Masterplanning the Adaptive City

Howard, Lewis Mumford, Frank Lloyd Wright, Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander,
Aldo Rossi, the Krier brothers, and numerous others the paradigm of the organic is
a persistent theme, initially as an undercurrent in modernism, and can serve to
guide urbanism in a century of massive urban change. 
Beyond simplistic metaphors, the behaviors of the mechanisms deployed 
in the city are sensitive, responsive, and adaptive.
70
One of the central questions
raised in later chapters is the inherent, paradoxical debate between notions 
of “collective intelligence” as a means of understanding and producing 
urbanism, versus a single masterplanner or designer responsible for urbanism’s
present and future. The city is a new kind of man-made nature, increasingly
understood and modelled according to the associative logic of natural and
biological systems. 
NOTES
1
> L. Mumford (1961) The City in History (San Diego: Harvest/HBJ Book), 58. 
2
> Mumford, The City in History, 13. 
3
> K. Davis (1965) “The Urbanisation of the Human Population,” in The City Reader, eds. R.T.
LeGates and F. Stout (London: Routledge), 20. 
4
> F. Otto (2009) Occupying and Connecting: Thoughts on Territories and Spheres of Influence
with Particular Reference to Human Settlement (Stuttgart: Edition Axel Menges), 58. 
5
> V. Gordon Childe (1925) The Dawn of European Civilization (London: Kegan Paul). 
6
> R.T. LeGates and F. Stout, (1996) “Introduction to Part One: The Evolution of Cities,” in
The City Reader, ed. R.T. LeGates and F. Stout (London: Routledge), 31. 
7
> N. Schoenauer (1982) 6000 Years of Housing (New York: Norton & Co.), 9. 
8
> J. Attali (2001) “The Roman System, or the Generic in All Times and Tenses,” in
Mutations, ed. R. Koolhaas, S. Boeri, S. Kwinter, N. Tazi, and H.U. Obrist (Barcelona: Actar), 22.
9
> Vitruvius (1914) The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. M.H. Morgan (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard).
10
> N. Schoenauer (1982) 6000 Years of Housing (New York: Norton & Co.), 12.
11
> J. Burry and M. Burry (2010) The New Mathematics of Architecture (New York: Thames &
Hudson), 158.
12
> J. Rykwert (1976) The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy and
the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA: MIT), 188.
13
> A. Andraos, R. El-Samahy, P. Heyda, et al. (2001) “How to Build a City: Roman Operating
System,” in Mutations, ed. R. Koolhaas, S. Boeri, S. Kwinter, N. Tazi, and H.U. Obrist (Barcelona:
Actar), 11. 
14
> P. Geddes (1915) Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and
to the Study of Civics (London: Williams). 
15
> D.G. Shane (2011) Urban Design Since 1945: A Global Perspective (London: Wiley), 28.
16
> L. Mumford (1934) Technics and Civilisation (New York: Harvest), 108–110.
17
> F. Otto (2009) Occupying and Connecting: Thoughts on Territories and Spheres of Influence
with Particular Reference to Human Settlement (Stuttgart: Edition Axel Menges), 55.
18
> A. Picon (2010) “Nature, Infrastructures, and the Urban Condition,” in Ecological
Urbanism, ed. M. Mostafavi and G. Doherty (Baden: Lars Müller), 520.
19
> L. Mumford (1986) The Lewis Mumford Reader, ed. D.L. Millner (Athens, GA: University of
Georgia Press), 231.
20
> R.T. LeGates and F. Stout (2011) “Editor’s Introduction,” in The City Reader, ed. R.T.
LeGates and F. Stout (London: Routledge), 599.
21
> J. Gottmann (1961) Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United
States (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund). 
22
> D.G. Shane (2011) Urban Design Since 1945: A Global Perspective (London: Wiley), 22, 140.
23
> Shane, Urban Design Since 1945, 254.
24
> Shane, Urban Design Since 1945, 254. 
25
> S. Sassen (2001) “The Global City: Introducing a Concept and its History,” in Mutations,
ed. R. Koolhaas, S. Boeri, S. Kwinter, N. Tazi, and H.U. Obrist (Barcelona: Actar), 105.
26
> N. Brenner and R. Kiel (2011) “From Global Cities to Globalised Urbanisation,” in The City
Reader, ed. R.T. LeGates and F. Stout (London: Routledge), 600.
18
TOM VEREBES

