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2. Complexity and fractal boundaries

2. Complexity and fractal boundaries NS Fractals have two related characteristics: they show complexity at every magnification; and their edges and interfaces are not smooth, but are either perforated or crinkled. A fractal has some connective structure at different scales. Historical cities are richly structured at every magnification, whereas contemporary cities enhance the largest scale but suppress everything else. There are no straight lines in fractals. A smooth flat plane has no substructure, and is therefore non-fractal. Colonnades, arcades, rows of narrow buildings with cross-paths all correspond to a permeable membrane with holes to allow interchange -- this is one type of fractal. When an urban interface is not permeable, it is convoluted, like a crinkly meandering river or folded curtain. A building edge couples by interweaving with its adjoining space, creating another type of fractal. This folding arises spontaneously as a natural consequence of urban forces; for example, portions of buildings that grow outwards onto the pavement. Despite the obvious threat to public space, it seems that this process represents a natural evolution of the built boundary into a more stable fractal form. There is a clear tendency to perceive the complexity of a city as being inversely proportional to its large-scale order. VP The more legible a city is, with a clear rectangular grid built for car traffic, the less complex it is. Nevertheless, diagonal and shorter paths allow someone to go more directly to their destination, but at the same time can cause disorientation. We are used to the rigid notion of a North-South orientation, but this actually reduces the connectivity possibilities in a city. It makes a city apparently more easy to read, but it also cuts the possible paths of connection. After all, a diagonal path is shorter than a stepped rectangular path. When a city's organized complexity is reduced, it is difficult for a person to connect to it. NS I'm sure that that occurs because what we understand as order in a city has to do with the largest scale, whereas human beings connect to the human scales. The most important urban structures exist on much smaller scales, going right down to the detail in the materials. Also, I think this perception is based on a rigid notion of order inflicted upon modern society by a misinterpretation of VP natural order. The rigid notion of science that partitions reality into segments has somehow shaped the 20th century mind. While science has evolved to study complex structures, our mind is still stuck with the Cartesian model. There is an underlying order in many of those apparently chaotic systems that we observe in nature. We should seek this type of order for our cities: an order that enhances life by promoting a rich network of interconnected paths at different levels of scale. In a way, this is like a call to go back to nature, and for our mind to be more connected to how nature actually shapes itself and works. We have been trained -- through our education -- not to want to see the fractal qualities of nature. But they are there, surrounding us. We should expect a city that is closer to nature to share the same type of property; that is, of organized complexity. NS One of the stated aims of modernism was to eliminate any architectural interface with fractal dimension. These were replaced by long, straight roads, and reinforced with the strict alignment of buildings. The reason given was to clean up the perceived messiness of older cities; yet that messiness was really the organized complexity that made them alive. Imagine the range of fractal interfaces as generated by the following mechanical model. Take a wire and compress it longitudinally, fairly evenly along its entire length. It will buckle and crinkle, creating a fractal boundary of dimension greater than one. (The dimension is more than one because the line fills up some area with its undulations, and would have dimension two if it filled in all the area). If you then pull it to straighten it out, again evenly along its length, it will first straighten, and then it will break into aligned pieces so as to be able to extend its length. This creates a fractal line with fractal dimension less than one (i.e., a line with holes in it that is closer to a collection of points having dimension zero than a continuous line of dimension exactly one). Of all possible lines one can create in this way, the perfectly smooth, straight line has a very low probability of occurring; and yet, that is what architects try to enforce all over the world. Traditional villages show an infinite range of fractal interfaces between their building fronts and street. There, one finds gentle curves that are crinkled on the small scale, and lines that are only approximately straight on the large scale. Even in formal planning, a curved structure such as the Circus and Royal Crescent at Bath arises from compression, and so it is crinkled on the human scale. The opposite is the colonnade and arcade, which comes from tension, and is straight. Even though there exist curved colonnades, such as St. Peter's, I believe that they are far less successful than structures that follow this model. Another point is the scale on which the fractal dimension is measured: great urban environments use fractals on the human scale, whereas dead environments deliberately remove them. For example, a colonnade is useful when the intercolumn spaces are roughly between 1m and 3m, i.e., comparable to the human scale of movement. Monstrous spaces of more than 5m between columns alienate the user. For this reason, flat, smooth buildings that are aligned and spaced 20m apart may resemble a fractal line on paper, but they so far exceed the human scale as to be totally alienating. They are not fractal on the human scale, which is what is important. The degree to which a city becomes more alive is measured by how much it is allowed to evolve like a living organism; VP to reach its natural organized complexity. The spaces and edges are designed by people's activities, and these boundaries and interfaces can evolve in time. 1. Fractals up 3. Creative freedom

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Suggested reading

Earth Summit 2002: A New Deal

Ecology and the Fractal Mind in the New Architecture: a Conversation

1. Fractals 2. C omplexity and fractal boundaries 3. C reative freedom 4. Universality 5. Jungian archetypes 6. Ecology 7. The fractal mind 8. Our vanishing heritage 9. The collective mind Bibliography Nikos A. Salingaros, 1999 - Disclaimer

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