key: cord-0057985-hc3cstl2
authors: Haken, Hermann; Portugali, Juval
title: Concluding Notes
date: 2021-02-03
journal: Synergetic Cities: Information, Steady State and Phase Transition
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-63457-5_16
sha: 5fce61dcf4a85e61a9118fc48a86e5823cdf00e5
doc_id: 57985
cord_uid: hc3cstl2

We conclude our book with a few preliminary comments on the COVID-19 pandemic which, as already can be seen, exhibits many of the ingredients of a complex system as well as strong links to cities, while its possible future effects on cities and their dynamics have yet to be seen.

China. Within a few months the virus underwent a space-time diffusion process and turned from a minor local fluctuation into a global order parameter of world society, describing and prescribing the life and behavior of millions of people around the world.

As we show in our book, when a fluctuation occurs during a stable state, the system is resilient and enslaves it. However, when the system is in an instable state, a minor fluctuation can give rise to grand outcomes. Two interesting implications are associated with this dynamics-one, more theoretical, refers to a notion we term latent instability, while the second, more socio-political, refers to the 'crisis of democracy' that can be observed in recent years.

Latent instability. In retrospect we now know that the global system of cities was in a latent unstable and vulnerable state, "ripe" for an event such as the corona to erupt: a highly urbanized and geographically connected global society more than ever before in human history. Urbanization implies population densities, making it easy for the virus to spread from one person to the other, while high ground and air connectivity enable the fast spread of the virus from city to city all over the world.

Both urbanization and connectivity were always perceived as advantages that make global society and its cities economically, socially and culturally resilient. But the 2008 economic crisis was a hint that high "smart" connectivity has its drawbacks, while the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster exposed the vulnerability of a highly dense urbanized society. Yet these lessons were not generalized to other domains. The dark sides of globalization, urbanism and connectivity were largely overlooked. Or more generally, what was overlooked is that each system has its weaknesses, that the very properties that make a system resilient in one domain, say, against economic fluctuations, might make it vulnerable to another kind of fluctuation. The implication is that a system's resilience is context or "fluctuation dependent".

Democracy. The motto that one hears time and again in the last decades is that society is becoming urban, that for the first time in human history more than 50% of human population live in cities, and so on. This is of course true, but: The 'but' is that this motto creates the wrong impression that by becoming more urban, world society is becoming also more uniform, that the old 'town-country antagonism' has gone as we all experience the same global urban reality. Yet this is not the case. The old town-country antagonism was replaced by a new spatial antagonism, this time between society in the big 'world cities' that form the hubs of the borderless global society and economy, vs. society in the local peripheral towns and cities confined by, and dependent on, national boundaries and governments. This tension took the form of a spectrum of positions at one pole of which is "non-liberal democracy while on the other, "non-democratic liberalism". This tension, as is well recorded, takes different forms in different countries: A partial list includes the Brexit in England, Trump's presidency in the USA, the 'Mouvement des gilets jaunes' in France, and more. Some, like Mounk (2018) see this tension in terms of The people versus Democracy, some like Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) claim that we are witnessing How DemocraciesDie, while Guilluy (2014) in his La France périphérique suggests seeing this tension in terms of the center versus the periphery. Democracy, that for half a century, since mid twentieth century, was marked by stability due to a delicate balance and complementary relations between liberalism and the rule of the 'Demos', is currently in a state of instability and strong fluctuations.

As noted throughout the book and above, when a system is in an instable state, a minor fluctuation can give rise to grand outcomes. What is and/or would be, the effect of the corona fluctuation on the crisis of democracy? Will it strengthen the side of the national(ist) demos? or that of global liberal society? Or will there be a bifurcation and both sides will go on?

And a final note. Our earth is a giant laboratory testing a variety of systems; so is also our socio-cultural-political globe. Various systems are being tested, ranging from fierce dictatorships through democracies to the primitive communism of hunters and gathers societies. But what is meant by "tested"? "Survival of the fittest", 1 coexistence in ecological niches that seemingly are more or less wiped out by globalization, or various kinds of symbiosis? What is the role of large companies especially in the fields of IT and AI? Concerning the "style" of government, it can be proved (Haken, unpublished) that adaptability times stability = constant.

Churchill once remarked that "many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been saidthat democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…" [(House of Commons, 11 November 1947) in Churchill by Himself 2008] . There is an often felt tension between the welfare of an individual, or of a social group and that of a society-is this tension an interpretation depending on ideology, or an outcome of the Miler's law aphorism, "Where you stand depends on where you sit."?. Some believe that they can control the course of history; is this an illusion? All in all, it seems that there will be no final outcome-nature's and society's tests will probably go on and on.

La France périphérique

How Democracies Die

The people vs democracy: Why our freedom Is in danger and how to save it