Hello Design L. I ran across one of your discussions in the Newswatch bulletin
board through my school's vax. Below is a roughly edited letter I sent out to
one of your members. He suggested I post it here, I welcome responses and
suggestions.
My prime interest has been property law, chiefly urban recovery, and I'm sadly
at odds with the corporate raiders and litigation knights that make up most of
the law school population. When I try to talk serious land law with them they
give me this look
like I'm from another planet.
I want to model urban neighborhoods as complex adaptive systems.
A complex adaptive system is a flexible system capable of adapting to new
conditions. The most common examples are in nature, bodies are complex
adaptive systems. So are coral reefs. The name may seem to apply to the
obvious, but complex adaptive
systems are also one of the approaches for artificial intelligence and robotics.
Competition is not eliminated among the elements of the system, but survival
of the whole rather than ruthless competition among the disparate elements
assures long-term
health of the system.
I contend that cities and towns are complex adaptive systems and that the coral
reef is the closest approximation of them in nature. Further, I feel that
cities and towns, which are more or less self sustaining systems, are healthy
and stem from human
tribal patterns, where suburban, ghettoized, and over zoned land use is
unhealthy and works against intrinsic human organic patterns of communication
and organization.
Less jargon laden, cities and towns are organic wholes. They have organs that
provide food (markets, restaurants), labor to feed and to remove "wastes"
(restaurant staff, cleaning staff, transportation workers), reproductive,
immune and repair systems
(contractors, developers, entrepreneurs), planning functions and resource
gathering (banks, businesses) and a host of other functions needed to support
the whole. The most striking characteristic of this pattern is that many uses
occur naturally in
proximity, and support each other. By contrast, suburban developments and other
land use which is overly restrictive create a situation where labor and
resources must be imported from other locations, and where only one function
predominates. Suburbs
are warehouses where we store our middle class labor. Work places that would
once have abutted their workers are isolated and function only during limited
hours. This isn't just dangerous industry that is removed from residences for
good reason
(generally removed, but ecological discrimination is another issue) but also
banks, stores, offices, almost all business. Looking at some older cities it
becomes obvious that our modern zoning practices utterly violate the patterns
of growth that created
our cities, towns and the social structures that created this country.
The effect of this has been to eliminate the shared uses that created a sense of
community and responsibility towards each other. When employer and employee
dwell in approximately contiguous regions and use some, or many, of the same
stores, schools,
etc. then common causes are found and connections are built. The employer has a
direct, emotional stake in the well being of the employee and vice versa. The
image is simplistic and utopian, the reality a great deal messier, but in
general this works.
I've lived in some (too few) places where community was encouraged and this
became the social context of the city. The suburban dweller has no such stake
in urban businesses or people and easily allows them to fail. Any thought of
urban neighbors
becomes either fear-driven or charity. The former causes more distance and
resentment between the urban and suburban dweller. The city dweller then has
no connection or identification with the burb dweller and a relationship of
fear, charity or
indifference breeds estrangement and resentment. Apply the same sentiment to
any group that can or must live isolated from any other. None feel any
obligation or social bond except with others who are markedly similar to them.
This creates intense
isolation and discrimination. It also creates fragile and unhealthy
developments that must rely on the despised outside resources to fulfill
essential functions. The few social ties that exist are based on similarity
("oh yes, my ranch house has the
garage on the other side, how distinctive!") and class. If a community is a
"self-supporting" organic structure with shared resources (analogy to bodies
and reefs, again) then these developments, no matter how wealthy, are unhealthy
and dependent on
resources from outside. It's as if they were all on dialysis and nutritive
drips. The poorer developments lack even that and eventually smother in their
own waste or suffer starvation. Businesses thrive in the day and become
wastelands, prey to vandals
and thieves, at night. Their resources of green space and parking go wasted.
