Abstract
This ethno-biographical account centres around a designer’s curiosity about complexity theories. It explores the common ground between 30 years of practice in planning and landscape architecture, and system theory in all its expressions in this period. The paper sketches out the use and misuse of systems theory, dissipative structures and the notion of uncertainty, complexity theories and finally of the new thermodynamics. The author’s changing view on nature, nature conservation and nature development as a planner and a landscape architect is a subtext throughout. He makes observations on the recurring problems faced by planners and designers that use analogies from other disciplines and sciences to conceptualize design strategies. Ross Ashby’s law of the requisite variety, for instance, was adopted by Dutch national planning in the 1970s and brought the whole planning machine to a grinding halt by the sheer complexity of the org-ware trying to mimic the complexity of society. The argument leads to the conclusion, supported by examples, that very complex problems can be tackled by applying simple rules. Examples range from the occupation of the Dutch countryside by newcomers and alternative ways for the effective taxing of CO2 to developmental simulation in silico for delta cities. Complexity theories have a lot to offer to the field. Alongside the ‘Santa-Fe’ school of natural science oriented complexity theory, the European school of Social Complexity theory as epitomized by Edgar Morin seems promising for solving planning and design problems. ‘Predict and Control’ can and must be exchanged for a far more flexible way of planning. We can put our trust in, and work with, the self-organizational energy in society and nature without becoming noncommittal. Simple rules can indeed give rise to rich results and an emerging order. Moreover, systems thinking could very well prove to be the strong countervailing force against the prevailing reductionism; we need to re-establish the role of design as the synthesizing activity in these complex processes.
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Notes
- 1.
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1962.
- 2.
The first wave being romanticism in the late eighteenth century, that also marked the start of nature reserves (Rousseau being instrumental to assigning Fontaineblaeau woods as Europe’s first nature reserve). The second wave after hygienists in the late 19th and the beginning of the twentieth century proclaimed the industrial city as an ‘illmaking’ environment and put nature and countryside as the natural cure.
- 3.
Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III The Limits to Growth, A Report to the Club of Rome, Universe Books, 1972.
- 4.
Chris van Leeuwen (1971) Ekologie (Delft) Technische Universiteit Delft, faculteit Bouwkunde and Leeuwen, Chr.G. van (1981) From ecosystem to ecodevicei. In: Tjallingii, S.P.; Veer, A.A. de (eds.) Perspectives in Landscape Ecology; contributions to research, planning and management of our environment (Wageningen) Pudoc; 29–34.
- 5.
Reclamation of the Wadden Sea constituted a tradition of almost 1200 years. It stopped when the Zwarte Haan Holwert consession was refused by the government in 1979. Prime Minister van Agt told the press that “seed potatoes are beautiful but the Wadden Sea is even more beautiful” thus summarizing almost 1,500 pages of scientific research that underpinned this decision.
- 6.
The Global Urbanological Model was never completed. For the Global Ecological Model see: E. van der Maarel, P. L. Dauvellier. Naar een globaal ecologisch model voor de ruimtelijke ontwikkeling van Nederland Ministerie van Volkshuisvesting en Ruimtelijke Ordening’s-Gravenhage), 1978.
- 7.
For an elaboration of the framework concept see: Dirk Sijmons Regional Planning as a Strategy, Landscape and Urban Planning Volume 18, Issues 3–4, February 1990, pp. 265–273. Special Issue Changing Agricultural Landscapes of Europe.
- 8.
Dick de Bruyn, Dick Hamhuis, Lodewijk van Nieuwenhuijze, Willem Overmars, Dirk Sijmons & Frans Vera, Ooievaar, de toekomst van het rivierengebied Gelderse Milieufederatie, Arnhem 1987 (With English, French and German summaries).
- 9.
