Interrogative Planning: Questions to Orient both Theory and Practice by University of Waterloo

CHANGES IN PLANNING AND THEORY

The organic and rational tendencies as outlined in the chart below reflect the types of solutions that have been used to solve the complex tensions of planning in the past. This is a helpful way of identifying how different ideas were implemented over time. All cities have elements of all of these ideas in them. What differentiates cities is the degree to which this or that idea was realized in implementation. An old medieval city may now have an area that was influenced by Le Corbusier while a city developed along modern, rationalist lines will undoubtedly have within it a certain degree of informality such as one might have witnesses in a medieval city have varying degrees of elements in them. These categories are necessary oversimplifications of the intricate variations and messy dynamics that are present in all cities. Rational Progressive Renaissance City – pre-planning th 19 c Utopias – Owen, Fourier th Early 20 c – City Beautiful – Burnham 1920-1975 – The Rationalist City – Bauhaus, Le Corbusier 1960-1970 – Technological Utopia - Soleri

Traditional Organic Medieval City – pre-planning which challenge the central The Culturalist Movement – Morris Garden City – Howard 1900 Onwards – The City of People – Geddes, Mumford, Jacobs 1985 – New urbanism (Duany)

Pierre Filion, PLAN 700 class notes, Fall 2011

SUMMARY Christopher Alexander’s work, The Nature of Order, has traditionally been associated with architecture. In this paper, I argue that his methods and theories about systems and process interactions are applicable to planning theory and practice. Given the difficulty in accessing some aspects of Alexander’s theory, I propose the development of an interrogative structure based on five orienting questions that are of practical use for planners in the field but which also leave open the theoretical edges that are critical for longterm improvements in planning. I use this interrogative planning approach to argue that Alexander’s theories represent a development that is more, not less, rigorous and that this approach is critical for more adaptive and robust methods of city building at all levels including the built environment, analysis of social fabric, and the development of new policy.

The sheer scale of human need that is currently unmet by contemporary planning, shocking levels of waste and misallocation, and well-entrenched habits of soulless development driven by uncaring profit-seeking all beg for better planning than we have thus far been able to think about or practice. Advances in theory will be critical to approaching these wicked problems and I will argue that the nuance and sophistication of Christopher Alexander’s work, though generally associated with architecture, has significant potential for advancing planning theory and practice in a complimentary way. Our cities and regions are permeated by a host of interacting contingencies that planning dares to engage with through translating ideas into reality. Under the sway of this calculus of control, we planned and built a fantastic quantity of roads, machines, buildings and infrastructure systems. This momentum continues in various forms around the world. But there are significant pressures that are accumulating both internally and externally

tenant of planning: control (Manguel, 2007, p. 89). Contemporary science tells us that a profound level of contingency exists at all levels of order and is a persistent feature of the world we inhabit. Uncertainty is not a bit of static that will eventually be tuned out and planning practice routinely tackles these complications with varying degrees of success. Trying to comprehensively capture knowledge of the planning context has proven to be impossible. The systems of cities are open at both ends – the greater scales that cities live inside and the sub-systems that give rise to cities – are both nonlinear. Planners know these complications intimately. Some are no longer planners because of it. Others, still holding on to the control legacy inherited by modern, reductive science, dig in more deeply driven by the echoing conviction that if they are determined, sufficiently competent and can get enough data for their models, the future can finally be tamed. Our contemporary position enables us to see how planning has

proposed various ways of dealing with these challenges. The rational comprehensive approach sought to catch everything relevant in a wide net and then sort out all the pieces clearly and logically through careful administration: objectives, full accounting of resources, and a detailed pathway between these things fuelled by science would yield the most effective outcome. Patsy Healey sums it up by explaining that: The key resource for this project of planning was seen as scientific knowledge and instrumental rationality. Scientific knowledge could provide an objective basis for identifying present problems and predicting future possibilities. Instrumental rationality focused on relating means (how to do things) to ends (what could be achieved), in logical and systematic ways (Fainstein & Campbell, 2011, p. 216 italics in original). The rational comprehensive school as expressed and enacted by people like Le Corbusier and Robert Moses is often cited as the most complete expression of this way of thinking. The critical realist position of people like Jane Jacobs sought understanding by looking at what was actually working and then seeing how we might preserve, enhance or replicate that success as needed. Her argument was that growing vital cities couldn’t happen through purely reductive moves: When city designers and planners try to find a design device that will express, in clear and easy fashion, the “skeleton” of city structure (expressways and promenades are current favourites for this purpose), they are on fundamentally the wrong track. A city is not put together like a mammal or a steel frame building – or even like a

honeycomb or a coral. A city’s very structure consists of its mixture of uses, and we get closest to its structural secrets when we deal with the conditions that generate diversity (Jacobs, 1992, p. 376 italics in original). All manner of variations in, around and between these stances can be found in both theory and practice (see Appendix 2). What is clear is that planning should neither be abandoned to chaos nor to the entrenchments of apparent control in the face of inherent, permanent and increasing complexity and uncertainty. We need to acknowledge that all of our work is, at best provisional. It will always be subject to interruption, modification, and even various types of collapse, some generative and others deeply destructive (Homer-Dixon, 2007). Despite the assurances that the public, politicians and financiers want, planning integrity requires that we admit the quintessential drawing board can never be put away, that we will have to leave our various planning documents permanently open. In taking this approach, planners are not shirking their duties: we simply live in a world that cannot be contained in a linear box or strained through a Gantt chart. Planners need tools, both philosophical and conceptual, that are better suited to this reality. Happily, such ideas and approaches are emerging and becoming more and more common, though rare enough to warrant continued exploration. Rem Koolhaus has argued that, “faced with this huge tsunami of unknown urban substance, the most important thing that architects can do is to write new theory” (Burdett, Ricky and Deyan Sudjic, 2008, p. 320). The admonition is certainly of direct concern for planners. Theory is the