A nice countertrend is shown at Prudential Center in Boston. This
once-architectural marvel then-eyesore now blossoms past business hours with
shops and restaurants. Its proximity to the Back Bay allows symbiosis with
local residents. This is still not
an ideal mix, but it's a great deal more sustainable and well integrated than a
big mall hunched in the middle of a parking lot desert. Okay, that's a fast
attempt to view American land developments as organic systems, now what do I
mean as a practical
matter, by studying them that way?
So far as I can tell, most urban planning looks at cities from a traditional
zoning or sociological perspective, at least that was what I got from the folks
at MIT when I went looking for interested parties. I am more inclined to
analyze urban
neighborhoods as efficient systems for use, accumulation and dissemination of
"information", or blocks of resources. I view cities as differing from the
burbs in having abundant shared resources compared with the isolationist mode
of the suburbs. I've
got some ideas for how to define parameters to do this, but can really use an
interested an knowledgeable person to discuss it with. So far I believe one
starts with looking at the balance of uses, then looks to turnover and the
balance of the community
members (income, education, age, race). After that, look at how many are
employed in some function that supports or is supported by the community. Does
a bank get most of its depositors from the area? A restaurant both its
employees and clients? Do
the majority regularly shop at stores in the community? Are the schools serving
most of the community and are the graduates well-educated to take up jobs in
the community? High tech? Information services? Other industries that are
competitive and
which benefit from being placed in the community and maintaining a clean,
well-integrated place of business? Are the political agencies responsive and
effective? That's just the first set of questions that come to mind. For most
healthy towns and
cities most of those questions would be answered yes. For isolated and
unhealthy regions most of these would be no. Unhealthy regions cannot support
business, do not have a population base that answers basic physical need, and
therefore has a constant
drain of labor out. Incomers must be induced by artificial means such as
fashion or fear of other areas, because there are few jobs, theatres, shops or
other traditional draws in the area. I've lived in several states, towns,
cities and even in rural
regions. These comments are supported by my experience and the comments of
other students of urban structure further buttress me. I believe a great deal
of the social and economic distress of the country comes from this isolation.
You no longer have
shared resources, shared needs. There are very few forums where people with a
range of needs, services and ability to find answers can come together, so
everyone is less informed about need. One result is fear and discrimination.
Another is a
decreasing number of new, small entrepreneurial businesses. The entrepreneurs
that do come into existence are often fatally hampered by inadequate
information about needs and target markets. Pollsters and televised blanket
opinions are used in place of
the intimacy of daily contact that happens when people use stores, restaurants,
parks, schools and offices with other, different people. If you live with
others just like you, then you largely have the same needs but no one to answer
them, and can offer
the same services but rarely meet the people who would benefit from them.
Everyone needs to spend more to find their markets, takes greater risks and is
less responsive to the needs of the customers because they rarely meet the
customers outside the
bounds of the mercantile relationship. The upshot is more money spent to get
the same or less return, more isolation, less responsiveness, fewer new
businesses and a generally declining quality of life. Some regions are
beginning to understand and fight
this. Oregon and Washington are fighting for community building rather than
subdevelopments. Dying towns are fighting for revivification. But most of
this is based on guesswork rather than informed choices. Humans don't exist in
a specialized way,
(imagine it, "it's Thursday so I am a shopper and nothing else", or "I'm a
lawyer therefore all my bodies needs are met by what I have in the law office")
A cross-disciplinary attitude that studies the psychological, practical,
physical, animal and
rational functions of the human is just a beginning. At heart are the questions
"what is human, what is needed to support meaningful human existence, and what
will likely continue to support it in the future?" For my purposes, I add "how
can I use law
and land planning to answer those questions and needs?"
Do you know someone who'd like to banter this back and forth a bit? I've got
reams of stuff on this topic from discussions with programmers, but I couldn't
find a planner who might be interested until I came across the bulletin board.
I want to discuss
these ideas with programmers, biostaticians, information science majors,
lawyers, urban planners, urban anthropologists, psych people and other
interested parties. -Copyright Jyl Livengood, livengoo@xxxxxxxxxxxx.
board through my school's vax. Below is a roughly edited letter I sent out to
one of your members. He suggested I post it here, I welcome responses and
suggestions.
