Mon 26 Mar 2007
When cities were first built they weren’t cities. They were just a collection of dwellings, usually next to a river, connected together by paths discovered by time through the compression of many feet. I guess you can still see those paths in the maze of many winding streets of the City of London. In this age, the dwelling was prime and connection was secondary and discovered. The city was starting to evolve.
As it evolved beyond a certain limit the disorder of the previous growth was replaced by a certain order. The planners stepped in and further growth was governed by these plans: land was becoming increasingly more expensive and the best use had to be made of that land. Instead of starting with dwellings (and this is more of a guess than an educated reasoning) the planners started with the connections: the roads. Before even the roads were mapped out the planners needed to understand the sort of traffic that would be on those roads dictating their width and construction. There would seem to be some sort of conversation between an abstract road plan and the type of dwelling that would be contained and connected by those roads.
Now, when new cities are built they always start with a road plan: the roads radiating out from the Arc de Triomphe, the grid plan of New York City . The dwellings fit into this plan.
March 26th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Malc - this is another teaser post .. is the rest still on its way?
March 26th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Yeah - there is probably more on the way but I need to figure out what it is actually first.
Or let someone else figure it out for me :0
Maybe it is a Zen post - there is no conclusion or purpose other than thought and consideration
March 26th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Interesting thought. Implies, of course, that the oldest cities WEREN’T planned whereas more recent ones have been.
In terms of quality of life, which is better ?
March 26th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Matt hi — Of course the oldest parts of a city are the best places to live as they are constructed around the human scale (possibly because they are built replicating the earliest shortest paths created by humans). Interestingly, it is claimed some parts of West London (can’t remember where) have roads that are inherited in some way from old iron age settlements. In any case, the post is more about connections between systems being where complexity lies rather than in the systems themselves - complexity is in the gaps between systems or in assumptions rather than systems intrinsically. Well, it might be about that if I can ever get round to making any sense of it
March 27th, 2007 at 1:34 am
Matt - that’s the sort of question that deserves several posts … I’m sure you could get lots of argument either way.
In terms of complexity residing BETWEEN systems - is that because despite the developers best intentions, people will always use systems (separately and together) in unanticipated ways? Is the complexity built in to try and cope with that, or does it happen because of that?
March 27th, 2007 at 1:36 am
BTW Malc - your security doesn’t always show in full - can get tricky to do it right. For instance, on this comment, what I can SEE in the box is “BelleAndSe”, but I’m betting it’s supposed to be “BelleAndSebastian” - about to check that with a ’submit’ …
March 27th, 2007 at 1:39 am
That worked (just as well I’m a ‘Belle and Sebastian’ fan) - but I’m going to have trouble guessing the next one …
NOPE - didn’t guess right; hit ‘refresh’ until I get one I can see in full … Ha - I like Patti too!
March 27th, 2007 at 8:48 am
Ric - oh sod! This security isn’t working very well anyway and hadn’t realised there was a limit on the number of characters! Want to move to Aksimet which JP says works very well but requires an upgrade to WP I believe which I am too scared to do!!
I am not 100% sure of the totality of reasons why complexity lies between systems but certainly people use systems in unnanticipated ways (for example functionality can be over-loaded to do two separate things which are alike enough for re-use of the functionality) but also when systems are built they either ignore other systems in the chain or make assumptions that may or may not be valid but validity in any case decreases over time as the chain changes. Engineers basically concentrate on their own systems and their own functionality. As they change their system they can subtly alter the environment of the whole organisation (which is supported by multiple systems which do not change and therefore are intruders in their own environment).
The point I thin I want to make is that first define the environment (roads) in terms of the syntax and semantics of data that pass between systems and then fix this environment. If a change is made to the environment is should firstly where possible be additive and secondly ripple through to all systems in the environmment.
Or something
March 27th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
That’s better (well - bigger anyway)!
I’m up against the “gap” between systems at work at the moment - we seem to be taking a siloed view of implementing applications, when I am arguing a more holistic, perhaps architectural view - and thinking of, I guess I’m trying to avoid or minimise that “inter-system complexity” …. part of my approach is the data semantics as well.
March 27th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Malc, you should read Christopher Alexander and Jane Jacobs, two people who spent a long time looking at city and community development from an architectural viewpoint, particularly from a social and cultural perspective. Alexander has actually written on software architecture as an analogy. You will enjoy it. And yes, I have the books if you want to borrow them. [Signed, of course!]
September 26th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Reigniting this conversation after a long time …
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:59 am
Would love to - but where are the flames
October 9th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
… in Iraq ! And I think that there is quite a lot of construction going on there now.
October 10th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Ah! Been meaning to write about that but need to get some thoughts straight. Was struck by some similarities between O’Rourke’s book on Adam Smith and something that Chomsky said about rebuilding in Iraq.
“How can we help the Iraqi people? By putting them in charge, and doing what they instruct us to do”
Help Iraqis?
November 1st, 2007 at 8:10 am
Very good point. I, unfortunately, forget who said it but I really liked the … “The fact that something is wrong is not necessarily a good reason to go and try and fix it. You need to be sure that you will be able to do a better job.”
November 1st, 2007 at 11:56 am
I hope nobody minds, but I am using this to do a quick product demonstration ….