means by which we attempt to put new framing on old problems, render coherence out of confusing paradoxes and unrelenting puzzles. It is often spoken of with derision in circles where the greatest good is simply to keep building, even if thoughtlessly. But we cannot escape theory. We either operate with some degree of consciousness about what we are deciding or we unwittingly follow whatever bits happened to get lodged in our minds through haphazard occurrence or, as is more often the case, the unreflective inheritance of the bureaucratic processes designed yesteryear but still alive today. In this essay, I will explain how the work of Christopher Alexander is suggestive of the theoretical elements and dynamics that are necessary for developing a more adaptive approach to planning, one that will fulfill the requirement that planners serve their fellow citizens by attending to the future without undermining that service by through overconfidence about what can be known. Alexander’s work is compatible at various points with incrementalists like Charles Lindblom (Fainstein & Campbell, 2011, pp. 176–190), new crowdsourcing planners like Robert Goodspeed (Crowdsourcing Urban Planning?, 2011) grand vision utopians like John Friedman (Fainstein & Campbell, 2011, pp. 87–104) and global explorers like Oren Yiftachel (Fainstein & Campbell, 2011, pp. 540–549). It is not necessary to agree with Alexander at all points. His work is simply a specific example of how people who are involved in the actual development of built environments can leverage the insights of complexity science to deliver better results to the people they serve. Planners must absolutely not stop planning but

they must build a deeper intelligence and artfulness into their systems of thought and the methods that underwrite their practice. As former Bogota Mayor Enrique Penalosa reminds us, this is possible, desirable and essential if we are to attain any measure of success in our global transition to a more fully urban phase of civilization that has the well-being of both citizens and the good stewardship of their environmental setting in mind (Burdett, Ricky and Deyan Sudjic, 2008, pp. 307– 319). Alexander has developed a substantial body of both theory and practice that is driven by an integrative understanding of formal science as well as the knowledge that is embedded in the multitude of our technologies and human social/cultural practices. While he is best known as an architect, his ideas and approaches arise from his work in science and these aspects, in particular, are of central interest to city-builders and theorists. The sources of his work are diverse and include transportation theory, computer science, cognitive studies and architecture (Alexander, 2003a, p. 1). The underlying concepts arising from complexity science inform the rich plurality of these pursuits. In the context of this essay I will articulate how his approach can offer valuable insight for planners from theoretical, historical and practice-oriented vantage points. There are a handful of questions that are useful to consider as the tensions of method, objective, analysis and scientific investigation are explored. First, how many (or how few) rules and structures do you need for a successful city to emerge? Is it useful or dangerous to explore city

dynamics for mathematical constants (Bettencourt, Lobo, Strumsky, & West, 2010)? Are there core variables or drivers without which planning, at any scale, cannot succeed? What are these variables and can methods like Hillier’s space syntax approach yield the insight we need? (Haas, 2008, pp. 30–39) Can we orient our day-to-day work in such a way that we do better with using them in the service of the common good? Do various scales have particular variables? How do they change over time? Second, is the context of planning practice increasing in complexity to the point that functional effectiveness from an individual human perspective is losing meaning? How would we know if that point was being approached? What would happen if it did collapse? Is that even a meaningful term in this context? Third, can a city be scientifically analyzed for its complexity/fragility based on the number of acts, plans, regulations, financial resources, reporting responsibilities, committees, boards, that are involved? Can we effectively measure the bureaucratic overburden in any given city or region and establish how fragile or resilient it is? How might this be done? These three categories are suggestive of the challenges that face planners and planning institutions as they interact with myriad variables at all scales. As we examine Christopher Alexander’s approach, the deep challenges of our contemporary planning context stand as a significant challenge that requires intensive engagement with theory and practice.

SOURCES FOR PLANNING THEORY Despite Lindblom’s recognition that many planning practitioners disdain formal theory (Fainstein & Campbell, 2011, p. 187), planners are very much in need of more substantial and sustained developments in theory as our urban transition accelerates globally. While the effects of theory may not show up in our built environments for years or decades after they are written, the consequences of ideas are clear when we examine the history of planning. One of the most obvious is the extent to which our culture was changed by the significant increase in expressways and highways during the mid-

twentieth century in North America: cities were the energy and resource centres that these structures sought to connect. Our ideas about culture, human relationships, the environment, commerce, technology, education, religion, work and so on can be seen in the artefacts of our cities. An enriched understanding of how our cities function and how the process of changing them actually functions is a task that planning theory engages with directly. It shares this practical delivery commitment with other closely related fields like architecture. This is one reason why Alexander’s ideas coming out of architecture

formally are so directly applicable. His summary paper begins with a brief statement about the essential problems of architecture (Alexander, 2003a, p. 3). These tough challenges are directly pertinent to planning, project management, software development, corporate design, organizational reform or any one of many other domains where significant numbers of elements of varying scales, types and peculiarities interact and form systems and sub-systems and supra-systems. I have summarized, rephrased and elaborated on Alexander’s seven challenges in my own words below:

