5. From paper to practice: some examples

In this chapter I want to show how the theory developed in chapter four can help us to understand and plan spatial changes. In paragraph 5.1 I would like to present Aramis. Aramis was an idea for a new kind of transportation that was unsuccessfully studied between 1969 and 1987. Because of the fact that Latour has used the results of this case study to set up the theory described in the last chapter, it should be easy to see how the theory could work in practice. In the second paragraph of this chapter I want to examine a case study done by Wolf Reuter on the project Stuttgart 21. In this chapter I try to show how scientists, politicians, economists and moralists are working together on an experimental metaphysics.

5.1 Aramis

Aramis is the French abbreviation for Agencement en Rames Automatisées de Modules Indépendants dans les Stations (arrangement in automated trains of independent modules in stations). It was a revolutionary concept for a transport system that combined the efficiency of the metro and the flexibility of a car. In his book Aramis, or the love of technology (1996) Bruno Latour describes how associations of technological explanations and sociological explanations lead to the cancellation of the project in 1987. As Latour puts it: the book is about the question who killed Aramis?

Aramis is a proposition. At the start of the project in the 1960s it was not more than just a great idea. During the project, Aramis developed to a proposition with a broader network. This network consists out of both humans (like the government and the company who developed Aramis) and non-humans (like motors, software and cabins). Both humans and non-humans have their conditions (Latour 1996:57). They require, they constrain and they provide.

As the regional planning commission DATAR invites the company Automatisme et Technique in 1969 to do a study on Personal Rapid Transit Systems, Aramis is born (Latour 1996:12). After Matra, a French high-tech company, bought the patent from Automatisme et Technique and also the Airport of Paris and the RATP (subway and bus company in Paris) joined the project, Aramis could be turned from an idea on paper into a running prototype (Latour 1996:46-50).

Turning Aramis into a prototype was done at Orly, near Paris. At a track of about one kilometre with one test station engineers were able to test experimental versions of Aramis. The main question to be answered in this phase was: will the story of Aramis hold together? (Latour 1996:81). At Orly it did. Aramis was able to transfer itself from an idea on paper to two working cars at a rail track which could couple and uncouple by means of non-material coupling. However, there are some discussions about its feasibility. The RATP believes Aramis should be intrinsic secure, whereas Matra believes that it can do Aramis only with probabilistic security. Others did not believe that the system could get it from prototype to a running line in the Paris region at all. However, taken on the whole, Aramis did pretty well (Latour 1996:84).

After the Orly phase the project is slowed down. Everyone interviewed by Latour agreed on that (1996:84). There were different reasons for this waste of time. For example, at Matra they paid more attention to VAL, an automatic subway project that, as they believed, could be realised much sooner than Aramis. It also turned out that the complexity of Aramis was not negotiable for some of the organisations involved (Latour 1996:120). Nevertheless some things were done between 1974 and 1980. Site analysis at different sites, the development of a motor which had to be designed especially for Aramis and tests of the system main components (Latour 1996:13). It is also in this period that Aramis was simplified for economic reasons. There where more seats in every car, point-to-point service was abandoned and the cars were not going straight to their final destination anymore, but had to stop at several stations along the track. However, in spite of these simplifications, the moving cars themselves remained as complicated as before (Latour 1996:94).

In 1981 the teams of technicians working on Aramis are disbanded (Latour 1996:13). In spite of the technical progress that was made according to these technicians (Latour 1996:124-126) the project got into an interphase between 1981 and 1984. However there were some things done in these years. The possibility to develop Aramis and show it at the World Fair in Paris set the project back on the track (Latour 1996:13). In 1982 a new team was reconstituted from the VAL teams. They did site analysis in several cities around France. It was also during this time that Matra proposed to build Araval instead of Aramis. However, the RATP did only want the nominal Aramis (Latour 1996:147). In spite of this position, Aramis got simplified again during the interphase. Now, Aramis was a pair of two cars, with ten seats each, mechanically coupled. Between pairs they kept the non-material coupling. In July 1983 the World Fair project was abandoned.

