Action and the city. Emergence, complexity, planning

Higher Density Environments and the Critical Role of City Streets as Public Open Spaces

“…Cities today, therefore, instead of being the cumulative expression of countless varied and conscious actions by many individuals, are too often the direct outcome of a single plan or design from a handful of professionals [75]. This is witnessed in the increasingly identical land-use patterns and built form across the world, whether that be unrelenting, monolithic high-rise urban fabric, or endless low-density sprawl as the two extremes.…”

“…This is because building practices and streets have become a collection of fragments that fall largely in the hands of public agencies and licensed professionals. Instead of a place "where different, sometimes conflicting, lifestyles, interests and values are intermingled" [75] (p. 43), the primary environment has become a meaningless place, absent of diversity, spontaneity and surprise, and beyond the residents' grasp. Sanford Ikeda [80] explains that: "substituting the genius of the planner for the collective genius of ordinary people diminishes the intricacy, complexity, of the social order" (in [69] p. 12).…”

“…In comparison, principle-led planning that recognises self-organisation and encourages self-building, enables the expression of an uncountable number of life plans via daily building activities. Moroni and Cozzolino [75] (p. 44) point out that "[t]ypical examples are the common 'organic' morphological patterns that have emerged without rigid city plans, the hidden logic of the built environment or the different local building types". In the case of Almere in the Netherlands, an innovative 'organic area development' is fundamentally led by a framework-rule that is simple and generic.…”

Revisiting architectural landmarks

“…Church of Peter and Paul, the Protection Church, the Church of All Saints, the Church of Elijah, and the Iversky Convent) 5. Some of relatively small, low-belfry churches located amid street buildings in small spaces on the corners of intersecting streets (the Assumption Church on the corner of former Uspenskaya and Preobrazhenskaya streets) or in the gap between residential buildings, slightly set back from the building line (the Mariinsky Orphanage Church) Note that in addition to the landmarks, the large architectural complexes of the Iversky Convent, the Vakano Brewery, the drama theater, and some other buildings that stood out in that they used nonstandard architectural solutions played a major part in forming the original outlines and panoramas of the city [12].…”

Framework rules for self-organizing cities: Introduction

“…Self-organization is a key mechanism through which cities spontaneously and dynamically evolve and adjust to changing circumstances (Allen, 1997;Batty, 2005;Portugali, 2000). It entails an emerging process: place-based actions and interactions of an unrestricted number of urban agents produce certain physical, social and economic patterns at a global level that in turn coordinate the expectations and actions of actors at the local level (Moroni and Cozzolino, 2019). While providing cities with the capacity to adapt, the spontaneous nature of urban self-organization also challenges planning aspirations .…”