143 The most fruitful area for enquiry lies between these two extremes, where emer-
gent behaviour, the behaviour at a meta level, is studied but not attributed a purpose. A weak civitas would therefore hold the position that the environment of the city influences individuals and individuals influence the environment of the city. in a similar way to weak Gaia, this would yield few results beyond common sense. A strong civitas might say that a city has its own purpose and is completely beyond the control of the inhabitants.
The positions Dejan Sudjic takes in The 100 mile city (Sudjic, 1992) and Rem Kool- haas in Whatever happened to urbanism?( Koolhaas, 1995) seem to be the equivalent of a strong civitas: the city develops in ways of its own, ways often in complete contradic- tion and contrary to the intentions of urban design professionals.
Complexity based analyses of social patterns as emergent behaviour based feel wrong. Of course, it is entirely possible they are wrong – I will discuss the limitations to modelling below. But they feel wrong be- cause complexity equates the behaviour of bits, neurons and ants with the same importance as people, as human beings. This lack of emphasis on the status of people and their importance to systems is made explicit in the key concepts of the Gaia hypothesis:
(3) Humans have no special place or role in Gaia…
(8) [biomineralization] in some ways blurs the distinctions between living and non-living things
Scofeild, 2004:151
There is no doubt that little special value is placed on humanity in this theory; even the min- eral organisation becomes elevated in importance while humans are demoted, in out own eyes at least. These concepts do not translate completely to the city as unlike the biosphere the city is built
with intent by people. People therefore do have a special role in civitas. A parallel appli- cation of biomineralization to civitas (the city mineralization process referred to by De Landa ) would be that the city is a blurred living/non-living entity. This is an under- standing which elevates the status of the city from inanimate built form and so alters the comparative status of the human and their built environment.
The differences between complexity and reductionism arise from the multiple un- derstandings acknowledged in complexity theory, as well as the importance of bottom- up processes rather than top-down implementation, values that easily find social and political favour. In fact, humility seems to be a common response in complexicists, who are required to always be aware their systems are unknowable and unpredictable. This is exemplified by Stuart Koffman:
145 If one can never know of the next footstep is
the one that will unleash the landslide of the century, then it pays to tread carefully. In such a poised world, we must give up on the pretense of long-term prediction. We cannot know the true consequences of our own best ac- tions. All we players can do is be locally wise, not globally wise.
(Kauffman, 1995:29)
Despite the newness of complexity theory, many of the results of complexity are not new and do not overturn all previous knowledge. Many of the princi- ples or results have been discussed for centuries. Exam- ples of this are Aristotle’s ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ (wholism) and the Bible with ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer’ (power laws). Part of the tactics of this research has been to fit writers (in particular de Certeau) into a framework of complexity and find a close match.
One of the appeals of using complexity theory is
that it does not seek to eliminate any one form of knowing the world, but tends to accept existing epistemologies as special cases. In contrast to a post modernist ap- proach, which can appear to denigrate scien- tific thought, complexity instead sees a re- ductionist scientific investigation as rigorous and valuable when the system studied is simple and yet, when complex, is liable to produce the dis-information that is so rightly decried by postmodernists when the system studied is complex.
applying complexity to the city is the limitations of the applicability of results derived from the use of modelled results to the real world (Schneider et al., 1991: 37). This is the problem climate change prediction has. A very large amount of climate change is studied through the use of computer models. This lays it open to the (correct) criticism that modelling cannot truly prove that climate change exists in the real world. The same is true of all complexity arguments; they are un-provable in the real world. Even the simplest of complexity models, Per Bak’s sandpiles, does not com- pletely model the actual behaviour of real sand. Models of complex sys- tems involving human behaviour are, of course, even less likely to be com- pletely described by computer models.
From a methodological point of view, model experiments are only in some respects similar to real experiments. .... The main differ- ence from real experiments is, of course, that the scientist is interacting with a representation of a material object and not directly with the object itself. In the evaluation of model re- sults, therefore, the reliabilityof the model (i.e. the scientific quality of the representation of the object of study) is always at issue.
