Applying Principles from Complex Adaptive Systems Theory towards Urban Planning Strategies
Sharon Ackerman, PhD Candidate, Spatial Planning
A test case that replaces the design of urban objects with the choreography of urban processes….
Background:
- Urban Design Background (North American) - Interested in what Complexity thinking can add to cities (life and resilience!)
- Try to understand generic processes in CAS - Translate CAS principles for design - Interest in relational processes that occur by means of design interventions, rather then preceding design interventions
Presentation:
- Discussion of Relational strategies that use principles of complexity as understood in European Planning Literature
- Discussion of Design Tactics that employs relational/ complex processes for design unfolding in space
- ̒Thought Experiment' (competition entry for Winnipeg, Canada)
Complexity and Relational Processes adopted in planning (representative approaches):
- Healey: Communicative - Batty: Computational - Hillier: Post-Structuralist/Assemblage
Emphasis on Discourse, Story-Telling and the complexity of the social agents that are implicated in spatial politics
- “notamoreadequatetheoriza/onofspace,butinsteadatheoriza/onofspa/alrhetoricandofspa/alimaginingasthisformsthecoreofaspa/alpoli/cs”‐Malpas
Spatially Enacted Complex Unfolding – a few samples…. PopUpHood, Oakland - 1 vacated city block - 6 months free rent - 7 start up businesses
Low risk entry into the market place plus critical mass.
Spatially Enacted Complex Unfolding ʻPlay me Iʼm Yoursʼ : Pianos, Toronto - 41 pianos distributed around the city - impromptu concerts, sing-a-longs, gatherings - activation of underused urban sites
Pianos act to probe the latent social capacities of various sites.
Spatially Enacted Complex Unfolding Pop Rocks, Vancouver - Large scale bean bag chairs distributed along one city block - umbrellas - Invites citizens to ʻsocialize, rest, eat or read a book in the heart of downtownʼ
Spatially Enacted Complex Unfolding - Raw/Almond Restaurant (architecture gallery/restaurant) - 1 frozen river, 1 table for 20 - 3 weeks, 3 settings per night - Minus 30 degrees Celsius
Occupying the frozen Red River and changing the perception of winter activity in the city.
Common Orientation: ʻLighter, Quicker, Cheaperʼ (LQC- Eric Reynolds) (also called Tactical Urbanism)
Common Traits: - Create Juxtapositions: novel spatial connections - Probe Lightly: low investment, failure acceptable - Explore Widely: get feedback on ʻfitʼ configurations
Competition Entry: Portage and Main, Winnipeg - Design for key civic intersection - Pedestrians had been pushed underground by barricades - Surrounding areas suffering from lack of pedestrian activity - Many vacated sites, surface parking lots, boarded shops
Team saw the problems of the intersection as being driven by relational factors that implicated the downtown as a whole.
Site Analysis: 7 x 7 x 7:
Spaces = Niches
Programs= Species
Days = Iterations
Generative Matrix
Iterations and Feedback loops that support fitness evolution - Intersections of the matrix act as probes of fitness potentials: Saturday in July + Streets to claim + Urban play = Urban beach
What this planning strategy could offer…
Sharon Ackerman, PhD Candidate, Spatial Planning
- speeds up the evolutionary capacity of cities by generating possibilities - failure is an option! - lots of tests means chances of finding good strategies (and entrenching those) - provides a way to get around bureaucratic ʻlock-inʼ by creating a pathway to creative city uses - information about the relative fitness of interventions is provided at a high level of resolution due to being enacted rather than forecasted
Questions?
Sharon Ackerman, PhD Candidate, Spatial Planning
‘Thetaskofcityplanninghasbecomelessoneofproducingthesimpleorderof‘ra/onal’urbanplans,butoneofhowbesttogenerateandmaintainthefunc/onalcomplexity–orcomplexfunc/onality–tradi/onallypossessedbyci/es…Thesomewhatparadoxicalchallengeofplanningthenbecomesoneofhowto‘plan’akindofcomplexitythatseemstohavearisen‘naturally’intradi/onalci/es,withoutplanning.’‐StephenMarshall2012