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27
> S. Johnson (2001) Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software
(London: Penguin), 106.
28
> S. Sassen (2011) “The Impact of the New Technologies and Globalisation on Cities,” in
The City Reader, ed. R.T. LeGates and F. Stout (London/New York: Routledge), 556.
29
> S. Sassen (2001) “The Global City: Introducing a Concept and Its History,” in Mutations,
ed. R. Koolhaas, S. Boeri, S. Kwinter, N. Tazi, and H.U. Obrist (Barcelona: Actar), 105.
30
> M. Castells (1996) The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Blackwell), 380.
31
> Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 398.
32
> S. Shaviro (2003) Connected, or What it Means to Live in the Network Society (Minnesota:
Regents), 134.
33
> C. Waldheim and A. Berger (2008) “Logistics Landscape,” Landscape Journal 27, no. 2:
220. 
34
> Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 151.
35
> S. Sassen (2001) “The Global City: Introducing a Concept and its History,” in Mutations,
ed. R. Koolhaas, S. Boeri, S. Kwinter, N. Tazi, and H.U. Obrist (Barcelona: Actar), 113.
36
> S. Sassen (2008) “Disaggregating the Global Economy,” in Shanghai Transforming, ed. I.
Gil (Barcelona: Actar), 84.
37
> S. Kwinter (2011) Requiem for the City at the End of the Millennium (Barcelona: Actar), 31–33.
38
> Quoted in H.U. Obrist (2011) “Introduction,” in Project Japan, R. Koolhaas and H.U. Obrist
(Köln: Taschen), 18.
39
> R. Koolhaas and H.U. Obrist (2011) Project Japan (Köln: Taschen), 187.
40
> Obrist, “Introduction,” 18.
41
> M. Wigley (2007) “The Architectural Brain,” in Network Practices: New Strategies in
Architecture and Design, ed. A. Burke and T. Tierney (New York: Princeton), 36.
42
> Johnson, Emergence, 113.
43
> Johnson, Emergence, 113.
44
> A. Burke (2007) “Redefining Network Paradigms,” in Network Practices: New Strategies in
Architecture and Design, ed. A. Burke and T. Tierney (New York: Princeton), 56.
45
> S. Shaviro, Connected, 10.
46
> Wigley, “The Architectural Brain,” 36.
47
> Mumford, The City in History, 74–75.
48
> F. Otto, Occupying and Connecting, 110.
49
> Mumford, The City in History, 13.
50
> Johnson, Emergence, 110.
51
> R. Koolhaas (1995) “Whatever Happened to Urbanism?” in S, M, L, XL, OMA, R. Koolhaas,
and B. Mau (Rotterdam: 010).
52
> Kwinter, Requiem for the City, 81.
53
> G. Deleuze and F. Guattari (1988) A Thousand Plateaus (London: Althlone), 174.
54
> Shaviro, Connected, 3.
55
> Mumford, Technics and Civilisation, 372.
56
> Mumford, The City in History, 184.
57
> In Koolhaas and Obrist, Project Japan, 58.
58
> A. Perez-Gomez (1986) The Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge: MIT Press). 
59
> Kwinter, Requiem for the City, 74.
60
> Quoted in Mumford, The City in History, 93.
61
> Otto, Occupying and Connecting, 41.
62
> Mumford, The City in History, 310. 
63
> A. Picon (2010) “Nature, Infrastructures, and the Urban Condition,” in Ecological
Urbanism, ed. M. Mostafavi and G. Doherty (Baden: Lars Müller), 520.
64
> Mumford, Technics and Civilisation, 90–93.
65
> Burry and Burry, The New Mathematics of Architecture, 11.
66
> Mumford, The City in History, 172.
67
> C. Waldheim (2010) “Weak Work,” in Ecological Urbanism, ed. M. Mostafavi and G.
Doherty (Baden: Lars Müller), 118.
68
> S. Marshall (2009) Cities, Design, Evolution (New York: Routledge), 124.
69
> M. Burry (2011) Scripting Cultures: Architectural Design and Programming (Chichester:
Wiley), 159.
70
> Marshall, Cities, Design, Evolution, 124.
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THE CITY AS EXPRESSION

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