Emergent Urbanism

Rediscovering Urban Complexity

complexity

The mathematical definition of a city

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Thu, 10/18/2007 - 00:31, last updated Sun, 11/06/2011 - 01:09

20th century professional urbanism is the story of a war on complexity in order to control urbanization.

The modernists rebelled against the "mess" of the city. They put everything in their place. In this square shall be the houses. In that square the offices. In that square the stores. In some form of another, this system, called zoning, is in force over 99% of the American continent. Its main advantage is that it is incredibly lazy.

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