Designing Networks Cities

<p><em>designing networks cities</em><b> </b>presents a sophisticated, multi-disciplinary, and multi-dimensional approach to urban design. Emerging from years of practice, experimentation, and research by designers (landscape architects, urban planners, urban designers and architects), this approach engages with contemporary thought across a number of disciplines to re-invent the entrenched blunt instruments of the city making process.</p><p>A cry for flexible, sharp-instruments in urban design, <i>designing networks cities </i>presents a multi-dimensional way of seeing the essential components of the city (<i>form</i>, <i>space-time</i>, <i>order </i>and <i>aesthetics</i>). It purposefully links traditional architectural design derivation mechanisms to urban design, in the hope that cities will not only <i>be pragmatic</i>, but also become sophisticated <i>iconographically</i>, <i>poetically</i>, and <i>syntactically</i>. It provides the tools to enable decision making within a multiplicity of constraints and opportunities: a <i>philosophy </i>of becoming, not being; a <i>science </i>of dynamic systems, not stasis; and an <i>art </i>of sensations, not subjectivity. And finally, and most importantly, it argues <i>why </i>it is important that cities embrace these multiple dimensions of society on a planet that is facing increasing environmental challenges: an <i>economics </i>focused on equity for all, not for some more than others; a <i>politics </i>supporting a genuine representational democracy, not one representing the overly influential; and a <i>culture </i>[including history] that embraces difference, not one that encourages division.</p><i><p>designing networks cities </p></i><P>not only provides the means to identify these issues and a methodology to deal with them within a complex emerging co-existence, but also demonstrates the development of cities that embrace and respond to the complexities of life in what some are calling the Anthropocene.</P>