City as Airport

Keynote: City as Airport

Harvey Molotch, NYU


sociology of product designers

• connecting culture and economy
  
• high art as a “semiotic handle” for design
  
• design as a “technology of enchantment”
  

• security is “submarket” – it is not governed by market forces
  
• security is the product of a “command and control” ethic
  
• there’s no R+D, none of the “useful and approachable” aesthetic of product design
  
• the security gate at the airport becomes the model for the security state in toto
  
• part of the work of “doing security” is showing that security is “being done” [security is performative – but who is the audience? what purpose does bad design serve?]
  
• the “massive idiocies” of airport security: the difficulties created for families with children, the picnic tables used as baggage depositories, the Rubbermaid containers used for change
  
• yet flight attendants are “nice” and “do security” – part of their job is the doing of security work in a non-confrontational and reassuring manner
  
• we all do security, though. we all scan the world around us for threats
  
• Disneyland does security and crowd control well; it may seem like heresy, but why can’t airport security be more like Disneyland?
  
• airport as welcoming device (ex: LAX’s neon pillars)
  
• suggestion that airports have security personnel as dedicated “helpers” of passengers, not as guards – “Helping is learning rich”
  
• the example of the busybody, who is helpful but who also performs neighborhood surveillance [as in Jane Jacob’s neighborhood studies]
  

• Q: (Christena N-E) “Security” for whom? Points out the anxiety produced by security measures in families with children, and the workarounds instituted by other travelers
  
• Q: (Genevieve B) (1) The way the experience is gendered, especially in the rules about who can search women. (2) who takes security seriously: big cities vs. little ones.
  
• Q: (John U.) Is this a US-specific question? Schipol and Shanghai are great.
  
• Q: (Adam R.) Airport as liminal space of city: on the geographic margins, but the cause/center of urban catastrophes.
  
• Q: (Giles L.) What is the difference between “security” and “safety” Security is retrospective; safety is proactive.
  
• Q: (Nigel T) Bad design is functional; it enacts dramas that construct anxiety.
  
• Q: (Elizabeth G) The extent to which bad design performs earnestness, sincerity, urgency in gov’t activities (ie, as Americans we think good design is somehow commercial, and bad design non-profit)
  
• Q: (Tim B) The social value of “putting up with it” breeds solidarity
  A: Yes, it can be about “doing your part” – security as solidarity
  
• Q: (Nalini) But I like the Rubbermaid containers! Isn’t this an argument about what “good design” really is?
  
• Q: (Giles L) Well, think about how good at design the Dutch are. Isn’t there a way in which “good design” can be so good it’s restrictive?
  
• Q: (Eric) Getting through security is like getting a gold star in class. Maybe you should get a printed copy of your X-rayed baggage after you get through, to commemorate the parade of your containers past the eyes of the guard.
  
• Q: Police outsource distrust – they do it so we don’t have to.
  
• Q: Security depends upon performing pleasure and performing anxiety at different points in the process – need to have both happen.
  
• Q: (Christena N-E) [An answer to the good design thread] Designers make us feel better, and airports make us feel worse.
  A: It’s the spatial articulation of the good cop/bad cop narrative. It’s the small details that make us feel the anxiety of being strangers there, like not being able to open a door.