1. Form and function discussion represents an artificial separation. We must get much better at understanding the inseparable dynamics of form and function within the contexts of our design, planning and building. 2. Planning always has a context that is deep, critical and cannot be marginalized without great cost. Making something whole is not about rainbows and unicorns. This isn’t a preliminary step, an item to check off the list of formal requirements. It is essential to whatever it is we are building, designing, planning. 3. Planning is effective where design generates unity. Real intelligence requires that we comprehend how various scales of interaction relate to each other. Medical doctors are required not only to treat patients but to consider the factors that may be contributing to their malady. The best physicians do this at a variety of scales, often simultaneously. The same is true of excellent planners. 4. Planning never marginalizes human feeling because human response is an objective reality that must be addressed. If the design of a building, a street or a neighbourhood generates strong negative reactions over time, it will lead to a host of very concrete problems. A space that generates strong positive reaction will lead to a host of benefits. The same phenomena can be seen in product design an Apple, IDEO and similar agencies have demonstrated both the financial and cultural freight that accompanies supposedly soft considerations. 5. Planning acknowledges that ecology and biology are not fads; they are integral aspects of context, unity, human feeling and other critical variables. Connection to land and place must happen for planning to work in both the short and long term. This very much relates to the context question. Ecological and biological thriving may, in fact, be seen as evidence of many interacting elements working out. We have gained some ground in this area generally but deeper structural questions about sustainability, harmony and thriving are far from being answered. 6. Planning fully understands that social agreement is the only way that the complex processes of building and sustaining a city or region can succeed. We only need to look at what happens to cities when social agreement collapses. Crime skyrockets, infrastructure deteriorates, vital institutions fade, and fear erodes communities; in short, cities decline rapidly when the social capital is eroded. It seems clear that architects and planners need to incorporate various cultural dynamics more effectively. Tokens of engagement are not only useless, they can actually fuel deeper disagreement, scepticism, and outright hostility. 7. Beauty must, ultimately, provide a critical accountability for our planning and building. The subtlety, coherence, value, intelligence and aesthetic power of beauty is woven through all of human existence. We find our highest achievements as cultures and civilizations where it is most evident. It must be present at all scales not only in the objects we create and the buildings we construct but must characterize the larger scale systems and processes that facilitate growth, development, re-development and cooperation. Though often applied insufficiently in past attempts to attain it, the pursuit of the beautiful in our collective work is simply essential.

The next concern is to establish how these essential concerns of architecture, building, designing and planning interact with our established forms of knowledge and practice. Christopher Alexander believes that when we design and build, we are contending deeply with highly complex processes. Through increased consciousness of this enacted intelligence, we can understand complexity better: “Architecture presents a new kind

of insight into complexity because it is one of the human endeavours where we most explicitly deal with complexity and have to create it – not typical in physics or biology, at least not yet.” (Alexander, 2003, p. 3) The correspondence to planning is clear enough. Planners must also both engage with complexity and generate it. By understanding these dynamics in architecture, we can profitably shape, engage with and utilize these insights in computer science, organizational theory,

institutional design, planning and other human endeavours. The core of Alexander’s distillation for approaching these seven challenges comes in the form of his fifteen transformations or principles (Alexander, 2003, p. 22). He calls them principles, transformations, and glues of wholeness at different points in his work. They are a set of identifiable points or clusters that draw out something important in each case.

ALEXANDER’S FIFTEEN TRANSFORMATIONS

On initially encountering his work, the reader may discover that Alexander can seem messy, vague, imprecise, confusing, and paradoxical. He is all of these things at different points owing to the exploratory nature of his project. However, it would be selling him far short to equate these impressions with the ramblings of a muddled thinker. Alexander is messy because he is confronting a reality that does not behave. Rather than choose only the elements that are at least

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

reasonably controllable and then limiting his reflections to those time-slices or mental boundary spaces, he takes on the mess and remains engaged in it. His big idea is to articulate, through both reflection and practice, a new calculus for design and building that is underwritten by complexity in a tangible, active, scientific and deeply human way. He approaches theory not as an activity detached from tangible experience but believes that the worlds of ideas and of built things

inform each other directly and with significant sophistication, a sophistication that we have only just begun to grasp. Alexander builds both to enact what he thinks and to learn about how the process can teach him about the spaces he orders, the materiality, humanity and variability of trying to make sense of the bits and atoms along with the sentient inhabitants of the world. Here is a brief summary of his fifteen transformations (Alexander, 2003, pp. 5–22):

Wholeness and Value as a necessary part of any complex system. An intuitive model of wholeness as a recursive structure. A mathematical model of wholeness identifying wholeness as a well-defined recursive structure of a new type. Objective measures of coherence in complex systems, and the unavoidable relationship between structure, fact, and beauty. Fifteen geometric properties [transformations] as necessary and inevitable geometric features of reality in any complex system. A meeting point between cognition and objective reality? A new, experimental way of determining degree of coherence, degree of life, and relative value. The science of complexity must make room for subjectivity, not in the sense of idiosyncrasy of judgement, but as a connection to the human being. Local symmetries and sub-symmetries. Deep adaptation as a central concept in complex system theory and in architecture. The absolute necessity for successful adaptation to be achieved by generative means. The effect of structure-preserving transformations on the world and their role in the unfolding of wholeness. The hugeness of configuration space and the way the trajectory of a complex system can reach adaptation. More on adaptational success as a special kind of trajectory through configuration space. Wholeness-preserving transformations are the primary ways the trajectory of a complex system is able to reach successful adaptation.

These are clearly not the kinds of things that a practicing planner can engage with directly in day-to-day work. While they could be used directly by some practioners, the language and the structure of Alexander’s ideas are not directly useful enough for broad consumption. This may explain, in part, why he has not been as widely read. He is working out various ways to show that what people like planners and architects must be wrestle with is complex, not just complicated. Watches, as the saying goes, are complicated but raising a child is complex (Westley, Zimmerman, & Patton, 2006, p. 8). This means that reading every manual on parenting won’t alleviate the challenge of

dealing with this particular child at this time under these conditions. Even if it did, all that could change the next moment. Alexander is clearly not interested in having the posture he explains reduced to a slavish set of fifteen steps. However, proceeding with the design and construction of streets, parks, gardens, homes, offices, manufacturing facilities and highways under the conditions of complexity is the context in which and from which these ideas spring. They are therefore not irrelevant to the doing dimensions of a planners work. This cannot be overstated. A deeply recursive connection between doing and learning our theory through doing is central to all that he does and all that he

thinks. That means it will be de facto impossible to be tidy about process. Alexander believes that computer science and organization theory are fields that have felt the weight of complexity most profoundly but that other fields will surely follow in recognizing the irreducible complexity of all levels of interaction:

such a successful street operated with a formal theory or were called planners, they were part of a process that led to a good result (bad results may also be highly instructive for the opposite reasons): “In [the fields of biology, meteorology, etc.] scientists are passive as to the issue of creating. In architecture, we are the active proponents. We have more at stake. If we are wrong, we create a mess. And the insights we have gained, so far, though vaguely related to the insights gained in physics, chaos theory, and biology, are unique, more powerful and practical – and if I may say so, far deeper in content than the insights gained in the passive sciences.” (Alexander, 2003, p. 4) It is, in fact, the intensity of requirements placed on architecture, design, and planning that makes the deep interrelationships of theory and practice so powerful. There is no

