Cities of Complexity

! Helene Furjan presents a complex and unique concept in her paper, “Cities of Complexity.” There are 4 dominant themes surrounding the text and the topic at heart which touch on the contemporary and classical views of urban city structure and design. The topics cover everything from Typologies and topologies, Urban Networks, Glo-cal Worlds, and Bottom-Up Urbanism. These four themes all relate back to the bedrock theory of Manuel Castells whom stated that, “our society is constructed around flows.” These are the interactive, dynamic, network systems in which our urban ecologies and social organizations are designed upon.

! The first theory of organization is that of the shift between typologies and topologies with respect to design and network layout. The simple typology theory states that in classical urban network design lies within the idea of determining “how units of interconnected systems can be represented spatially in relation to one another.” Simply put, how hierarchal elements within the urban grid can be composed in such a way that they have some sort of relatable characteristic and dynamic relevance. This is then compared to the contemporary theory of space dynamics, which is topological. This design approach lends itself to a more dynamic, reactive, responsive, and infinitely complex mesh layout which is not bound by limits or dependent factors like the typological approach is. This approach looks at spaces as “smooth” rather than grid-like, looking at them as organic in nature rather than artificially structured according to predetermined importance. It will be seen how this theory more closely relates to the forthcoming design techniques, in the sense of interconnectivity, responsiveness, and physical and social dynamics.

! The next theory of spatial organization within the urban setting is the idea of urban networks and the abstraction of that base concept to application past the physical realm. This idea was first uncovered by Harry Beck in 1931 when looking at the London Underground map system. He realized that the routes and stops of the underground system relied less on the nodal stops opposed to the relations of the lines. This essentially means that the system deterritorializes and gave no hierarchal value to these stops, or nodes, thus creating a collective assemblage that creates a network. This detracts from the historical context previously discussed in the fact that that system relied completely on territorial and hierarchal nodes, based upon importance and relevance. This theory was then constructed upon and applied to the urban architectural setting. With this idea in hand, architects then started to add layers to this complex network. There were network layers for infrastructure, transportation, buildings, people, communications, goods, and more. They essentially compared the layout of a city to the organic and biological network of the food web and related its dynamic characteristics to that of such. With the concept of urban networks, the construction and physical complexity of cities were growing, in the sense of size and intellect. Structure and organization no longer relied on just the physical realm, but the idea of designing with people in mind, and treating the urban fabric as a living dynamic entity.

! The forthcoming concept or evolution of urban network organization is the concept of Glo-cal Worlds. This concept takes the urban fabric and launches it into the information age where a global economy and global communication is a click or call away. In the past the complex networks or the city structure, centralized or decentralized, were in many ways isolated to themselves, and thus still held a nodal and hierarchal place within a lager grid-work of contextual cities. However, in the world of the digital age, urban structure is viewed with a globalist approach where the design is “scale-free: a complex organizational architecture that is both deterritorialized and concentrated.” This essentially means that because information, goods, and resources can be traded electronically the need for centralized nodal powers are not needed because the scale has lost all meaning or relevance. Now these power cities are acting as nodes within an infinite global scale, in which sense they link up and concentrate rather than integrate. There is no longer a primary need to focus on territories or spatial awareness, rather all resources within generalized areas have been concentrated to one specific nodal element and is then dispersed to an infinite number of locations, thus creating a virtual network fabric with the nodal entities relying of degrees of connectivity to evaluate their worth, rather than physical hierarchal importance.

! The final evolution and conceptual theory of urban organization is the practice of Bottom-Up design. In short this theory explains where the concept of Glo-cal worlds will travel once completely integrated. It states that glo-cal worlds focuses on a heavily concentrated and interconnected network system in which goods are valued and nodal prominence is decided upon which resources a geographic region holds. Because information and goods can be transported easily, essentially the super powers of the resource trade control the entire complex network. Bottom-up urban theory suggests that the way in which the world is moving towards with its glo-cal tendencies is half wrong. It states that with the immense advancements in theory and understanding of urban networks, we need to take a step back and find out how we can evolve this model into a more efficient model. It suggests extrapolating information and taking advantage of the interconnectivity which we have and finding the weak and strong points. By doing this we can find the pros and cons within the global infrastructure and relate them back to the local scale. In this sense it is meshing all of the theories covered in the discussed rhetoric. By essentially looking back at the smaller scale grid network, we can find these spatial hierarchies and strong nodal points and reevaluate their effectiveness relatable to the global communication network. The metaphor used in the text is that of a termite colony and its complex parallel organization. It is important that from the very foundation on which the urban network is designed upon, that even the lowest hierarchal network can be integrated and communicated easily with the higher hierarchal nodal elements within the global grid.

! Essentially, all of the urban network and organizational theories discussed all relate to each other in one way or another. They are all different in program and intention, however, each is a variation from the last, evolving out of necessity and dominance. With exception of bottom-up design, which takes a full circle approach saying that the contemporary techniques of the modern day urban setting have lost touch with fundamental values and can greatly benefit from integrating foundation concepts into itself to create a holistic urban fabric which strives for maximum efficiency and allows for natural advancement and evolution unto the next urban organizational paradigm.