Reassessing Christopher Alexander’s theory of urban morphogenesis

Abstract

The architect Christopher Alexander made major contributions in architecture, city science, computer science and other fields. His earlier works, notably “A City is Not a Tree,” contributed to the understanding of cities as complex adaptive systems. Less well known, although no less theoretically ambitious, was Alexander’s later work after the year 2000. Here we explore the potential contribution of this work to contemporary urban challenges, focusing on Alexander’s magnum opus The Nature of Order: An Essay of the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe. We assess its theoretical contribution to the field of sustainable urbanism, with a focus on its computational aspects, as well as the critique it poses for conventional approaches to urban sustainability.

Keywords

Christopher Alexander / Urban morphogenesis / Network science / Complex adaptive systems / Sustainable urbanism

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Funding

University of Notre Dame

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s)