IN-PERSON London. Section A

Abstract

The term “antifragile” characterizes systems that improve after being exposed to disorder and disturbance. This paper reviews positions on antifragility across disciplines and provides an approach to conceptualize dense urban areas as potential antifragile systems. With regards to city planning and design practices, antifragility can expand the normative pursuits of sustainability (conserving resources and questions of moral uncertainties) and resilience (withstanding shock and adaptation and questions of epistemological uncertainties). It does so assuming a context of ontological uncertainty and that marginal, cumulative quantitative change in performance capacity results in qualitative change in system behavior and possibly change in system state. Further, these changes may result in increased capabilities and capacities to manage previously unexperienced or unknown kinds of disturbance. Towards livable cities, it builds upon considerations of urban areas as coupled biophysical-social systems but allows for emergence of new relationships to meet or better meet evolving needs. The paper offers a framework for comparative studies of urban system forms and functions, including the identification of critical tipping points. A basis for understanding ordering and governance mechanisms within complex urban systems is paired with a basis to grade disturbances by their intensity and the extent of their effects. Exposure to increasing or new types of disturbance prompts responses with different effects. Marginal gains in capacity to manage disruption (becoming more antifragile) or losses (becoming more fragile) emerge through re-allocation or re-distribution of resources. Transformative improvement or deterioration may come though fundamental re-ordering of systems. Issues for experimental validation will be presented.