Comments on: Roads patterns following biological patterns http://liftlab.com/think/nova/2008/04/26/roads-patterns-following-biological-patterns/ mind/tech bazar from outer space Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:05:56 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=wordpress-mu-1.2.1 By: Enrique Ramirez http://liftlab.com/think/nova/2008/04/26/roads-patterns-following-biological-patterns/#comment-474958 Enrique Ramirez Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:05:00 +0000 http://liftlab.com/think/nova/2008/04/26/roads-patterns-following-biological-patterns/#comment-474958 This is a fascinating post, and yet I wonder as to the degree of difference between Dumé’s findings and those of Walter Christaller’s Die zentralen Orten im Süddeutschland (1933) (translated as Central Places in Southern Germany). In this text, Christaller articulated a system of relationships between urban centers and the surrounding lands. These relationships are both qualitative and quantitative — qualitative in the sense that Christaller himself uses the term “optimization of the distribution of cities”; qualitatitve, however, in the sense that he uses a system of hexagons to represent this idea of optimization. The real conceptual difference, however, is that Christaller’s Central Place theory is first and foremost a model, and one that occurs in a geographically-impossible flat, isotropic plane. His was an influential theory, laying the groundwork for C.A. Doxiadis’ work on Classical Greek infrastructural planning, to William Cronon’s magisterial Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1992). I also note that using biological examples to explain the particularities of a system has a very distinguished pedigree. But more recently, German sociologist Niklas Luhmann used the theories of Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela for his thrilling and maddening Soziale Systeme (1984) (translated as Social Systems in 1995). Though Luhmann probably never conceived of his system as a way to explain infrastructural phenomena, you can imaging that some enterprising student of regional and urban planning will. This is a fascinating post, and yet I wonder as to the degree of difference between Dumé’s findings and those of Walter Christaller’s Die zentralen Orten im Süddeutschland (1933) (translated as Central Places in Southern Germany). In this text, Christaller articulated a system of relationships between urban centers and the surrounding lands. These relationships are both qualitative and quantitative — qualitative in the sense that Christaller himself uses the term “optimization of the distribution of cities”; qualitatitve, however, in the sense that he uses a system of hexagons to represent this idea of optimization. The real conceptual difference, however, is that Christaller’s Central Place theory is first and foremost a model, and one that occurs in a geographically-impossible flat, isotropic plane. His was an influential theory, laying the groundwork for C.A. Doxiadis’ work on Classical Greek infrastructural planning, to William Cronon’s magisterial Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1992).

I also note that using biological examples to explain the particularities of a system has a very distinguished pedigree. But more recently, German sociologist Niklas Luhmann used the theories of Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela for his thrilling and maddening Soziale Systeme (1984) (translated as Social Systems in 1995). Though Luhmann probably never conceived of his system as a way to explain infrastructural phenomena, you can imaging that some enterprising student of regional and urban planning will.

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