Masterplanning the Adaptive City

Creating Life, Alexander delineates a distinction between “living structures” and
“non-living structures.” The classification does not make a strict distinction
between organic and inorganic matter, but aims to explain, and possibly excuse,
artefacts which, “for the first time, introduce[d] a type of structure on earth which
nature itself could not, in principle, create.”
71
The understanding of order, then, is
rooted in the processes of its formation. 
Urban culture, social order, and technological change can be said to evolve
alongside each other. These longer-term transformations inherent in urban
evolution involve “a combination of variation, reproduction and selection,” and
take place over successive iterations of adaptation.
72
Interestingly, Mumford
equates the “human heritage” of cities with permanence, when evidence of the
changing, evolutionary nature of cities suggests otherwise.
The mark of the city is its purposive social complexity. It represents the
maximum possibility of humanizing the natural environment and of
naturalizing the human heritage: it gives a cultural shape to the first, and it
externalizes, in permanent collective forms, the second. 
Lewis Mumford
73
In his book Design with Nature, Ian McHarg outlined ways in which nature and
culture can better coexist.
74
Planning, traditionally seen as a discipline which
seeks to forecast stable, predictable order, is today faced with the immense
challenges posed by global warming, the effects of which, given a minimum rise in
temperature of two degrees Celsius, include “drought or flooding in many parts of
the world, and a sea level rise of several metres within a century and much more
after that.”
75
A roadmap to mitigate such conditions is beyond the scope of this
book. A central concern, however, is the investigation of ways in which urbanity
can adapt to the changing global environment, with local pertinence as a basis for
planning for an uncertain future. A new model for planning requires a response to
global warming, and “an evolutionary step forward in humanity’s ability to plan for
and manage its future.”
76
Some urbanists, landscape urbanists, environmentalists,
and others insist that neither mitigation nor adaptation can be effective planning
strategies unless there is a massive transformation of the economy, its mode of
using resources and its basis in disposable manufactured goods, buildings, and
cities. As a prerequisite for such change, society must begin to accept the natural
complexity of the world, and to learn to better adapt to it.
A series of oppositions characterize the evolutionary mechanisms of
urbanism, including history and the future, convention and innovation, endurance
and ephemerality, permanence and change. All of these help to explicate the
concept of evolution in cities, society, and culture. 
NOTES
1
> T. Verebes (2010) “Endurance and Obsolescence: Instant Cities, Disposable Buildings,
and the Construction of Culture,” in Sustain and Develop: 306090, Vol. 13, eds. Jonathan Solomon
and Joshua Bolchover (New York: Princeton Architectural Press). 
2
> Le Corbusier (1929) The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning (London: Dover), 138. 
3
> T.J. Campanella (2008) The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It
Means for the World (New York: Princeton Architectural Press), 190.
4
> Campanella, The Concrete Dragon, 282.
5
> R. Koolhaas and H.U. Obrist (2011) Project Japan (Köln: Taschen), 57. 
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URBANIZATION AND ERASURE

