Work-Live-Play

I read today about how Singapore's exhibit at the Venice Biennale 'showcases the Republic's ability to perfect social, economic and environmental balance, and how the replication of Singapore's ' high-density, mixed-used development' model by 1000 times will house the entire world living sustainably.This model, is very much in line with 'New Urbanism', the latest fashion in Urban Planning to create 'Work-Live-Play' environments for people to work and live in. I have always had an almost instinctive distaste for such a concept, but have never been able to explain why. Recently, I think I have found the underlying explanations.

The 'work-live-play' concept portrays itself as the 'great unifier' of different uses. From an era in which people live far away from where they work, and work far away from where they play, 'work-live-play' combines all these uses within a highly intensified and dynamic space. This concept has attracted many planners, architects, politicians. The problem for me though, is that this concept is stuck within an economic paradigm of specialisation, and worse, may even serve to camouflage it.

Just think about it. Why would we need to create 'work-live-play' physical environments, if we actually live through our work and play?Conversely, how is it ever possible to achieve a 'work-live-play' psychological environment, if we dont live through our work and play? A physical 'live-work-play' environment is little more than a psychological manipulation, which as all manipulations, can never be sustainable in the long-term.

When I was younger but still as naive as I am today, I broke down the natural human nature into three components: Greed, Self-Esteem, and Compassion. Each individual is then made up by different levels of each component, which then manifest into different characters and personalities. Human utility was therefore achieved by progress in each of the three spheres. Attaining more material (or even spiritual) wealth made people happier. Gaining more self-esteem, or a sense of self-worth made people happier. Contributing to the welfare of others made people happier. However, the pursuit of these components is hardly always complementary. Therefore, if an action allows someone to gain more material wealth, but affects his self-esteem negatively, then the net change to utility will be much less than the gain acrued from the gain to material wealth.

It is the incomplete understanding of and attention to human nature, which has led to today's seperation of 'work-live-play'. From the hunter gatherers, to the farmers, to the Industrial societies, to the 'globalised, urbanised, IT & Financial centric society of today, the human developmental model has been the unilateral pursuit to reduce risk, increase output, improve convenience. This is a natural extension of the fundamental 'greed' component of the human make-up. However, along the way, the complete ignoring of the components of 'self-esteem' (hardly the best word for what I am trying to convey, but includes self-worth, self-expression etc) and 'compassion', are perhaps why utility has not improved at all.

To the hunter gatherer, hunting for prey was a source of personal vindication, social vindication and risk rolled into one. He 'lived' through his hunting, in that each prey successfully caught was testimony to his ability and self-worth, his contribution to his family and the wider community, but each hunt came with it the chance of failure and even the risk of getting hurt or killed. Throughout the centuries, human beings have spent all their time and effort on decreasing the risks of failure. Specialization, efficiency, productivity, even risk-management itself, these terms can never be disassociated with the intention of reducing risk. But what has happened to 'self-worth' and 'compassion'? These have not only not been developed, but in many ways, have actually gone back.

For the average factory worker, even the office worker of today, does he validate his human existence through his work? Does he find self-expression in his work? The hunter-gatherer probably felt more. For the busy and pre-occupied and self-centred products of today's society, do they have any time for family and community apart of self? Probably less than the hunter-gatherer too. The seperation of work from self-expression, play and community has brought utility to the greed componet at the expense of 'self-esteem' and 'compassion'.

Therefore,even if we achieve the 'perfect balance' of social, economic and environmental balance, there will hardly be any sustainable improvement to the human condition, unless we adress the issue of 'psychological balance'. What we need to create, are not mere spaces where the functional uses of the economic paradigm meet, but spaces where the fundamental components of the psychological paradigm find expression. In this utopia, there will be no 'work-live-play', all of us, will simply live, again.