The last phase of the Aramis project started in 1984. Matra, the RATP, the regional government and the ministry of transport signed an agreement of building the Centre d'Expérimentation Technique (Centre for Technical Experimentation, CET). At the CET Aramis had to be build and tested. After the testing phase, the CET could become the first station of the first Aramis line at the Petite Ceinture. In 1985 the first scale models of the, during the interphase, simplified Aramis cars were presented. One year later the first full-scale pair was presented. However, in 1987 the whole project was abandoned. It was Matra president M. Etienne who first proposed to end it (Latour 1996:7). According to him the perspective for Aramis looked very bad at that moment. He believed none of the other involved actors were supporting the project anymore (Latour 1996:9). Others believed the increasingly negative conclusions on the technical and financial aspects were the cause for Aramis' death. Another common belief was that the system died al by itself. Latour (1996:277-278) ends up with 21 different visions on Aramis and on the cause of its termination. His conclusion is that the cause of death is the fact that the involved organisations did not discuss these different visions. During the project the idea Aramis did not change except for some minor simplifications. The actors did not like to research, but only were interested in putting the idea into service. This is how Aramis was killed.

Contributions to the powers

During the project the four disciplines from chapter four have made their contributions to perplexity, consultation, hierarchy and institution.

The request of the regional planning commission DATAR to do a study on Personal Rapid Transit Systems can be seen as a political contribution to perplexity. Mr. Bardet, who is a scientist, invented Aramis by using the instrument of a so-called invention matrix (Latour 1996:27). This is the scientific contribution to the requirement of perplexity.

Consultation was not done properly in the process Aramis has gone through. However, Latour did this afterwards in his post-mortem study. Every actor has been interviewed. The actors themselves decide which actors should be taken into account. When an actor comes up with a name, he or she has to be consulted as well. In the Aramis case this goes from the engineers working on the prototypes of Aramis to presidents of the RATP. As it turns out every actor did see Aramis in a different way. For example, the Airport of Paris did only believe that Aramis could be used for short distance tracks and would therefore be sufficient for use on an airport. They never believed in Aramis as a Personal Rapid Transport (PRT) type of transportation, whereas the other involved parties did treat it as such (Latour 1996:47).

During the research there has not been found any proof of discussion on the characteristics of Aramis. Over a period of almost twenty years these characteristics stayed the same, apart from some minor details. However, in the theory on the new Constitution this is a relevant part of the process. When Aramis had gone through the process of the power to take into account and the power to rank in order, the different visions on Aramis should have been discussed during the phase of hierarchization. Then these visions could have converged into one vision of what Aramis is.

Aramis never got instituted in the way it was meant to be. By the involved actors Aramis was treated like a fact in the old Constitution. They wanted to go quickly from perplexity to institution. The steps of consultation and hierarchy were skipped. Only when it came to 'social' factors, like questions about whether the Budget office was going to give money or not, the steps of consultation and hierarchy were followed. In other words: the involved organisations in the Aramis case behaved as if they found themselves in the old Constitution of modernism.

Conclusions

Latour concludes that nobody in particular can be accused of killing Aramis. It are not pure technological reasons that stopped the project. Neither are it only social factors. None of the reasons mentioned by the interviewed actors can explain the failure of the project. The VAL project had to deal with the same Budget Office for example. And there are lots of projects who made it to realisation although their feasibility was, like Aramis, only demonstrated by prototypes.

And it is also not enough to say that due to both technical and social factors Aramis did not make it, because the cause of death as indicated by Latour is neither technical nor social. The absence of love of technology, as being the cause of death, is not something that is purely technical. Neither is it purely social. Maybe we can use the word sociotechnical for the kind of reason for the failure of the Aramis project. When there is love of technology among the scientists, politicians, economists and moralists involved in a certain project, that should mean that they try to change the proposition in such a way that it can become a member of the collective. As we have seen in chapter four, this is not only about innovations. It is also about making deals and compromises on the essence of Aramis. Furthermore it is about comparing different propositions by making them commensurable through models. And it is also about discussing whether the proposition gets the right place in the hierarchy of the collective.

