Living Architecture: Urban Planning as a Science, the Metropolis, and Complex Adaptive Systems

Abstract

Many of the issues which confront architects/urban planners faced with current trends of rapid urbanization (typically in industrializing third-world countries) ought to have a direct, empirical method of implementing meaningful interventions with as little unintended consequences as scientifically possible. In an effort to develop an analytical tool, rooted in Complex Adaptive Systems theory, the inherent nature of slime mold (Physarum polycephalum) was utilized as an analogy to the ‘problem of the traveling salesman’ exhibited by cable care stations arranged within Barrio de Patare. Using a topographic model of the hillside barrios in Caracas (Venezuela), nodes of oat acted as sustenance for the propagation of slime mold growth and as an analogy to the cable car stations; whereby, the changes in elevation mirror the increased need of economic resources to build at such steep elevations. Potato agar was used as a growing medium to activate the dormant sclerotium positioned onto the topography model. Once active, the slime mold was able to find the nodes and develop an efficient network between each oat pile. This networking is ubiquitous to both social and biological systems; in both cases, there exists a complex compromise involving cost, transport efficiency, and fault tolerance. This study does not resolve complex urban issues of design on a broad scale; although, it does prove that the use of tools, rooted in Complex Adaptive Systems theory, can aid in the design/development of urban matters.