isolated lab to retreat to – what we consider, plan and build are the very spaces and relational dynamics that attend nearly all of our lives. It is the pervasive and “ordinary” nature of these collective fields that yields such lasting influence (Alexander, 2003, p. 4). For these reasons, our building arts from roads to subdivisions to office towers to stadiums do not have the luxury of being artificial without the straight, uniform, generic and unbending features of sterile approaches yielding results that everyone can see. If we require a way through the thicket of paralysis or despair-inducing complexity, if we believe that there is something both valuable and important in adjusting well to the persistent demands of city building in our time, then Alexander has something to say to us, a sketch to render that is valuable for understanding our cities and the processes that fund their design, development, refinement and adaptation:

“Although computer science and organization theory are the fields where this appreciation of complexity has first made itself felt, biology cannot be far behind: and even questions in physics, though apparently more simple, will (I firmly believe) ultimately turn out to depend on the same kinds of issues of complexity” (Alexander, 2003, p. 4).

The intervening years have supported this conclusion. It is perhaps, then, not surprising that Edward Lorenz encountered irreducible complexity and the chaotic underpinnings of the world via mathematical modelling and prediction in the context of a deeply variable and complex phenomena like weather (Lorenz, 1963) where a large system makes the possibility space incalculable. Antiseptic tidiness is as false as it is dangerous, whether in a human relationship or in designing a neighbourhood. Alexander provides important reflections on why this is true. In particular, a pre-determined range of possibilities excludes learning and insight. When we (or our predecessors both immediate and ancient) find a solution in arranging buildings along a street that has somehow managed to balance the intricacies of high density human life, we have a living example of generative design. Whether the creators of

“That is why we must start paying attention to architecture, as a major source of insight in the field of complexity. The creation of fine-tuned, well-adapted complexity – as encountered for example in architecture – must now take shape as a major topic of theoretical science. Our ability, or failure, to master this science, is crucial to our survival” (Alexander, 2003, p. 4)

“Complexity science provides a new theory-driven framework for thinking about, understanding, and influencing the dynamics of complex system, issues, and emerging situations. Insights from complex systems research also provide an exciting new lens of exploring the development and ongoing evolution of cities and neighbourhoods, as well as their interactions with the larger environment or context of which they are a part” (Haas, 2008, p. 275).

T. Irene Sanders has also made strong connections between complexity science and cities:

Alexander, approached in the right way can draw these themes and possibilities together in a meaningful and effective way.

FIGURE 1. TagCloud of Alexander’s 15 Transformations to show the word frequency distribution within the 73 word text block (http://www.tagcrowd.com/)

RE-STRUCTURING ALEXANDER: FIVE QUESTIONS FOR INTERROGATIVE PLANNING The fifteen transformations or “emerging scientific concepts bearing on complexity” that Alexander lays out are not easily translated into practice. Though he ran an interesting experiment on how his approach to developing a specific part of a city with a team of students and therefore made his ideas practical (Alexander, 1987), various professional participants in design and planning processes will find his transformations difficult to communicate or implement meaningfully amid acts, zoning requirements, municipal agreements, provincial regulations and so on. I am therefore proposing that through a careful study of the fifteen transformations, a more useful pattern can be extracted that will draw theoretical needs into the mix while allowing for practical implementation into the design process, public consultations, committee meetings and other governance needs that planners face. It is essential that these new formulations remain connected to the deeper theoretical soil. Adopting an interrogative structure will make adoption more likely – this is crucial for implementation. My method of translating the larger corpus of theory into a more functional form involved analyzing word use, frequency, and context to discover overlapping themes

both in the fifteen transformations above as well as in the additional commentary that follows each of the fifteen statements (see Appendix 1 for word analysis visualization). Beyond this, the four volumes that stand behind the overview paper (Alexander, 2003, vols. 1–4) are the deeper well upon which additional rigorous inquiry must draw. Within the balance of this essay, the five resulting themes will be the focus of analysis and reflection. The five themes that interact in within the fifteen transformations include adaptation, recursive processes, coherence, subjectivity and functionality (Figure 1). The best examples of effective design whether it is rooms, buildings, streets, neighbourhoods, cities and so on involves a continuous calculus of these elemental themes interacting. In order to add even more poignancy to these five themes, I am proposing that they be reframed as questions and that these five questions then form the core of an interpretation of Alexander’s theory for structuring our ordering of urban and other space. This approach, based on the five proposed questions, is what I am calling interrogative planning. The value of structuring questions is that they allow movement in both directions. If we only saw the questions, we might reasonably ask, “Why these five?

Where do they come from?” which would point us back toward the fifteen transformations. However, the questions might be usefully engaged without looking into theory but they would still carry a significant amount of Alexander’s theoretical capital. Another benefit of using questions is that they invite reflection, engagement, participation, and most importantly continuous revision. They may be used in public settings, committee settings, or any number of other situations where the planning process encounters conversation or deliberation. While some strategies and theories favour certain scales (communitybased planning tends toward the local and specific, for example), an interrogative approach allows movement between various scales of functioning structures, a key feature of Alexander’s work. Each of these five questions will orient thinking and practice uniquely depending on what scale is in mind when they are asked. They are, in a sense, scale free, though not in a rigid, over-simplified or reductive way. Asking structured questions does not necessarily lead to predetermined or slavish answers. Instead, they allow us to proceed meaningfully and intentionally toward concrete decisions and approaches within the project that is at hand or in mind at a given point in time.