My prime interest has been property law, chiefly urban recovery, and I'm sadly
at odds with the corporate raiders and litigation knights that make up most of
the law school population. When I try to talk serious land law with them they
give me this look
like I'm from another planet.
I want to model urban neighborhoods as complex adaptive systems.
A complex adaptive system is a flexible system capable of adapting to new
conditions. The most common examples are in nature, bodies are complex
adaptive systems. So are coral reefs. The name may seem to apply to the
obvious, but complex adaptive
systems are also one of the approaches for artificial intelligence and robotics.
Competition is not eliminated among the elements of the system, but survival
of the whole rather than ruthless competition among the disparate elements
assures long-term
health of the system.
I contend that cities and towns are complex adaptive systems and that the coral
reef is the closest approximation of them in nature. Further, I feel that
cities and towns, which are more or less self sustaining systems, are healthy
and stem from human
tribal patterns, where suburban, ghettoized, and over zoned land use is
unhealthy and works against intrinsic human organic patterns of communication
and organization.
Less jargon laden, cities and towns are organic wholes. They have organs that
provide food (markets, restaurants), labor to feed and to remove "wastes"
(restaurant staff, cleaning staff, transportation workers), reproductive,
immune and repair systems
(contractors, developers, entrepreneurs), planning functions and resource
gathering (banks, businesses) and a host of other functions needed to support
the whole. The most striking characteristic of this pattern is that many uses
occur naturally in
proximity, and support each other. By contrast, suburban developments and other
land use which is overly restrictive create a situation where labor and
resources must be imported from other locations, and where only one function
predominates. Suburbs
are warehouses where we store our middle class labor. Work places that would
once have abutted their workers are isolated and function only during limited
hours. This isn't just dangerous industry that is removed from residences for
good reason
(generally removed, but ecological discrimination is another issue) but also
banks, stores, offices, almost all business. Looking at some older cities it
becomes obvious that our modern zoning practices utterly violate the patterns
of growth that created
our cities, towns and the social structures that created this country.
The effect of this has been to eliminate the shared uses that created a sense of
community and responsibility towards each other. When employer and employee
dwell in approximately contiguous regions and use some, or many, of the same
stores, schools,
etc. then common causes are found and connections are built. The employer has a
direct, emotional stake in the well being of the employee and vice versa. The
image is simplistic and utopian, the reality a great deal messier, but in
general this works.
I've lived in some (too few) places where community was encouraged and this
became the social context of the city. The suburban dweller has no such stake
in urban businesses or people and easily allows them to fail. Any thought of
urban neighbors
becomes either fear-driven or charity. The former causes more distance and
resentment between the urban and suburban dweller. The city dweller then has
no connection or identification with the burb dweller and a relationship of
fear, charity or
indifference breeds estrangement and resentment. Apply the same sentiment to
any group that can or must live isolated from any other. None feel any
obligation or social bond except with others who are markedly similar to them.
This creates intense
isolation and discrimination. It also creates fragile and unhealthy
developments that must rely on the despised outside resources to fulfill
essential functions. The few social ties that exist are based on similarity
("oh yes, my ranch house has the
garage on the other side, how distinctive!") and class. If a community is a
"self-supporting" organic structure with shared resources (analogy to bodies
and reefs, again) then these developments, no matter how wealthy, are unhealthy
and dependent on
resources from outside. It's as if they were all on dialysis and nutritive
drips. The poorer developments lack even that and eventually smother in their
own waste or suffer starvation. Businesses thrive in the day and become
wastelands, prey to vandals
and thieves, at night. Their resources of green space and parking go wasted.
