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A city isn’t a machine. Ambiguity isn’t sloppy in this context, it’s needed to allow room for contradictions to resolve. People make art out of trash, but the

A city isn’t a machine. Ambiguity isn’t sloppy in this context, it’s needed to allow room for contradictions to resolve. People make art out of trash, but the dump isn’t a museum, a museum is. Christopher Alexander has arguably done more than any other human to help us understand why our built environments (physical and software) take the forms they take. 10 minutes flipping through A Pattern Language will clarify the underlying basis for the linked essay.

archithrow 7y ago
I think the point here is that there is a really bad "rhetoric smell" to A City is Not a Tree. It's a geeky rant which jumps to conclusions and makes tendentious statements. Christopher Alexander's trajectory as an architect (almost all other architects ignore his work) is witness to this. Whether it's down to the abstract formalism, messianism, narcissism, I don't quite know. But there is something off-putting about him. When Alexander tries to sell us the line that a city "is" a semilattice, and that this precise mathematical formalism is somehow humane while an equally abstract tree is not—these abstract structures are being asked to do a lot of work. A more skilled theorist wouldn't structure the argument around platonic ideas. All he is trying to say is that exclusive zoning is bad, that human settlements are a naturally a mess of overlapping activities and concerns and should be designed that way. Trying to suggest that this is some kind of mathematical property just feels theological and immature. His writing is reminiscent of a CS undergrad coming up with a concept for a new operating system based on some particular abstraction (pipes, say) and writing a long screed about it without implementing the thing. It's giddy and the central idea is an overvalued abstraction. All I can say is, Alexander is a crank, as far as architecture goes.
- thanatropism 7y ago
  Why did Alexander metaphors flourish in computer science?
brownbat 7y ago
Wow, that book is weird and interesting, thanks. It contains so many claims, from the obvious to the benign to the ridiculous... Suburbs are obsolete, cities are magical! All farms should be in valleys! People should probably exercise more, twenty minutes of walking per day! Cars are dangerous, unless they are electric, then they are suddenly safe! Big doors are fascist! I'm glad the structural shorthand used in that work inspired lisp and wikis and many other ideas in CS. And I can wholeheartedly second the recommendation, people should check it out. With caution though. I think it'd be extremely dangerous to take the claims at face value just because the organization, the structure and shorthand for those claims is novel. The book did not meaningfully increase my appreciation for the linked essay unfortunately. Seems like a ton of people who are smarter than I am found this all stunningly profound though, so what do I know.

archithrow 7y ago

I think the point here is that there is a really bad "rhetoric smell" to A City is Not a Tree. It's a geeky rant which jumps to conclusions and makes tendentious statements. Christopher Alexander's trajectory as an architect (almost all other architects ignore his work) is witness to this. Whether it's down to the abstract formalism, messianism, narcissism, I don't quite know. But there is something off-putting about him. When Alexander tries to sell us the line that a city "is" a semilattice, and that this precise mathematical formalism is somehow humane while an equally abstract tree is not—these abstract structures are being asked to do a lot of work. A more skilled theorist wouldn't structure the argument around platonic ideas. All he is trying to say is that exclusive zoning is bad, that human settlements are a naturally a mess of overlapping activities and concerns and should be designed that way. Trying to suggest that this is some kind of mathematical property just feels theological and immature. His writing is reminiscent of a CS undergrad coming up with a concept for a new operating system based on some particular abstraction (pipes, say) and writing a long screed about it without implementing the thing. It's giddy and the central idea is an overvalued abstraction. All I can say is, Alexander is a crank, as far as architecture goes.

thanatropism 7y ago
Why did Alexander metaphors flourish in computer science?

brownbat 7y ago

Wow, that book is weird and interesting, thanks. It contains so many claims, from the obvious to the benign to the ridiculous... Suburbs are obsolete, cities are magical! All farms should be in valleys! People should probably exercise more, twenty minutes of walking per day! Cars are dangerous, unless they are electric, then they are suddenly safe! Big doors are fascist! I'm glad the structural shorthand used in that work inspired lisp and wikis and many other ideas in CS. And I can wholeheartedly second the recommendation, people should check it out. With caution though. I think it'd be extremely dangerous to take the claims at face value just because the organization, the structure and shorthand for those claims is novel. The book did not meaningfully increase my appreciation for the linked essay unfortunately. Seems like a ton of people who are smarter than I am found this all stunningly profound though, so what do I know.