FIGURE 2: Fifteen transformations become five questions

The five questions for the practice of interrogative planning are as follows. We will consider each in turn: Is it adaptive? Is it recursive? Does it cohere? Is it subjective? Is it a functional whole? As processes, projects, or plans are being considered, carried out or even evaluated, these questions can be powerful catalysts for reflection and dialogue. Rather than being checklist items, they become inherent accountability points with strong reflexive capability that serves all aspects of planning process. I will now turn to an examination of each of the questions. Is it adaptive? If there is anything directly practical in what complexity science has taught us so far about the future, it is that we can neither control it nor fully anticipate it. It isn’t a problem with inadequate method or incomplete data – the unknown future is pervasive and permanent. But, as Alexander so helpfully sketches for us, we may not be able to draw straight lines into the future but we can devise approaches to design, building and planning that are able to respond to these changes over time. This can only happen if the changing conditions driven by either larger scale or smaller scale variations are connected to our work at a given scale. We respond to change successfully when those changes can happen in small doses occurring often. Thus, adaptive planning processes can only come about through generative strategies. We must design our planning in such a way that it can mutate as it progresses. If we are unable to adjust well to unknown

future variation, our chances of surviving are slim and the possibility of thriving thinner still: “Deep adaptation is the process whereby the landscape, or a system, or a plant, or a town, proceeds by a series of spatially organized adaptations in which each part is gradually fitted to the parts near it: and is simultaneously fitted by the whole, to its position and performance in the whole” (Alexander, 2003a, p. 15) In the context of planning, Alexander’s “spatially organized adaptations” would involve things like policies, acts, consultations, charettes, research, public debates and the host of other dynamic players that participate in city building. We don’t currently possess an adequate language or sufficient habits of mind to fully appreciate the smaller sub-scales and larger meta-scales that are at work in these exchanges. But we can make progress both by being open to new arrangements and by carrying forward the most useful lessons from the past. For example, Lindblom and the pragmatists are, in a general sense, more tuned to the smaller cycles while the rational comprehensive approach is more tuned to the larger metacycles. Interrogative planning asks us to reflect on both the micro- and meta-dynamics with which a given plan has to contend. We will need new analytic and process strategies and tools to increase awareness of how adaptive approaches can be nudged toward positive rather than destructive outcomes. The dynamics of small and large systems are present. How we understand and interact with them will determine our ability to implement and sustain robust and desirable solutions.

Is it recursive? In the contexts of planning and process, reflections on being recursive require an ability to understand how information, resources, feedback, novelty and other flows that drive planning are able to find a way back into the process as it develops. A truly recursive process isn’t simply about getting feedback for public relations purposes or to fulfil legislated consultations as is typical with many public engagement structures. A recursive structure is an order of magnitude more difficult and nuanced than the thin veneer of listening to affected people in a patronizing way. Information and communication is perhaps the easiest aspect of planning that can become recursive – we plan, act, get feedback in various forms, adjust the plan, keep acting, and so on (Allmendinger, 2009, pp. 197–223). A more difficult problem involves thinking about built environments, transportation structures, financing, life-cycling, and other practical matters in recursive terms. Alexander explains how we might envision the interactions of different orders of organization and function recursively: “As we know from recursive function theory, surprisingly simple ideas, of nested levels, can have profound and effective consequences – and, often, surprising one. Both Ian Stewart and Brian Goodwin acknowledge the important of recursive ideas, and say that in their view, too, recursiveness of qualities is likely to be a feature of all living structure.” (Alexander, 2003a, p. 7).

In some cases, we have explored how nature plays this out, as when architects utilize the insights that termites manifest to

keep their mounds cool in the unforgiving heat of an African sun (Fatima, 2011). Better cooling systems for buildings based on termite mound air movement mimics the results of recursive processes rather than designing with recursive qualities being built into our own systems, plans, and structures. Humans have doubtless always done this, to some extent: we learn from what we observe. Moving recursive insights deeper into the process is a more difficult but much-needed aspiration involving consideration of metasymmetries, local symmetries and sub-symmetries. Each of these levels functioning well is contingent on the other levels, hence a degree of complexity that can only be fruitfully managed by the interactions themselves being part of the process. If humans or human committees have to manage it all, paralysis will result. This has been the classic shortcoming of various controldriven structures and approaches. Does it cohere? Coherence and wholeness are very related and integral to each other. Adaptation considers how much change a functioning system can successfully manage or is capable of. Coherence is about the functioning system being complete in the first place, a discrete entity what hangs together. Without coherence, there is no identifiable thing. Alexander wants to better understand the role that coherence might play in our designing and building. For instance, what structures or types of structures represent wholeness? Can we objectively measure coherence in complex systems? To the extent that we can, are there degrees of coherence? A new, experimental way of determining degree of coherence, degree of life, and

relative value are all part his inquiry (Alexander, 2003a, p. 8). Coherence is at work in many scientific methods and approaches and we may be able to extend these ideas to fields not previously thought possible. Alexander argues that were there is resistance to the idea of coherence as a quantifiable category, it is generally a problem of degree and not kind: “But there is a very thin line – in fact, I would argue there is no substantial line at all – between the issue of relative coherence of subsystems in a physical-mechanical system, and the more complex distinctions of coherence in an aesthetic entity – the phrasing of a piece of music for example (Alexander, 2003a, p. 8). Science has a long history of facts as far as they relate to parts but when it comes to the possibility of aesthetic facts, notions of elegance, seamless integration of form and function, we are much less well equipped though in mathematics and physics, if one explanation is inelegant and another is elegant, the later is likely correct. Alexander suggests that we should not, in our science, hold to facts about parts along: “After all what is science? It is the study of what really happens, how the world works. Done in such a way that agreement can be forged by clear thought, and by empirical procedures...There is clear thought about structure; and there is empirical basis and procedure specified, which allow people to form agreed on shared observations, and thereby to reach – at least tentatively and roughly at first – shared understanding and reliable results (Alexander, 2003a, p. 9). In short, something that is alive and adaptive must be both recursive and coherent. Planning has at various points approached

