Social Tectonics and the Trust of Cities

The strength of a country, and especially the strength of a city, is its ability to react to, and repair, the social fissures that originate wherever three or more humans live together. Social tectonics is the natural fracturing along societal lines like wealth, education, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, even color of skin, shapes of noses, or sports team preferences. Humans are amazingly adept at finding things in others to be wary of.

Social tectonics is active everywhere. No government or leader can stop it – but much can be done to reinforce our societies, institutions and cities, as well as reducing stresses. Like observant seismologists, social scientists sense where stresses are increasing and approaching breaking points. For example, the Occupy Movement that has popped up in many American cities represents growing stress in people who see too much concentration of wealth. The Arab Spring is a fracture between the general populace and the few who concentrated political power.

Probably today’s most severe and least understood social stresses are growing over how we view technology. Our opinions on technology – be it genetically modified food, nuclear energy, life extension, genomics, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, privacy and data collection – do not typically break down along the usual fault lines. Conservatives-liberals, urban-rural, socialists-capitalist, developed-developing, these groups do not generally have a common opinion on emerging technologies. And like all the other big social movements, cities will experience these challenges first. Citizens and their local leaders are now figuring out how to live atop these particularly active fault lines.

Mayors and national leaders face a new and growing challenge – better understanding and mediating among new technologies. There is only one way to reduce growing stresses and minimize social tectonics, and that is through trust.

Trust is often an important missing ingredient in many developing countries. However, technology can occasionally help grow this much needed reliability and confidence. For example, the widespread penetration of cell phones in Sub Saharan Africa. Cities like Nairobi are well positioned to take advantage of this growing trust as Kenya’s information system grows in reliability. Or Kunming, China, with real-time municipal data available on its public website, and Belo Horizonte, Brazil’s comprehensive monitoring of neighborhood service levels; both cities are using data systems to nurture greater community trust.

Growing (or eroding) trust is most accomplished in cities. Information, communication, and technology (ICT) systems are likely a forerunner for new, even more disruptive technologies, to come. Many smart cities use ICT first as a way to better communicate with citizens; a way to strengthen the relationship. During the next couple of decades, sustainable cities need to ensure that new technologies are introduced within a community of sufficient, and hopefully growing, trust.

Trust in the city.