5.2 Stuttgart 21

In Germany, Wolf Reuter wrote about the Stuttgart 21 project of the Deutsche Bahn (German Rail). From the empirical results of Reuter’s research, it is possible to show how these empirical results can lead to conclusions which lead us into the new Constitution.

As mentioned already in chapter three, the project Stuttgart 21 is about replacing the terminal station in Stuttgart by an underground through station. Before the process started in 1994, there had been several plans about how to deal with the High Speed Railway Lines (HSRL) in southern Germany. In 1985 there were plans to build a HSRL that would leave Stuttgart out of the international network. In 1989 a Stuttgart traffic expert proposed to build a new through station in Stuttgart. Deutsche Bahn planned to build such a station in 1992. However, in 1994 they decided not to build a new station, but replace the existing central station of Stuttgart by an underground station. For the city of Stuttgart this project would mean a large area near the inner city, which was only used by Deutsche Bahn till then, would become available for spatial development (Reuter 2001:29). This was even more important because of the geographical position of Stuttgart. The city finds itself in a wide valley. In this valley the possibilities for further expansion of the city were used up. However, the availability of the area of Deutsche Bahn brought new chances for expansion near the inner city.

After the first ideas were presented in April 1994, the project partners Deutsche Bahn and the city of Stuttgart worked out a städtebauliche Rahmenkonzeption (framework conception concerning town construction) (Reuter 2001:31). This framework was presented in September 1994. It showed the possibilities for building a new part of the city and the development possibilities for the long-distance and suburban railway traffic. The third step in the planning process departed where the framework conception finished. In a Gutachterverfahren (consultant procedure) six bureaus for planning did some research whether the framework conception could be realised. They also made some sketches on how this could look like. At the same time, Deutsche Bahn had ordered a Machbarkeitsstudie (feasibility study). This study concentrated on the technological feasibility. The outcome was presented in January 1995: "Stuttgart 21 is technically feasible and it brings us advantages for urban development and traffic" (Reuter 2001:32). However some problems could arise when it came to eventual environmental damage to the sensible zones within the area. After the feasibility study was done, Deutsche Bahn ordered an extension to this study. This was called the Vorprojekt. Everything was positive according to the researchers. Stuttgart 21 was the synergy concept.

Based on the consultant procedure, the feasibility study and its extension, in November 1995 the aktualisierte Rahmenkonzept (updated framework concept) was presented. It presented the foreseen use of the area, and it divided the area into three subsections. In section A services like restaurants and shops were foreseen. In section B and C houses had to take the biggest part of the available space. At the same time the project partners (Deutsche Bahn, the city of Stuttgart, the land of Baden-Würtemberg and the federal government) signed a Rahmenvereinbarung (agreement of main principles). In this agreement some important decisions were taken (Reuter 2001:33). The financial contribution of the parcels, which are to be sold by Deutsche Bahn, to the project is fixed. Also some minimum requirements are set. The area should contain housing for at least 11.000 inhabitants. Offices for at least 24.000 jobs had to be included in the plan.

After the agreement on the main principles of the whole project had been signed, the city of Stuttgart started a kooperatives Gutachterverfahren (cooperative consultant procedure) for the area in which the building of offices and houses was planned. Ten bureaus for planning took part in the procedure. The winning concept did take the possibility of economic disappointment into account. It proposed to build neighbourhoods which could survive on their own. Based on this winning concept, the city of Stuttgart designed an entwurf des Rahmenplan (draft outline plan). The draft was put into a process of citizens' participation. Four hundred citizens took part in this process. Several additions were made to the draft outline plan. In July 1997 the definitive outline plan was determined by the municipality Council (Reuter 2001:33).