ideas of coherence through an emphasis on systems-related theory and practice (Allmendinger, 2009, pp. 49–62) although the systems in mind dating from the 1970s were focused on simple systems (information and computing would remove unknowns) rather than complex systems (variables and persistent contingency ensures permanent unknowns, regardless of computational power) which have developed more recently (Allmendinger, 2009, p. 62). These represent attempts to model coherence and to dissect it. Variance about what it can yield for planners can be seen, by analogy, in a recent Scientific American article that explores the possibility that if we can capture and synthesize enough data, we will be able to understand how the global system will evolve, play out accurate scenarios, and see the future more clearly. Debate about this possibility is vigorous but highlights a desire find coherence within our burgeoning data sets (Weinberger, 2011, p. 56). One possibility for making better use of complex systems approaches (simple systems have limited value and may work for certain aspects of project management or very limited-space processes where most of the variables are known and familiar) is the emerging strength of network science as a means to not only see the “things” but the relations between the things (Newman, 2010). Relations are critical, not just pieces. Social network analysis and network taxonomy from new sources of data (Onnela et al., 2007) may be able to be applied to social issues such as wholeness and the search for wholeness in our cities. It may well be that network science is the new mathematics wholeness. One hopes that a more robust

development around the taxonomy of networks and their corresponding behaviours will provide an additional set of empirical tools for planners. Bill Hillier’s work on space syntax is another way of understanding what is happening when cities or neighbourhoods cohere at various scales and how that knowledge might lead to structuring city spaces more effectively or at least creating the conditions where those structures can emerge over time: “Originating in the last quarter of the twentieth century the aim of the space syntax movement was to bring together the study of the city as object with the study of social, economic, and cultural processes, and so, show these processes to be spatial in an architectural way, and allow us to bring together urban design with urban reflection and research. Space syntax addresses the city naively, as what it seems to be: a network of spaces created by successive acts of building” (Haas, 2008, p. 30). Is it subjective? Within the five questions, this is perhaps the most difficult and therefore the most easily misunderstood. Very quickly, Alexander differentiates between two types of subjectivity (Alexander, 2003a, p. 13). The first is kind is idiosyncratic: I am the only one who holds to a given judgement and my holding that judgement is sufficient to justify it. This is not the kind of scientific subjectivity he has in mind The second is when I engage something subjectively, have an experience of or make a judgement about, something that is objective. The science of complexity must make room for subjectivity, not in

the sense of idiosyncrasy of judgement, but as a human being making a connection to something that actually exists and in that connecting, concludes certain things about it. This is not Type I subjectivity. We can only get at wholeness, coherence and their fruits when “we agree to use the observer’s feeling of his or her own wholeness as a measuring instrument” (Alexander, 2003a, p. 13) and when we do so, significant gains can be made. A practical expression of how the subjective can be brought to bear on understanding, defining and expressing objective reality is the use of narrative fragments by complexity researcher Dave Snowden who makes use of selftagged narrative fragments collected and analysed with various analytic tools to collect individual narrative fragment tags and visualize them collectively (Mosier & Fischer, 2010, pp. 223–246). Based on complexity science and research on narrative structure and process, the Cognitive Edge approach (Snowden & Boone, 2007) is a concrete demonstration of how Alexander’s Type II subjectivity might be brought to bear on actual projects, corporate mapping and other planningrelated practices. In general, the effort is to discover ways for the subjective to add up meaningfully to reveal the contours of the objective. Considerable rigour and sophistication can accompany the employment of subjectivity in working out how we might proceed in given specific situations despite the presence of overwhelming variables. Technology represents new frontiers for coordinated subjective development via crowdsourcing for planning. Robert Goodspeed (Crowdsourcing Urban Planning?, 2011)has been researching the

relative value of different forms of crowdsourcing (he identifies at least six types) for planning settings. New approaches to generative design are emerging in product design, architecture and engineering (Sivram Kish, 2011) and represents another possible form of crowdsourcing if the modelling space could be expanded to planning scales. Crowdsource planning is a means of approaching the concrete represented by a distributed subjective group – how the individuals sense of things can be coordinated with other individuals to approach the ‘that’s what we were trying to express’ point of action and agreement. When the relative merits of a few examples such as networks science, narrative fragment analysis and crowdsourcing are taken together, it seems likely that we will be able to make us of numerous techniques and methods to develop a more robust subjectivity. The limits of collecting public opinion won’t be offset by technology and planners will continue to need good judgement that balances specialized and comprehensive knowledge. Toronto planner Joe Berridge, speaking about aspects of downtown development, cautions that: “too much faith in the power of community neglected the needs of the city as a whole. Toronto was the adopted home of Jane Jacobs – she lived around the corner and was a good friend – but her views were hardened by Nimbyists into an extreme localism that devalued any citywide initiative” (Bayer, Michael and N. Frank, J. Valerius, 2010, p. 184).

Is it a functional whole? The fifth and final question involves an assessment of wholeness: does the designed/planned/built entity we have in mind actually function, does it work? This question may be asked regardless of the scale since a larger whole depends on functioning smaller wholes and vice-a-versa. The interrelation to the other four questions is obvious enough here. If there is no preservation of a functional whole amid change, the system or entity cannot evolve and it will break down. When systems collapse, they may do so partially and reorganize more effectively in a new form better suited to the new conditions (catagenesis) or they may collapse to a point where they cannot recover their former levels of complexity (Homer-Dixon, 2007). For growth to happen, functionality must be maintained during the changes. If, as noted above under adaptation, the changes are too great and functioning stops, growth will also stop. This is commonly called death. The challenges we face in asking if a given context is a “functional whole” is not unlike the requirement a doctor faces in keeping a patient alive while performing a procedure that exposes the patient to the risk of complications. Maintaining a functional whole or bringing a functioning whole into existence is a deep challenge for both science and planning. Alexander argues that it is perhaps the most significant challenge we face: How can a complex system find its way to the good configurations? In a theoretical sense, we may say that the system walks through configuration space, taking this turn and that, and always arriving at a well-adapted

