IN-PERSON: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

Mental images of the world provide bases for observations, analyses, evaluations, and actions. As the challenges of the built environment become more interconnected, there is a corresponding need to develop images that allow people to comprehend how the change of a part can restructure the whole. This paper presents a framework to characterize foundational relationships that give order to complex urban areas. It considers the built environment as a purposeful, emergent, open, and self-organizing system-of-systems. Three classes of ordering mechanisms are hypothesized. “Order from above” comes about through political, security/safety, and gray infrastructure practices. “Order from below” comes about through social, economic, and information exchange practices. “Order from within” makes use of Information Communications Technology (ICT) and is increasingly important as cities become “smart.” There are two sub-ordering triplets. Combinations of political, infrastructure, and ICT-based information practices enable high-models of order from within. Combinations of social, economic, and ICT-based information practices enable low-models of order. It is recognized that the three mechanisms of order operate simultaneously, even if not equally across a given area and at a given time. Based on this theorization, opportunities to influence system structure and function within each triplet are considered. Topics related to urban dynamics, such as metabolic flows of resources, which are of central concern to urban design and landscape architecture, are highlighted. Approaches to quantitatively assess changes in the triplets are offered.