Cities are multifaceted, complex ecosystems that are deceptively easy to oversimplify. A city’s complexity is a consequence of its physical size, population density, size, health and inellegence, cultural mixes, the technologies utilized to meet the needs, and satisfy the desires of the people, geography, climate, environmental pressures, and much more. All these variables, as well as the social dynamics of control and management of cities, are what differentiates cities from all other social constructs of humanity. As people and social groups differ from each other so do cities. There is no one solution for an entire city.
There are those who revel in the complexity of systems built by people for people that brings together a myriad of individual actors and social groups to cities. They welcome the human chaos taking place within and between building and transportation systems designed to increase human interaction and exposure to different neighborhoods and communities. There are others who are not drawn to cities organized complexities, individual uniqueness. and chaos. The end goal in urban design is always to increase control and reduce the complexity of interaction that ingratiates their senses. The panaceas always include modifications applied to the entirety of a city. This type of human being must decrease interaction, standardize look, and separate. Codes, zoning, and form are used to carve out urban ends that bring order and control. Those who are from the former group will not purpose solutions that reduce or harms the city characteristics they love. No highways that Alice up cities like a pizza, endless blocks of apartment complexes, or office parks in their solutions or plans. The latter group will uniformity and control impose. Their ideal of a great city is the antithesis of the former group’s ideal of a city.
When looking for answers to a city’s problem, mayors, administrators, politicians, and groups and residents need to know the orientation of the urban planners and architects providing answers and solutions. Too many solutions have been implemented based on the recommendation of the latter which leaves cities worse off than they were.
Fundamentals:
– Great cities have great neighborhoods.
– Great cities create great nations.
– Capital cities end up feeding off of cities.
– Capital cities derive power from cities.
– Capital Bureactats serve only their self interests.
– Capital cities destroy their nation’s greatness by eviscerating the cities they govern.
– Urban needs are always in flux.
Artificial Intelligence will never model society offer solutions that yield positive results because the AI can not be human.
Principals of Methodology:
– No urban plan will work when too much weight is given to computer simulations.
– Economic projections are never accurate.
– It is the bane of humanity that strives to order the world and cities to accept humanity itself is never orderly and is subject to the limitations imposed by Chaos Theory.
– Markov chains Monte Carlo simulation, Bayesian statistics, AI and many other computational methods can never equal the decisions making ability of a mayor and administrators who know their city.
Economic and social behavior models are always wrong over the long term and re useful only in short term forecasts because the subject matter modeled is nonlinear.
– Disease vectors and disease prevention have to be addressed.
– The more dynamic a city, the shorter the efficacy if an urban plan..
City Solutions Institute 