configuration. The huge question, of course, is How this walk is controlled: what are the rules of the walk, that make it lead to good adaptation? Although a few very preliminary answers have been given to this question, no good ones have yet been given. This is perhaps THE scientific question of our present era (Alexander, 2003a, p. 19). A key aspect of a functioning whole is that it interacts in a good way with both the system that it lives inside as well as with the smaller systems that live inside of it. This notion of cycles of function and wholeness within and supporting other kinds of wholeness was noted by ecologist C.S. Holling who observed how cycles of growth and decay at all scales had regular patterns that yielded endless novelty (Gunderson & Holling, 2002). Alexander is less sure that we have sorted out how to assess wholeness and how to preserve it amid the changes we make in planning and building: “Nature has a way – built into the majority of systems, of finding its way to a well-adapted state for any given complex system – at least for most cases. We do not have a way. For buildings – and indeed for any complex system [ eg. Cities ] – this is the most fundamental practical issue of all.” (Alexander, 2003a, pp. 19–20). The human factor in cities is critical and wholeness attends to serving the needs of people without losing sight of the other scales of interaction needed for that to happen – climate, ecology, energy security, food supply, transportation, cultural vitality, freedom of speech, justice, and so on all matter. Interrogative

planning and Alexander’s approaches to developing and building have powerful social/cultural dimensions that are inseparable from contemplations about the built environment. That’s what underlies and connects the notions of wholeness at the root, the artesian well that feeds his thinking. Linguists, technology scholars, organizational theorists and many others have noted that what we become is both reflected in what we make and in how what we have made then influences us. There is always a delay in these dynamics but we seek, in meeting the massive human needs that our cities are embody, to make the delay less costly and the implemented plan more responsive to what we cannot know about the future. Attending to wholeness orients planners to these challenges.

THE FUTURE AND INTERROGATIVE PLANNING Allmendinger points out that there has been significant interest in new planning theory as standardized canons of thought and practice have fragmented amid the dissolution process of older paradigms: “I believe that there a post-positivist perspective not only provides a powerful critique of current planning typologies but can also provide the basis for an alternative...I attempt to account for why there has been an explosion on theoretical thinking and provide a new understanding typology of planning theory with which to understand it.” (Allmendinger, 2009, p. 41). He categorizes post-positivist theory as characterized in general by an awareness of being cultural and historically embedded which in turn prevents applications of theory being read in a direct corresponding way from theory to practice and ensures that there is a constant mixing of thought and practice (Allmendinger, 2009, p. 42). In addition, he argues that the general sources of theory for planning are either exogenous (from outside the field), framing (accepting certain general boundaries for specific types of analysis), social (top-down or bottom-up), philosophical (following schools of thought in philosophy), or indigenous (mediated by certain types of local or cultural realities that lead to unique new blends) although the boundaries and interactions between these general sources is not always very formalized (Allmendinger, 2009, pp. 43–46). Within this fragmented space, there are a number of hopeful sources of support for moving an interrogative framework into practice and ongoing theoretical

reflection that have been noted in the course of this essay. There is some value in all of the myriad approaches to planning that have come and gone or that are currently embedded in organizational culture and process. Adopting an interrogative approach will enable us to sort out what is useful in a given context and what is counter to our efforts to build effective and functioning cities and regions. Complexity theory approaches do not represent the absence of planning or a ‘hands off the wheel’ approach to navigation. It is a higher order of planning, a more rigorous administration and a more mature form of action. ‘Organic’ is often criticized as soft, flaky and weak - all rainbows and unicorns. But it is, in fact, more technically challenging, full of unknowns, resistant to control, wily, and overwhelming. One might ask, is it easier to carve a likeness of a leaf or to create a living, fully functioning leaf? Even if they look identical, the one that is alive is infinitely more intricate. The complexity of a living thing is many orders of magnitude more organized, complex, regulated, and detailed than any mechanistic system we can devise either in practice or theory. Despite this, we continue to resist the ‘organic’ attempts as lacking vigour. Our reductive inheritance, our managerial hubris, is in full view on this front. Some of our most heinous planning results have come from misguided rationalism that has, in hindsight, been too simple and which has, in some cases, become simplistic given the rich interactive nature of a city. Deyan Sudjic concludes that planners tend, by default, to be slavish users of past theories: Like everyone else, planners tend to use the weapons and

strategies of the last war to fight the battles of the next one. The situation also gives pause for thought about the way in which ideas about cities form and change. With the same impeccably worthwhile intention of creating jobs and a better way of life for its inhabitants, two different generations of planners proposed opposite strategies, and thus it may well be that cities are more often the product of unintended consequences than of anything else (Burdett, Ricky and Deyan Sudjic, 2008, p. 35). Perhaps one of the unintended benefits of our inability to fully control a given city is that the city has room to evolve in its own way: “A city is, perhaps, closer to being a self-organizing system than a more conscious artificial creation such as an entire nation, which is the product of a particular historical moment and which may yet prove to be of only transient importance…Over time it must continually adapt and find new ways to survive, and it must be able to switch from one technology to another to do it.” (Burdett, Ricky and Deyan Sudjic, 2008, p. 48).

It is certainly worth considering that a very different kind of approach, one that is more mature, robust, rigorous and effective, is at the very least possible and may in fact represent a new urgency in an increasingly urban-intensive world. The sheer intensity of the pressures on urban regions around the world means that, far from eliminating informality, we will need to better understand how to make intelligent use of it:

“One in seven people on the planet live in squatter communities or in shantytowns. More than half the workers in the world earn their living off the books. These markets and neighbourhoods provide housing and jobs that governments and the formal private sector fail to. Governments need to work with these communities rather than neglect or suppress them.” (Neuwirth, 2011, p. 56)

