IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/urbpla/v8y2023i3p246-258.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Quanti-Qualitative Approach to Alexander’s Harmony-Seeking Computations

Author

Listed:
  • Alice Rauber

    (Graduate Program in Urban and Regional Planning, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)

  • Romulo Krafta

    (Graduate Program in Urban and Regional Planning, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)

Abstract

Harmony-seeking computations, as proposed by Christopher Alexander, offer a way to tackle complexity. Smart, free agents, facing uncertainty, look for order in a context powered by fifteen attractors, or patterns. Harmony-seeking would then be a relatively guided path across those idealized patterns, towards wholeness and beauty. However, individuals acting to change the city must combine circumstances imposed by external and inner urban forces with personal interpretations of one or more of those patterns that could change all the time. Moreover, each action is intertwined with others, in an unpredictable outcome. This article explores the possibility of bringing together urban inner and outer forces and ingenious individuals’ actions of city change by hypothesizing: (a) wholeness as a structural attribute defined as spatial centrality; (b) beauty as meaning attached to places, evolving either from historic accumulation or individual assignment; (c) order as every meaningful approximation between them; (d) a disaggregated description of the urban organism, based on multi-layered graphs, in which would be possible to record both morphological and territorial characteristics (form, transport, infrastructure) and semantic attributes (land uses, public image, remote associations, symbolic relationships); and (e) a set of spatial differentiation measures, mostly based on centrality, potentially able to depict wholeness (by measuring the effect of each component on all others) and beauty (by measuring urban robustness derived from any selected set of components). A multilayer graph-based approach to spatial differentiation algorithms provides a framework for the description, analysis, and performance evaluation of every component, as well as the whole system, both through quantitative and qualitative representation.

Suggested Citation

  • Alice Rauber & Romulo Krafta, 2023. "A Quanti-Qualitative Approach to Alexander’s Harmony-Seeking Computations," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(3), pages 246-258.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:urbpla:v8:y:2023:i:3:p:246-258
    DOI: 10.17645/up.v8i3.6826
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/6826
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/up.v8i3.6826?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen Marshall & Jorge Gil & Karl Kropf & Martin Tomko & Lucas Figueiredo, 2018. "Street Network Studies: from Networks to Models and their Representations," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 735-749, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael W. Mehaffy & Tigran Haas, 2023. "Introduction: Toward a “Post-Alexandrian” Agenda," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(3), pages 148-152.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dimitrios TSIOTAS & Nikolaos AXELIS & Serafeim POLYZOS, 2022. "Detecting City-Dipoles In Greece Based On Intercity Commuting," Regional Science Inquiry, Hellenic Association of Regional Scientists, vol. 0(1), pages 11-30, June.
    2. Alice Rauber & Romulo Krafta, 2023. "A Quanti-Qualitative Approach to Alexander’s Harmony-Seeking Computations," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(3), pages 246-258.
    3. repec:osf:socarx:7fxjz_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Elek Pafka & Carlo Andrea Biraghi, 2025. "Walkability: From Spatial Analytics to Urban Coding and Actual Walking," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10.
    5. Maria Stavara & Dimitrios Tsiotas, 2024. "A Combined Graph Theoretic And Transport Planning Framework For The Economic And Functional Analysis Of Large-Scale Road Networks," Sustainable Regional Development Scientific Journal, Sustainable Regional Development Scientific Journal, vol. 0(2), pages 27-39, October.
    6. Lingzhu Zhang & Alain JF Chiaradia, 2022. "Walking in the cities without ground, how 3d complex network volumetrics improve analysis," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 49(7), pages 1857-1874, September.
    7. Ben Derudder & Zachary Neal, 2018. "Uncovering Links Between Urban Studies and Network Science," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 441-446, September.
    8. Ouassim Manout & Patrick Bonnel & François Pacull, 2021. "Spatial Aggregation Issues in Traffic Assignment Models," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 1-29, March.
    9. Boeing, Geoff, 2021. "Spatial information and the legibility of urban form: Big data in urban morphology," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    10. Yat Yen & Pengjun Zhao & Muhammad T Sohail, 2021. "The morphology and circuity of walkable, bikeable, and drivable street networks in Phnom Penh, Cambodia," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 48(1), pages 169-185, January.
    11. Jing Cao & Haichao Ling & Tao Li & Shiyu Wang & Shengchuan Jiang & Cong Zhao, 2024. "A Graph-Based Scheme Generation Method for Variable Traffic Organization in Parking Lots," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(11), pages 1-18, June.
    12. Nir Kaplan & David Burg & Itzhak Omer, 2022. "Multiscale accessibility and urban performance," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 49(2), pages 687-703, February.
    13. Boeing, Geoff, 2020. "Street Network Models and Indicators for Every Urban Area in the World," SocArXiv f2dqc, Center for Open Science.
    14. Tsigdinos, Stefanos & Paraskevopoulos, Yannis & Tzouras, Panagiotis G. & Kepaptsoglou, Konstantinos, 2024. "Development of a complete method for re-conceptualizing street classification in an urban municipality," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    15. Valentina Marin & Carlos Molinero & Elsa Arcaute, 2024. "The scalar mismatch of regional governance: A comparative analysis of hierarchical structures," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 51(9), pages 2126-2145, November.
    16. Baorui Han & Dazhi Sun & Xiaomei Yu & Wanlu Song & Lisha Ding, 2020. "Classification of Urban Street Networks Based on Tree-Like Network Features," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-13, January.
    17. Boeing, Geoff, 2020. "Exploring Urban Form Through Openstreetmap Data: A Visual Introduction," SocArXiv rnwgv, Center for Open Science.
    18. Asya Natapov & Achituv Cohen & Sagi Dalyot, 2024. "Urban planning and design with points of interest and visual perception," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 51(3), pages 641-655, March.
    19. Dimitrios Tsiotas & Vassilis Tselios, 2023. "Dimension Reduction in the Topology of Multilayer Spatial Networks: The Case of the Interregional Commuting in Greece," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 97-133, March.
    20. Barrington-Leigh, Christopher Paul & Millard-Ball, Adam, 2019. "A global assessment of street network sprawl," OSF Preprints 6vp8j, Center for Open Science.
    21. Gaëtan Montero & Geoffrey Caruso & Mohamed Hilal & Isabelle Thomas, 2023. "A partition-free spatial clustering that preserves topology: application to built-up density," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 5-35, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:urbpla:v8:y:2023:i:3:p:246-258. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.