emergence

The manifesto of the Emergent Urbanism Network

Mathieu Helie — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:33:34 +0000

As the idea of an emergent urbanism has become more popular, I'm receiving more and more emails asking me to look over some link or another and provide an opinion of the content. As I have unfortunately limited time, I cannot answer many of these requests. This led me to the realization that this little website needs to take a new, bold step into becoming something more than a blog/lesson, into an experiment in a new type of media.

Emergent Urbanism at the University of Montreal

Mathieu Helie — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:24:33 +0000

I was invited to the complex systems laboratory of the Université de Montréal this week to present emergent urbanism to their twenty-member large research group. Click through to SlideShare in order to see the full text of the presentation under the "notes on" tab. The entire text is in French, however I know a significant share of this website's visitors enjoy French once in a while.

Fake complexity: traffic control

Mathieu Helie — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 22:23:57 +0000

The University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute has produced a handy little flash game where you can experience the life of a traffic planner in a series of increasingly complicated traffic challenges.

Principles published

Mathieu Helie — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:57:37 +0000

The full article conceptualizing the principles of emergent urbanism has been published by the International Journal of Architectural Research volume 3 issue 2. You can download the complete article or read the whole issue.

The Cultivation of a Spontaneous City

Mathieu Helie — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:11:57 +0000

This is the last of a series of excerpts from my article in the upcoming issue of the International Journal of Architectural Research, about the principles of emergent urbanism. Click here for part I, The Journey to Emergence. Click here for part II, The Fundamentals of Urban Complexity.

Modeling the processes of urban emergence

Mathieu Helie — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:57:11 +0000

Organization and intelligence

Mathieu Helie — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:00:49 +0000

1. Sun Tzu said: The control of a large force
is the same principle as the control of a few men:
it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers.

2. Fighting with a large army under your command
is nowise different from fighting with a small one:
it is merely a question of instituting signs and signals.
- From The Art of War by Sun Tzu

The Journey to Emergence

Mathieu Helie — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:00:00 +0000

This is part I of a series of excerpts of an article to be published in the International Journal of Architectural Research entitled The Principles of Emergent Urbanism. Additional parts will be posted on this blog with the editor's permission until the complete article appears exclusively in the journal's upcoming issue.

Squaring the circle

Mathieu Helie — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:42:38 +0000

The complex grid

Mathieu Helie — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:52:42 +0000

In a medieval-era city the pace of urban growth is slow to a point where the growth of the city is not consciously noticed. Buildings are added sporadically, in random shape and order, as the extremely scarce economic situation makes no other pattern possible. Typically this means that the shape of streets will match the existing natural paths of movement, giving the street network an organic structure that is preserved through successive transformations in the urban fabric.

Chaos re-emerges

Mathieu Helie — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 19:22:17 +0000

1960's psychedelic art?

Or the American landscape?

Decoding paradise - the emergent form of Mediterranean towns

Mathieu Helie — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:43:34 +0000

Serifos in Greece

Producing land with nested markets

Mathieu Helie — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 19:57:26 +0000

The Poundbury Grid, from Streets and Patterns by Stephen Marshall

Creating the emergent dimension, or learning from Wikipedia

Mathieu Helie — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:29:40 +0000

In Architecture: Choice or Fate, his manifesto for New Urbanism, classicist Leon Krier produced many inspirational images of urban complexity, going as far as a fractal comparison of modern and traditional buildings. The cover of the book, a fictional resort town for Tenerife, presents a fascinating case study of complex symmetry; no building is the same as another, but all share the same geometric properties. That would not be unusual had it not been an architectural manifesto.

The emergent dimension, or why New Urbanism is not urbanism

Mathieu Helie — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 01:22:25 +0000

There are two methods for producing fractal geometry. The first method, the decomposition, is the most easily understood. In a decomposition we apply an algorithm that breaks up the geometry of some starting point into several parts. We then re-apply this algorithm to the smaller parts created, obtain many more, even smaller parts, and continue this reiteration until we have reached the complexity limit at the smallest scale of object we can possibly make. This is how an architectural design proceeds because it reflects the way that building proceeds.