the appearance of purposefulness in a system which is not purposefully constructed
“….Once thus comprehended, Tokyo’s non-intentional landscape has the appearance of purposefulness in a system which is not purposefully constructed simply because purposeless is in its very nature transitory[45]. Like the form of the ancient city the coherent non-intentional landscape of modern Tokyo comprises multiple levels of unintended order arising from markedly distinct lifestyles[46] – dense, multilayered units whose scale grows more refined and human as it moves closer to the daily lives of the people of the city[47]. These deviations from the geodetic city plan are not failures or irrational expressions but rather represent emergent patterns of order that are the result of many different traits operating in the system at once[48]. Here diverse structural types operate locally within the same structure while maintaining systemic coherence and originating self repair throughout[49] – reinvigorating the diversity of ways of life for the various city districts[50]. In this view Tokyo displays the fullness of the city as a field of ubiquitous difference – an organic totality, but one that does not lose the individuality so essential to diversity and creativity[51]. In this way the city is redeemed by regular interaction with the country[52], but from deep within.
[45] Wiener (1954:38) referring to Ashby’s machine; see also Mandelbrot Fractal Geometry of Nature and the idea that the seeming chaos of nature embraces a flexible, orderly structure (discussed in Ashihara, 1989:19).
[46] Born of Edo period partitioning (Jinnai, 1995:122).
[47] Jinnai, 1995: 122
[48] Reiser and Umemoto, 2006:140 discussing essentialized systems vs. systems with singularlities
[49] Reiser and Umemoto (2006:157) discussing systems becoming other systems; see also Salingaros (2010b); Salingaros et al. (2010); Wiener (1954); Ashihara (1989 e.g.58, 64)
[50] Jinnai, 1995:122
[51] Bookchin, 1974:123
[52] Yokoi Tokiyoshi discussed in Smith, 1978:58
From The Non-Intentional Landscape of Tokyo (which is an early sketch for the Non-Intentional Landscape pamphlet)
