Being critical about emergence

Reading this chapter, I was able to put all the readings about emergence, complexity, evolutionary and adaptive discourses. I had been struggling for some clarity for a while.

A few months ago I wrote this article trying to lay out for myself the variety of different discourse. I had been criticised by peers when trying to converse about complexity and design, my peers finding it difficult to find consistency in the dialogue. I don't think it was necessarily my fault... it's just that the discourse suffers from a lack of criticality generally when it comes to what certain terms mean. evolution and emergence both have a variety of connotations and semiotic 'baggage' which accompanies them. THis makes critical discourse very difficult to engage in.

This article by Bachman allocates these discourses into four categories: wicked, messy, ordered and natural. ALthough this doesn't clear the discourse, it allows an alternative way of looking at the variety of materials which regard complexity and the built environment.

...Although I am sure that Christopher Alexander would take offence with being categorised as messy: it does make the dialogues of complexity a little easier to navigate.

microplexes - a study in emergent urbanism

I found this on emergenturbanism.net and found it very informative, drilling deep into potentials of interpreting emergent urbaism in the context of biology, social networking systems, and computer optimisation.

Discussing the work of Mathieu Helie:

Through this model Helie attempts to show how policy can reduce its predictive role in projecting growth through costly, speculative infrastructure investment, and reduce its organisational role in dictating precisely how growth occurs. The outcome, or so he claims, is sustainable growth based on dense urban form. It’s not without its complications however, as these kind of models are essentially behavioural models for planners and contain ideological statements about policy. They are also still simplistic.

But by building software models with these kind of growth rules, where policy acts like instructional DNA as opposed to the agent of a total, centralised vision, we can analyse how self-organisation can create urban environments with different connectivity properties to our contemporary cities and compare those differences.

SLUM UPGRADING examples in Brazil

SLUM UPGRADING in Sao Paulo has begun to reap some rewards. This report shows how changes in the approach to a new somewhat 'emergent' policy has moved it from political and well meaning rhetoric to actualisation.

http://citiscope.org/2010/no-excuses-slum-upgrading

Parkour Park In Denmark

Sweet as!, although for me it begins to take Parkour out of the public realm as soon as boundaries for these activities are created, and the appropriation becomes more standardised. I feel the same-way about skateboarding, in that when specific spaces begin to be created for these actions... then it looses something. Instead of responding to the environments, the environments respond to the repertoire of actions... and the initiative and the action of appropriation which is at the heart of the discipline becomes a little lost.

Another Abstraction to the Digital Realm

This really cool bit of software development allows the participant (intended for the use of landscape arch students) to use the insurgent techniques of 'part' of guerilla gardening in order to explore new landscape typologies and contexts.

http://www.designundersky.com/dus/2010/2/25/ludic-guerrilla-gardening-drone-warfare.html

I have some concerns though. Firstly, why do we need to abstract Guerilla Gardening, just like we have done to the Co-Adaptive Architecture movements of the late 70's and 80's.

Secondly, how can Guerilla Gardening work when it is removed from the real social and urban structures which it relies so heavily upon? Guerilla Gardening fails when it fails to generate committment and 'cultural investment' by participants... primarily because guerilla gardens... like any garden, requires to be maintained if it is not to go from productive intervention to smelly community eyesore. The real (un-hyped) Guerilla Gardening movement stress approaches to management, community involvement and is much more of a semi-candelstine activity than you would think.

The Guerilla Gardening movement in Brisbane that was initiated by 'Swaggie' (not by any means the only instance of Brisbane guerilla gardening) saw an initial involvement of over 100 participants in the streets of West End... but participation quickly fell to a committed 10-15 people. There was a very substantial amount of top-heavy administrative work required, and the particpants who were involved on a 'digger' level were often from outlying areas travelling to be part of the activity for the novelty or because they believed in the idea. After about 4 months of co-ordinated digging, bombing and planning the 'Swaggie' GG movement ran out of steam. This was despite the very best of intentions to develop local contacts, get press recognition, develop a 'leadership structure' and generate local involvement. Guerilla Gardening as a sustainable movement, needs to be able to be sustained by the participants on a community level and not an adminstrative one. And it needs 'vested interest'.
Plus.. the semi-subversive nature which this 'game' removes accounts for about 75% of the enjoyment in Guerilla Gardening... why would you want to do that?

In short.. I think Guerilla Gardening is a much deeper concept than this game might portray, and it has many more wide ranging possibilities for it's employ, beyond the education of landscape architecture students. It also has a lot more serious constraints that need to be negotiated...

So will Guerilla Gardening take the route of Co-Adaptive Urbanism?... or will people put the effort in to make it happen???... we shall see...

West Oakland: Upscaling Neighborhood, or Reviving Industrial Hub? | Planetizen

conflict over appropriation/organic models of development and top-down authoritative approaches here:West Oakland: Upscaling Neighborhood, or Reviving Industrial Hub? | Planetizen

Zoning for Food Trucks | Planetizen

Zoning for Food Trucks | Planetizen