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Principles
of Urban Structure, by Nikos A. Salingaros.
In his introduction to this book,
the outspoken critic of much contemporary
architecture and planning Nikos Salingaros calls the
collection of previously-published essays a "call to
arms for those concerned with the built environment."
He further states that "mankind needs to shape and
repair its cities following some proven logic, rather than
dogma masquerading as rationality." These statements
basically explain the author's position: to improve the
built environment by educating practitioners on the application
of scientific principles to their work. Many architects
and planners working today would deny that any scientific
application is relevant, perhaps stating that architecture
embodies art as much as science and that cities are far
too complex -- encompassing political, market, and other
forces. Salingaros, Christopher Alexander and other like-minded
thinkers of course disagree, using science as a foundation
for approaching the built environment, though at times it
seems like science is also used as a rational for a historical
way of building, predating the automobile and 20th-century
Modernism.
The essays collected here attempt
to explain how cities work, as well as providing guidelines
for architects and planners to create humanizing environments.
Each essay introduces various scientific themes in relation
to the city, such as emergence, information fields and fractals.
This last is perhaps the most interesting, though misunderstood,
means of applying science to another discipline. When one
thinks of fractals, one thinks of the symmetrical repetition
of patterns at various scales, though a blind application
yields something more formal than functional, exactly what
the author is against. Instead, Salingaros explains that
the "fractal city" embeds detail and complexity
from the largest of scales to the smallest, which ties him
strongly to Christopher Alexander.
So what we have is a theory that now also includes architectural
detail, strongly uniting architecture and urbanism in opposition
to today's tendency to separate the two.
Probably the most valuable lesson
in these pages -- something that permeates just about every
essay -- is connectivity. Here, the author confronts the
single biggest problem of contemporary urban planning head
on: the automobile. As planners cater cities and developments
to the car, other means of getting around are negatively
affected, especially biking and walking. It's these small-scale
connections and means of moving about the city that need
to be strengthened for the contemporary city to be more
humanistic. It may not be the ultimate solution, but it's
a start.
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