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6
> J. Jiang (2009) “Go China’s Sustainability: Asynchronous Revolutions,” in Sustain and
Develop: 306090, Vol. 13, eds. Jonathan Solomon and Joshua Bolchover (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press), 136.
7
> C.J. Chung, J. Inaba, R. Koolhaas, and T.L. Sze (2001) Great Leap Forward (Köln: Taschen). 
8
> Campanella, The Concrete Dragon, 159.
9
> T. Zhang (2011) “Chinese Cities in a Global Society,” in The City Reader, eds. R.T. LeGates
and F. Stout (London: Routledge), 590.
10
> W. Pan (2008) “Utopian Cities, or How the Author Solves the Problems of Rural China,” in
The Chinese Dream, eds. N. Mars and A. Hornsby (Rotterdam: 010), 466.
11
> J.C. Brazier and T. Lam (2009) “Go West, Go Big, Go Green? A Journey through China’s
‘Great Opening of the West’,” in Sustain and Develop: 306090, Vol. 13, eds. Jonathan Solomon and
Joshua Bolchover (New York: Princeton Architectural Press), 85. 
12
> Zhang, “Chinese Cities in a Global Society,” 594.
13
> M. Hulshof and D. Roggeveen (2011) How the City Moved to Mr. Sun (Amsterdam: SUN), 81.
14
> Zhang, “Chinese Cities in a Global Society,” 597. 
15
> D.G. Shane (2011) Urban Design since 1945: A Global Perspective (London: Wiley), 29.
16
> M. Castells (1996) The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Blackwell), 404.
17
> Shane, Urban Design since 1945, 44. 
18
> H. Haken (2000) “Foreword” in Self-Organisation and the City, J. Portugali (Berlin:
Springer-Verlag), v.
19
> R. Koolhaas (1995) “The Generic City,” in S, M, L, XL, OMA, R. Koolhaas, and B. Mau
(Rotterdam: 010), 1248.
20
> Chung et al., Great Leap Forward, 29.
21
> R. Koolhaas (2012) Interview with Paul Fraioli, Journal of International Affairs, April.
22
> S. Kwinter (2011) Requiem for the City at the End of the Millennium (Barcelona: Actar), 34.
23
> S. Sassen (2001) “The Global City: Introducing a Concept and Its History,” in Mutations,
eds. R. Koolhaas, S. Boeri, S. Kwinter, N. Tazi, and H.U. Obrist (Barcelona: Actar), 114.
24
> J. Attali “The Roman System, or the Generic in All Times and Tenses,” in Mutations, eds.
R. Koolhaas, S. Boeri, S. Kwinter, N. Tazi, and H.U. Obrist (Barcelona: Actar, 2001), 21.
25
> S. Sassen (2008) “Disaggregating the Global Economy,” in Shanghai Transforming, ed. I.
Gil (Barcelona: Actar), 81.
26
> L. Mumford (1986) The Lewis Mumford Reader, ed. D.L. Millner (Athens, Georgia:
University of Georgia Press), 109.
27
> Campanella, The Concrete Dragon, 220–221.
28
> Campanella, The Concrete Dragon, 293.
29
> A. Hornsby (2008) “Hey Fuck! Where’d the City Go?” in The Chinese Dream, eds. N. Mars
and A. Hornsby (Rotterdam: 010), 206.
30
> P.G. Rowe (2008) “Urbanising China,” in Shanghai Transforming, ed. I. Gil (Barcelona:
Actar), 79.
31
> S. Boeri (2010) “Five Ecological Challenges for the Contemporary City,” in Ecological
Urbanism, eds. M. Mostafavi and G. Doherty (Baden: Lars Müller), 449.
32
> Shane, Urban Design since 1945, 259.
33
> S. Marshall (2009) Cities, Design, Evolution (New York: Routledge), 83.
34
> R. Koolhaas (1995) “Bigness, or the Problem of Large,” in S, M, L, XL, OMA, R. Koolhaas,
and B. Mau (Rotterdam: 010), 515.
35
> C. Alexander (1980) The Nature of Order, Book 2: The Process of Creating Life (Berkley:
CES), 557.
36
> L. Mumford (1961) The City in History (London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch), 531.
37
> Koolhaas, “Bigness, or the Problem of Large.” 
38
> R. Koolhaas (1995) “Whatever Happened to Urbanism?” in S, M, L, XL, OMA, R. Koolhaas,
and B. Mau (Rotterdam: 010).
39
> Kwinter, Requiem for the City, 78.
40
> Koolhaas, “Bigness, or the Problem of Large.”
41
> Kwinter, Requiem for the City, 80.
42
> Shane, Urban Design since 1945, 332.
43
> Le Corbusier, (1921) Towards a New Architecture.
44
> Mumford, The City in History, 545.
45
> D.H. Meadows, D.L. Meadows, J. Randers, and W.W. Behrens III (1972) The Limits to
Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York:
Universe Books).
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TOM VEREBES

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