by hand

PROCESS, etc…
As cultures live through word of mouth and by example (Jacobs, 2004:5) cultural information (and also knowledge and wisdom) is a matter of process, not fixed, static storage[1] (Wiener, 1954:121). This is because the environment as a properly functioning energy system reprocesses earlier environments (McLuhan, 1966:90). Association (and the tradition that guarantees it) which is the organic growth of interrelationships in space and time – ensures that communication and experience remain moist, fertile, virile and meaningful. Rather than acquisition of design skill or the management of technology, then, a view to living toward an experiential understanding (process) of man and man-made object is necessary (Blee, 1966:81, 82). Experience is a live relationship between feeling and form. The basis for a vital urbanism then consists of the ‘nuclear relations’[2] between the physically and personally heterogeneous people who actually construct the city (Bookchin, 1974:75, 84,124) – these actual conditions of relating are more important than forms or attitudes and thus an understanding of man becomes essential. This means that feedback, and the integrity of the channels of communication between humans, spaces, structures, cities are essential to the welfare of society (Wiener, 1954:131) – a learning (versus control engineering, or negative feedback (McLuhan, 1966:92)) system that can run on the results of its past performance (Wiener, 1954:32, 34, 61).

To nurture learning systems let us respect the geometry of the living city (i.e. human-scaled urban geometry). A “Not Alienated” urbanism (Ricci, 1966:115-119) that is conceived, built and rebuilt over a long period of observation and reflection, with a design principle based on the experience of real people (Bookchin, 1974:98). Use a peer-based approach to upgrade our cities, driven by freely-shared information on how human beings can live better. We need to respect, observe, document (for posterity, lest we forget), share, and accept advice on how to apply, patterns and small-scale technology to fix what we have (based on e.g. Salingaros, 2010a, Section 10 and Bookchin, 1974:123-34). In this understanding, all manner of frictions, cracks, fissures, gaps and ‘vacant’ spaces arise; spaces that are integral to the ‘police’ order yet simultaneously outside of it. It is here that ‘quilting’ points and node for experience and experimentation with human(e) urban possibilities germinate – “Let the human spirit grow in the interstices between the engineering” (Wilsher and Righter, 1975:79). And let there be interstices.

[1] In cities, solutions are less important than the processes by which we arrive at them (Natalie Becker, quoted in Wilsher and Righter, 1975:82).

[2] What does this mean?