For the design of the new underground through station a competition was started up by Deutsche Bahn in February 1997. Bureau Ingenhoven won this competition with its "spectacular construction" (Reuter 2001:33). After the outline plan in July, the plan for the station was presented in October 1997.

Although the plans looked really great from the project partners’ point of view, it had also its critics (Reuter 2001:34). Three kinds of arguments were used against the plans. In the first place there were doubts about the necessity of a through station in order to connect Stuttgart to the European net of High Speed Railway Lines. Secondly, it was argued that the huge amount of new offices near the old inner city would negatively influence the economic situation of this part of Stuttgart. Lastly, the planning culture in which the plan was created was criticised.

After the plan making from 1994 till 1997 the project slowed down (Reuter 2001:34). However, the project is still running. The first offices have been build. The latest forecast has set 2013 as the year in which the project should be finished (Deutsche Bahn 2005).

Contributions to the powers

Although Reuter is focussing on discursive and power acts, we can also see the different contributions to the four requirements defined by Latour. Because Reuter did his study not as thoroughgoing as Latour did, or in any event he did not publish it, I can only present the examples Reuter mentioned in his article on the case (see scheme 5.1 for an overview).

The task of perplexity means in this case the task of making the proposition Stuttgart 21 visible, and to let it speak. The most obvious contribution is made by Prof. Heimerl when he made a proposal that also included the building of a through station in Stuttgart. As a scientist, Prof. Heimerl has the instruments to detect this, till then invisible, proposition. Only while the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Stuttgart made study-sketches of the new station, the possibilities of the large area around the central station of Stuttgart came into the project. This is also a scientific contribution to the requirement of perplexity. A political contribution is the recognition that Stuttgart should be connected to the European net of High Speed Railway Lines.

Consultation was done by different means in the Stuttgart 21 case. Consultation is the stage in which the spokespersons of Stuttgart 21 present how the proposition looks like. The political contribution to the consultation was to make clear that every involved opiniongroup could say something on Stuttgart 21.

The process of hierarchizing is still ongoing, because the plan has only partially been turned into real spatial changes already. During the phase of hierarchizing, the proposition Stuttgart 21 changes. Only after research of scientists Stuttgart 21 becomes the synergy concept. And this research was only ordered after political and moralist voices demanded to take environmental issues into account. Another example is the moralist bringing in his or her objections. What about the economic situation of the existing city centre when 24.000 jobs are created in the neighbourhood? Can it not be a little less? However, the moralists lose against other contributions to the work of hierarchizations. For example the contribution made by the economists make formulas in which money is much more important than the economic situation in the inner city when it comes to the question whether Stuttgart 21 can be realised or not.

Scheme 5.1

Institution of the Stuttgart 21 proposition is only partially fulfilled already. It became instituted through the contribution of politicians who decided to get on with it after the debates in phase three. The scientists, who we are talking about in a very broad sense here, make their contribution by finally making real buildings, streets and squares out of the development plans.

Conclusions

Whereas Aramis was not killed by non-humans or humans, Stuttgart 21 did not succeed because of only natural or only cultural factors. We cannot hold the conclusion that it was because of political decisions that a part of Stuttgart 21 made it already to real buildings, streets and squares. Lots of development plans did not make it to copy itself into reality. However, it would also be too fast to conclude that it is a combination of natural facts and cultural values that made Stuttgart 21 possible. In Stuttgart 21 we discover a love of technology. The politicians involved did not only talk about subjective opinions, they also constructed reality. And the scientists? They worked together with the politicians, the economists and the moralists in order to create reality rather than they searched for absolute facts. The case of Stuttgart 21 also shows that the different disciplines do not stick to the separation of the powers set up by Latour. For example, the consultation of citizens took place when the political discussion on pro's and contra's was already captured in a first draft of the outline plan.