Christopher Alexander's "The Nature of Order" comes to mind, where he makes similar points WRT urban architecture and patterns of cities' growth. Manuel De Lan

Christopher Alexander's "The Nature of Order" comes to mind, where he makes similar points WRT urban architecture and patterns of cities' growth. Manuel De Landa made a phenomenal analysis of European cities as dissipative structures in "1000 Years of Non-Linear History", covering both ecological, geological and linguistic aspects of their development.