 1965 – Wx4]

MKThink is located on the top floor of the old State Belt roundhouse, just off the Embarcadero in San Francisco. Our view of the pier is uninhibited by office partitions; spaces are delineated by mobile whiteboards and shelving units rather than cubicles. The open floor plan encourages the interaction of MKThink’s three studios – Innovation, Strategy, and Architecture – by opening up the flow of conversation and ideas through visual and audio connections.

Theories on how to reconfigure and optimize the modern office abound, but they all center on maintaining the balance between people, environment, and business. Here are a few ideas for ways to approach these three components of the workplace.

Ray Oldenburg writes about the existence of the third place in his book The Great Good Place. He distinguishes it from first places (home) and second places (work); it is a space where the community gathers naturally and interacts casually – think coffee houses, main streets, and public parks. In an office setting, providing a space separate from the central working hub where people can pause and meet could create third places that allows for breaks in the constant flow of productivity and encourages the sharing of ideas in an informal environment.

In a recent article titled “The Rise of the New Groupthink”, Susan Cain argues that solitude, not collaboration, is the genesis of creative work. Constant brainstorming sessions interrupt and inhibit the crucial process of personally working through a problem and coming up with a creative solution. Cain suggests a more balanced approach towards the office environment that allows for small group meetings but does not impose on the individual’s workspace.

An office should provide a flexible space to experiment with different set-ups and components, where individuals can easily flow from group meetings, to individual work, to small interactions. Open central office plans eliminate the need to define physical or mental edges – peripheral, rather than tunnel, vision is developed and allows for a vibrant experience of the whole space.

A business’s office is a chance to tell its story through a physical space. Imbuing an office with a unique identity gives it a sense of place and makes people feel they belong there. To develop company culture, the office could provide ways for employees to Own their personal workspaces and have different ways of showcasing their work.

To figure out which approach best suits a specific environment, MKThink performs a quantitative evaluation of the physical space that works in tandem with a qualitative assessment of how users inhabit that environment. Moving forward, guiding cultural and design principles determine the development of opportunity areas, ultimately resulting in a space that best serves the needs of its users and enhances their everyday experiences.