WE ASKED the world for its thoughts on Saturday 13 May. In other words we posted a message on the Internet asking for views on 鈥渦rban development and the environment鈥� and then sat back waiting for the replies to roll in. This was going to be a global brainstorm.
From time to time, representatives of the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM) get together with Dutch academics to discuss aspects of environmental research. On 14 June our group at Leiden University was due to make a poster presentation on this year鈥檚 topic, the environment and urban development.
The Netherlands is a densely populated country and many of its urban areas face what has become known as the 鈥減aradox of the compact city鈥�. The paradox arises because although there are environmental advantages in keeping cities small and compact and reducing space requirements and traffic within them, this also increases the concentration of pollution and the traffic between cities. Here at the Centre of Environmental Science we have investigated some of the issues involved, but perhaps by now our studies needed updating. So we contacted the Research Institute for the Built Environment (RIGO), in Amsterdam, and suggested that together we consult the Net. As a bonus, such a project would give us hands-on experience with some of the surfing tools. In particular, we had in mind the 鈥淒elphi method鈥�: you collect ideas from as many sources as possible and distribute them for comment. By going through a few cycles, we would have a good idea of the present consensus on urban development and the environment. And that was what we hoped to present in our poster.
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Our work might influence the Netherlands鈥� Environmental Policy Plan prepared every four years by VROM. Its second plan was published in 1993, and the next is due in 1997. With the RIGO we intend to present our own virtual chapter of a virtual Environmental Policy Plan 鈥� a plan according to the world of scientists and planners.
With between 16 and 40 million potential Net addresses (New 杏吧原创, 13 May), we clearly needed to find the right targets for our investigation. We started by collecting the newsgroups and distribution lists on architecture, urban planning and sustainable cities. It took us some hours at the keyboard to acquire the necessary adroitness. Then we added e-mail addresses of people and organisations we thought would be interested. Even when we had only a name and a continent, we had some amazing successes searching out e-mail addresses by means of the Net鈥檚 search engines.
With our mailing list completed, and the call for contributions typed in, we confidently typed the line: mail /subject=鈥漜all for contributions鈥� call.txt 鈥淍world.dis鈥� and we hit the enter key. Immediately error messages began to scroll all over the screen. Half a day went by before we realised that we had left some of the control characters in the files. We removed them, retyped the magic phrase, and hit the enter key again.
Answers came back in seconds from around the world: 鈥淵our message dated Sat, 13 May 1995 08:34:22 +0100(MET) with subject 鈥榗all for papers鈥� has been successfully distributed to the ENVINF-L list (449 recipients).鈥� Or: 鈥淵our message was received. This reply is generated by a mailbot. Mail is read several times a week. Thank you for your message.鈥�
At a rough estimate about a thousand people had received our call for contributions. The first human reaction came from the US after 6 hours. It was short and to the point, clearly from an expert. It was the start of a small but steady trickle of ideas and opinions, information and critical comment.
After a week or so, the first complaints started to roll in. 鈥淧lease take me off your list,鈥� or occasionally with more emphasis, 鈥淧LEASE TAKE ME OFF!鈥� 鈥� capitals being the equivalent of shouting on the Net. It seemed that we had been filling people鈥檚 mailboxes with unwanted mail. We apologised and removed them from our mailing list. In our next batch of messages we changed the construction and announced that we would take people off our list unless they asked us not to. Sadly, things went wrong again. Rather foolishly, we had used the account: ecocity@rulsfb.leidenuniv.nl to send this message to the official distribution list ecocity@searn.sunet.se, causing great confusion to subscribers to the first ecocity account. After a stream of confused messages, the owner of the list stepped in and politely informed us of our misbehaviour, and kindly opened an account dedicated to our discussions. We apologised to the world, changed our name and moved the files to the new address.
Altogether we received 143 mail messages, most of which asked to be kept informed but were mostly confused inquiries from subscribers to the official 鈥渆cocity鈥� distribution list. Based on some 25 contributions that fitted what we were really looking for, we were finally able to present a virtual chapter of the next National Environment Policy Plan.