The ‘discovery’ of the Oostvaardersplassen, a planned industrial area in the new Zuiderzeepolder Zuiderlijk Flevoland was a pivotal experience in Dutch Nature conservation being misled into thinking that ‘our nature’ was completely dependent on agricultural activity. For budgetary reasons this area wasn’t drained yet because it was scheduled not to be put to use before 2010. Nature—that was almost declared dead by pessimists—kicked in like a squatter movement. Without farming pressure this young polder soil showed how marshland would have looked in the days before reclamation. The almost 6,000 hectares harbored were relatively quickly colonized by bird species that were never seen in the Netherlands since the late nineteenth century. Spectacular re-colonization of thousands of breeding Grey Geese was recently completed by the appearance of some pairs of the European White Tailed Sea Eagle (dubbed ‘the flying door’). The Oostvaardersplassen gave rise to the hope that active nature (re)development was possible in the Netherlands.
- 10.
This theory postulates that local extinction and re-colonization of species on islands have rates that are as relational to the size of the island and the distance to the mainland (or other islands). It gave rise to the idea that our fragmented natural areas were ‘islands’ in an agricultural desert and that the theory could be applied to this problem. See: Robert H. MacArthur & Edward O. Wilson The Theory of Island Biogeography Princeton University Press, 1967 and for the extension of the theory to nature conservation practice: Jerred Diamond, Island Biogeography and the Design of Natural Reserves (1976), in Robert M. May’s Theoretical Ecology: Principles and Applications, Blackwell Scientific Publications, pp. 163–186.
- 11.
Bal, D., H.M. Beije, M. Felliger, R. Haveman, A.J.F.M. van Opstal en F.J. van Zadelhoff (2001). Handboek natuurdoeltypen. Rapport Expertisecentrum LNV 2001/020, Wageningen.
- 12.
Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order out of Chaos: Man’s new Dialogue with Nature. Flamingo Press, 1984.
- 13.
First being Introduced by Bolzmann’s in the late nineteenth century reasoning that the second law of thermodynamics introduces the irreversible entropy concept that implies an arrow of time. Poincarré’s ‘recurrence theorem’—over an infinite time everything that can happen will happen—shaded doubt over this arrow of time. This might hold true for isolated systems but the open thermodynamic systems that Prigogine and others are describing reinstated the irreversibility of time of the second law.
- 14.
Fred Feddes, Rik Herngreen, Sjef Jansen, Rob van Leeuwen, Dirk Sijmons (ed) Oorden van Onthouding, NAi Uitgevers, Rotterdam 1998. See for the use of Prigogine’s work in this book: Bert Harms, De toekomst met pen armen, onzekerheid als bevrijding, pp. 146–149 and/or Dirk Sijmons New adventures ahead! In: Landscape, Architectura at Natura Press, Amsterdam 2002 (Originally: Nieuwe avonturen tegemoet, LOCUS Seminar book 1993).
- 15.
A rough chronology of urban history in Europe: Traditional City, Surveyors/Bookeeping City, Architectonic City, Public Housing City, The Scattered City.
- 16.
These aphorisms stem from my own notes (1974–1975). Both were tutoring at the TU-Delft in the 1970s. This observation also applies in ecology. Agricultural activities, being relatively constant from the start of our reclamation to the invention of artificial fertilizer, produced a myriad of gradients and a high biodiversity.
- 17.
UNU Symposium on Science and Praxis of Complexity in 1984 was attended by renowned scientists like Prigogine, Morin, Boulding and many others.
- 18.
Steven M. Manson Simplifying complexity: a review of complexity theory Geoforum 32 (2001) 405–414.
- 19.
Edgar Morin, Complex Pattern and Design (1976) In: Edgar Morin, On Complexity (2008) pp. 31–32, Hampton Press Inc, CressKill, NY.
- 20.
Letiche, H. 2008. Making Healthcare Care. Managing via Simple Guiding Principles. Charlotte, NC: IAP.
- 21.
