Principles of Urban Structure

by Nikos A Salingaros

This book explains how cities actually work. It will serve as a guide and inspiration for planners to re-humanize our cities using the latest technologies and recent understanding from science and mathematics. The dogma of mainstream urbanism cannot cope with the changes in technology, culture and science of the last decades. The heritage we are left with is an overly asphalted and sterile concrete environment. Therefore this book addresses the needs of professional urbanists, sutdents and teachers, who wish to understand how and why cities are successful or not, depending on their form, components, and substructure. Most of the needs are related to the urgent search for new instruments of urban planning and design, to which this book contributes conceptually by showing how to connect the fractal city on multiple levels. There is an increasing awareness that a city needs to be understood as a complex interacting system. Different types of urban systems overlap to build up urban complexity in a living city. This raises the need for using concepts such as coherence, emergence, information, self-organization and adaptivity. This book relates these concepts to the city, shows how to operationalize them, and hopefully marks the beginnings of an urban science.
What people are "I would also like to draw your attention to a seminal book on urban design which could fundamentally alter our approach to urban design thinking -- and directly impact our 'Principles of Urban Structure' written by Nikos A. Salingaros -- a close friend and associate of Christopher Alexander. This book, in my opinion sums up that 'body of knowledge' which has simply not been integrated into our planning and architectural curriculum across the world. Many of our urban development issues arise from this. Although this book was first published in 2005, by Techne Press, Amsterdam -- it is surprising that many in the urban design field have not heard of it. It is my sincere hope that 'Principles of Urban Structure' --which is a collection of important essays, written and published over the last fifteen years in various journals, becomes the foundational text upon which present and future generations of urban planners, designers and architects build their studies and practice. In my opinion the knowledge contained in this book is capable of reconnecting our fossilized humanity with the evolving science of urban design. The lost art of city design can only be found once again through such clear thinking." ~ Mahesh P. Butani, Raise the Hammer

Genres: Architecture, Urban Studies

254 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Sabin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Salingaros is very adept at interpreting concepts of science and translating them into a form architecture and urban studies may benefit from them. It contains many explanations and examples to follow and understand the principles outlined.
I completely agree with his evaluation of modernist urban practices and the directions he is advocating, but when reading it I felt a bit irritated by his didactic tone.