He goes on to point out that the developed world also grew as a result of formalizing the shantytowns of New York, San Francisco, and other cities. It may well be that this is a persistent feature of urban growth rather than an anomaly, except in cases of cultural amnesia. In Ontario the number of self-built houses in peripheral areas that were outside the official city represents our own North American version of informal development if we look at the first half of the twentieth century (Wilson, 2011). This isn’t something that we spend much time considering in our current planning environment but is perhaps a key feature of life-stage growth for cities and regional economies. By listening to urban thinkers and planners in other parts of the world (vantage points that are unfamiliar to privileged Westerners) a deeper intelligence can be fostered in both individuals and institutions. This is a largescale interaction in Alexander’s terms, a means of gathering intelligence in a more extensive way. There is little doubt that the most significant scale of informality is taking place in developing countries and the cities they grow, often far from the reaches of formal planning. As noted by Geetam Tiwari of the Indian Institute of Technology,

there is perhaps no greater challenge to planning than the massive size of the global informal economy: “Undoubtedly, the growth of future cities depends upon how well we are able to plan for the ‘unplanned’. The generic theme evolving from Asia, Latin America, and Africa is that as cities expand, the ‘informal’ sector grows faster than the ’formal’ sector. This means that our plans will need paradigmatic change to deal with the heterogeneous housing and mobility needs of growing city populations. We will have to plan spaces for activities that cannot always be well-defined and predicted. It is better to plan for what is inevitable than to turn a blind eye to the future.” (Burdett, Ricky and Deyan Sudjic, 2008, p. 351).

Informality is an awkward element for traditional planning and approaches to deal with. The poor don’t hire urban planners to develop their shantytown or favela. They build it ad hoc, on the fly, increasing complexity where needed as a result of internal drivers, not hired external expertise. On the far end of the spectrum is the fantastic acceleration in data generation that may be as deeply disruptive as the informal development of cities: “The explosion of data has turned the scientific method on its head. A scientist used to develop a hypothesis and conduct an experiment to prove or disprove it. Now you have so much data and so many ways to analyze it...you’ve got the answers. Now you’ve got to figure out the questions.” (Evans, 2011) Just as architecture has changed with new technologies

that allow for the engineering of highly complex curved structures and buildings including possible non-specialist design modes as noted earlier, all approaches that were not possible before the advanced algorithms and calculations could be made, so too will the new flows of data, social network analysis, network science, agent based modelling, gargantuan data and emerging platforms radically alter the social structures with which planning contends. The convergence of rapid technological change in both the built environment and the social/institutional environment will allow for planning approaches that were unheard of in earlier times and that were, in fact, impossible to achieve. Simply consider the size and scope of nonlocalized information and commerce enterprises like the Open Data movement (“The Open Data Foundation,” n.d.), Amazon, Walmart, Lenovo in China, outsourced skills in India and the future of cities can clearly not stay in normal mode. The intensity of interactions between theory and practice will need to accelerate to find the leading edges as they constantly change. We can ill afford to fall short in either regard and the deepest value that planners might offer to the common good is to ensure that a rich complementarity exists in these interactions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, C. (1987). A New Theory of Urban Design. New York: Oxford University Press. Alexander, C. (2003a). New Concepts in Complexity Theory Arising from Studies in the Field of Architecture: An overview of four books of The Nature of Order with emphasis on the scientific problems which are raised. Katarxis. Retrieved from http://www.katarxis3.com/SCIENTIFIC%20INTRODUCTION.pdf Alexander, C. (2003b). The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, Book 2 The Process of Creating Life (Vols. 1-4, Vol. 2). Center for Environmental Structure. Allmendinger, P. (2009). Planning Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Bayer, Michael and N. Frank, J. Valerius. (2010). Becoming and Urban Planner: A guide to careers in planning and urban design. Hobeken, New Jersey: Wiley. Bettencourt, L. M. A., Lobo, J., Strumsky, D., & West, G. B. (2010). Urban Scaling and Its Deviations: Revealing the Structure of Wealth, Innovation and Crime across Cities. PLoS ONE, 5(11), e13541. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013541 Burdett, Ricky and Deyan Sudjic (Ed.). (2008). The Endless City: The Urban Project by the London School of Economics. London: Phaidon Press. Crowdsourcing Urban Planning? (2011). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNXC6v0faCs&feature=youtube_gdata_player Evans, A. (2011). CANARIE â&#x20AC;&#x153;About Usâ&#x20AC;? webpage. Retrieved from http://www.canarie.ca/en/about/research Fainstein, S. S., & Campbell, S. (Eds.). (2011). Readings in Planning Theory (3rd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. Fatima. (2011, December 5). Nature and the Built Environment. Draft paper presentation presented at the PLAN 700 Paper Presentations, Univeristy of Waterloo, School of Planning. Gunderson, L. H., & Holling, C. S. (2002). Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural systems. Island Press. Haas, T. (2008). New Urbanism and Beyond: Designing Cities for the Future. Rizzoli. Homer-Dixon, T. (2007). The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization (First Printing.). Vintage Canada. Jacobs, J. (1992). The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1st ed.). Vintage. Lorenz, E. N. (1963). Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 20(2), 130-141. doi:10.1175/1520-0469(1963)020<0130:DNF>2.0.CO;2 Manguel, A. (2007). The City of Words. Anansi. Mosier, K. L., & Fischer, U. M. (2010). Informed by Knowledge: Expert Performance in Complex Situations (1st ed.). Psychology Press. Neuwirth, R. (2011). Global Bazaar: Shantytowns, favelas and jhopadpattis turn out to be places of surprising innovation. Scientific American, (September), 56-63. Newman, M. E. J. (2010). Networks: an introduction. Oxford University Press.

Onnela, J.-P., Saramäki, J., Hyvönen, J., Szabó, G., Lazer, D., Kaski, K., Kertész, J., et al. (2007). Structure and Tie Strengths in Mobile Communication Networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(18), 7332-7336. Sivram Kish. (2011, December 10). Open Generative Design. About, . Retrieved from http://www.opengenerativedesign.com/ Snowden, D., & Boone, M. E. (2007). Leader’s Framework for Decision Making. Harvard Business Review, (November), 10. The Open Data Foundation. (n.d.). Retrieved December 3, 2011, from http://www.opendatafoundation.org/? Weinberger, D. (2011). The Machine That Would Predict the Future. Scientific American, 52-57. Westley, F., Zimmerman, B., & Patton, M. (2006). Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed. Random House Canada. Wilson, T. (2011). Canadian Housing Policy (PLAN 700 Working paper presentation) (p. Verbal report). School of Planning: University of Waterloo.