A nice countertrend is shown at Prudential Center in Boston. This
once-architectural marvel then-eyesore now blossoms past business hours with
shops and restaurants. Its proximity to the Back Bay allows symbiosis with
local residents. This is still not
an ideal mix, but it's a great deal more sustainable and well integrated than a
big mall hunched in the middle of a parking lot desert. Okay, that's a fast
attempt to view American land developments as organic systems, now what do I
mean as a practical
matter, by studying them that way?
So far as I can tell, most urban planning looks at cities from a traditional
zoning or sociological perspective, at least that was what I got from the folks
at MIT when I went looking for interested parties. I am more inclined to
analyze urban
neighborhoods as efficient systems for use, accumulation and dissemination of
"information", or blocks of resources. I view cities as differing from the
burbs in having abundant shared resources compared with the isolationist mode
of the suburbs. I've
got some ideas for how to define parameters to do this, but can really use an
interested an knowledgeable person to discuss it with. So far I believe one
starts with looking at the balance of uses, then looks to turnover and the
balance of the community
members (income, education, age, race). After that, look at how many are
employed in some function that supports or is supported by the community. Does
a bank get most of its depositors from the area? A restaurant both its
employees and clients? Do
the majority regularly shop at stores in the community? Are the schools serving
most of the community and are the graduates well-educated to take up jobs in
the community? High tech? Information services? Other industries that are
competitive and
which benefit from being placed in the community and maintaining a clean,
well-integrated place of business? Are the political agencies responsive and
effective? That's just the first set of questions that come to mind. For most
healthy towns and
cities most of those questions would be answered yes. For isolated and
unhealthy regions most of these would be no. Unhealthy regions cannot support
business, do not have a population base that answers basic physical need, and
therefore has a constant
drain of labor out. Incomers must be induced by artificial means such as
fashion or fear of other areas, because there are few jobs, theatres, shops or
other traditional draws in the area. I've lived in several states, towns,
cities and even in rural
regions. These comments are supported by my experience and the comments of
other students of urban structure further buttress me. I believe a great deal
of the social and economic distress of the country comes from this isolation.
You no longer have
shared resources, shared needs. There are very few forums where people with a
range of needs, services and ability to find answers can come together, so
everyone is less informed about need. One result is fear and discrimination.
Another is a
decreasing number of new, small entrepreneurial businesses. The entrepreneurs
that do come into existence are often fatally hampered by inadequate
information about needs and target markets. Pollsters and televised blanket
opinions are used in place of
the intimacy of daily contact that happens when people use stores, restaurants,
parks, schools and offices with other, different people. If you live with
others just like you, then you largely have the same needs but no one to answer
them, and can offer
the same services but rarely meet the people who would benefit from them.
Everyone needs to spend more to find their markets, takes greater risks and is
less responsive to the needs of the customers because they rarely meet the
customers outside the
bounds of the mercantile relationship. The upshot is more money spent to get
the same or less return, more isolation, less responsiveness, fewer new
businesses and a generally declining quality of life. Some regions are
beginning to understand and fight
this. Oregon and Washington are fighting for community building rather than
subdevelopments. Dying towns are fighting for revivification. But most of
this is based on guesswork rather than informed choices. Humans don't exist in
a specialized way,
(imagine it, "it's Thursday so I am a shopper and nothing else", or "I'm a
lawyer therefore all my bodies needs are met by what I have in the law office")
A cross-disciplinary attitude that studies the psychological, practical,
physical, animal and
rational functions of the human is just a beginning. At heart are the questions
"what is human, what is needed to support meaningful human existence, and what
will likely continue to support it in the future?" For my purposes, I add "how
can I use law
and land planning to answer those questions and needs?"
Do you know someone who'd like to banter this back and forth a bit? I've got
reams of stuff on this topic from discussions with programmers, but I couldn't
find a planner who might be interested until I came across the bulletin board.
I want to discuss
these ideas with programmers, biostaticians, information science majors,
lawyers, urban planners, urban anthropologists, psych people and other
interested parties. -Copyright Jyl Livengood, livengoo@xxxxxxxxxxxx.