Architecture
is a massive medium, it communicates what we value most – our hopes and
desires, our aspirations. In the
same way, infrastructure conveys what is important to particular society: what
we build, where we build, and how we build it speaks volumes about what we hold
dear; and as our values change, the massive media of architecture and
infrastructure change with us. The
evolution of cities thus proceeds as we adapt our physical environment to
changing political, social, cultural, and economic needs. But how does that adaptation occur? What is the mechanism of change?
In fact, a city evolves one project at a time; each project is an attempt
to exploit an opportunity opened up by a change in political, social, cultural,
or economic conditions; each project is the product of a specific
interaction between particular individuals, one in which their often conflicting
desires are locked in an ongoing struggle, a sort of metabolic process whose
end-product is a completed project; and that it is in the aggregation of these
projects -- these particular adaptations to specific urban conditions -- that the
shape of the city emerges.
Underneath
this process is a pattern that seems to underlie adaptation across the spectrum:
ecosystems at every scale seem to be directed by a microcosm at a scale small
enough relative to the ecosystem that it seems invisible; when a change in conditions
knocks an ecosystem out of equilibrium, it is the effort of the microcosm that
does the hard work of restoring order.
Often, despite the overt desire of the ecosystem to return to a previous
equilibrium, the microcosm works at the smaller scale adapt it to the reality
of the new conditions.
How does
it do this? The microcosm works chiefly
through signaling and other more complex forms of communication. In forests, for example, a change
in conditions propels the microcosm to adapt. Microbial organisms such as bacteria, algae, and fungi
engage in metabolic activity that reconfigures the environment to cultivate a
new habitat, one more in line with the altered ecological conditions. The forest changes its makeup, autopoietically,
rearranging its biota through a succession of species, continually seeking equilibrium.
Cities evolve in a similar way; however, instead of an unseen microcosm instigating
change, it is what I call the metrocosm
that does the work. The
metrocosm consists of an ecosystem of citizens engaged in a riot of activity
that includes all manner of interaction – fighting and playing; buying and
selling; politics, sports and entertainment; crime and punishment; eating, praying,
loving, etc. – that, when taken together, is the city, autopoietically remaking
itself, interaction by interaction.
When this
activity occurs in the realm of architecture and infrastructure, the life of
the city can be read in its physical form; thus the city itself becomes a
massive medium broadcasting to the world the collective message of the
metrocosm. This is how a city like
New York is always New York even though both the medium and the message are
constantly changing.