(Schneider et al., 1991:37)
Despite these problems, many results from complexity modelling show such closeness to ob- served behaviour that the study of complexity de- mands attention. It is through the continual work of attempting to find correspondence between the ob- served world with the predicted world that that theo- retical positions find validity.
147 Working without a knowledge of, and a
method suitable for, complex systems can mean that form and process in a design work against each other. Working with it can mean that form and process work together to amplify positive effects. Because of the morphological effects, this process will carry on ‘designing’ without the di- rect intervention of the designer.
Complexity theory and design interact on many levels. Design is created by an evolutionary process within the environment of culture and
this materialisation of culture in turn creates the environment for culture to evolve in. Evolution of form can be forced using agent based modelling. Moreover, careful attention to designing with processes, the iterations and interactions and so work with, rather than against, the effects of complexity.
Design in this view is not an end point, something that can be completed. Design instead works like a seed, a potential start point for the transfiguring of space. If form and process are one (complex) unitary system, then the adjusting or changing of form is only a partial response to spatial design. A complete spatial design addresses an adjust- ing or change (or of course a conscious decision to retain) the processes that exist in that space. Time is an important factor in this, as processes unfold and emergence occurs over time. Does this mean spatial design is not ‘finished’ at any particular point? The unfold- ing emergence of the space is under continual evolution – in a metaphorical sense space
Summary
is an organism that is designing, making itself, so ideally the designer (co-creator) should be involved through time, and with the process.
Determinism is also addressed in this project. I believe that determinist design has been seen as a fail- ure because determinist design in the past has been ag- gressively reductionist in its approach. Dealing with almost any system involving living things is complex. Making reductionism an incomplete way of working with the system. Complexity theory implies that our actions have agency, and sometimes catalytic agency, but we cannot have global knowledge of the whole sys- tem. Taking a theoretical stance that claims to design in a non-determinist way does not absolve one of actual determinist effect in a complex system. Kauffman puts it that as we cannot be globally wise, we must attempt to be locally wise and brings up the image of Per Bak’s sandpiles, always on the edge of chaos, where moving one grain of sand can start an avalanche and we never know which grain of sand that will be. We still have to move – but it is a good idea to move awfully carefully in such a system! (Kauffman,1995:29).
Thackara gives these design guides:
From blueprint and plan to sense and respond
• From high concept to deep context
• From top-down to edge- seeding effects
• From blank sheets of paper to smart recombination
149 • From science fiction to social fiction
• From designing for people to designing with us
• From design as a project to design as a service (Thackara,2005,213).
In conclusion, design, through constructing forms that allow/ disallow interactions, inescapably constructs the processes working in that space. Constructing the processes influences the emergent/self-organising behaviour. The process can then go on to influence the way ‘mineralisation’ occurs, in effect designing itself. Ways of working with this complexity would likely centre on Green et al’s trio: change agents, change structure or change interaction
Perhaps modernism works in artefacts that have linear functions rather than non-linear functions. There is still beauty in minimalism, but we cannot seek it in complex systems.
Seek out the feedback devices in the system. Modernism had a ten- dency to feedback to the machine – not only did a machine aesthetic and functioning inspire modernist design, but efficiency in manufacturing added another machinic feedback to the design system.
Our intuitions about the requirements for order have, I contend, been wrong for millen- nia. We do not need careful construction; we do not require crafting. We require only that extremely complex webs of interacting ele- ments are sparsely coupled. (Kauffman, 1995:84)
This is the way in which the design of an infra- structure of interaction can contribute to this ordering
of interactions in the city. Designing to allow for sparsely coupled interactions is different design aim from the idea of careful construction of, or crafting of, the city. Lucien Kroll says
When everything is designed, it too easily becomes a sort of con- centration camp...we should instead try to organise a climate where a kind of friendly organisation is able to emerge spontane- ously. We know there are naughty architectures and we should avoid them....We should speak about and make gentle architectures. I think the definition of a good architecture is one where people are friendly because of the architecture. Perhaps this is fuzzy, but it means something..." (2005:183)
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