The decade collected ambitious titles like Kauffman’s by the dozen. The Life of the Cosmos by Lee Smolin, What is Life by Lynn Margulis and How Nature Works by Per Bak to name only a few. It shows the straightforward claims of the complexity scientists and the neo-neo-Darwinist school. It is also an indication of an ‘arms race’ in catchy titles that was gaining momentum in the 1990s in popular science writing (and reading) by well known scientists.
- 22.
Morin, E. (translated and introduced by J.L. Roland Belanger) 1992. Method. Towards a study of Humankind. Volume 1: The Nature of Nature. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
- 23.
Edgar Morin, On Complexity, Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press 2007 A compilation of earlier French texts on complexity by Morin.
- 24.
All quotes in this paragraph are from: Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, Oxford University Press, New York 1995.
- 25.
See for the Spanish Inquisition on every attempt to any possible violation of the truce of the Neo Darwinist Syntheses: Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Simon & Schuster New York 1995. The book contains a lot of commentary on Dennett’s Bète Noir, Stephan J. Gould. It doesn’t fully deal with the emergent Complexity Science. Fifteen years later Dennett would have a day’s job to defend the Syntheses against ‘attacks’ that Evolution might be working on other dimensions too. Not only genetic but epigenetic, symbiotic, behavioral and symbolic variations would write the history of life. See for these recent developments: Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb Evolution in four dimensions MIT press Cambridge, 2006 or Denis Noble The Music of Life, Biology Beyond the Genome, Oxford University Press, New York 2006. The most fundamental, iconoclastic and therefore widely ignored, but nonetheless extremely interesting contribution to evolutionary theory introduces symbiogenesis (from the merge of different archeabacteria to form eukaryotic cells to the symbiosis of a fungus and an algae in a lichen) as an alternative to the random mutation of DNA as the cradle to speciation. Lynn Margulis Acquiring Genomes: a theory of the origin of Species , Basic Books, New York 2002.
- 26.
Punctuated equilibrium is the theoretical concept that states that evolution has periods of relative stability were slow and gradual change prevails ‘punctuated’ by periods where in a relative short period an enormous amount of activity and speciation is being observed in the fossil record. It was taken as an attack on the central dogma of ‘gradualism’ in evolutionary theory. Eldridge N. and S.J. Gould Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phylogenetic gradualism, Cooper&Co, San Fransisco 1972.
- 27.
Stephan Jay Gould The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Belknap, Harvard, Cambridge 2002. See for the False tracks of Homology and Analogy pages 928–931 and for his assessment of Complexity theory pages 1208–1214.
- 28.
See alsoEkim Tan & Juval Portugali : The Responsive City Design Game, this book pp 375–397
- 29.
A Wicked problem is a phrase originally used in social planning to describe a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems (Wikipedia).
- 30.
Ruut van Paridon & Karen de Groot, van Knooperven® tot Tuinenrijk (masterthesis, 2003), published as The country realm in OASE #63 Countryside (2004).
- 31.
Sijmons, Dirk & Sander de Bruyn, Albert Cath, Bram van de Klundert, Arthur Petersen, De Matrix, Interdisciplinary Research on Perspectives on Climate Proofing the Netherlands, Room for Climate, National Research Project H+N+S, Amersfoort, 2010.
- 32.
Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S,M,L,XL 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 1995.
- 33.
Dirk Sijmons, The City and the World, Inaugural address, TU-Delft 09 December 2009.
- 34.
Dorion Sagan & Lynn Margulis, Welcome to the Machine, In: Margulis en Sagan, Dazzle Gradually. Reflections on the Nature of Nature, Chelsea Green Publishing, Vermont, 2007.
- 35.
Fred Feddes, Maarten Hajer and Dirk Sijmons, Een Plan dat Werkt. NAi publishers, Rotterdam, 2006, chapter Deltaplanologie.
- 36.
Eric. D. Schneider & Dorion Sagan Into the Cold, Energy flow, Thermodynamics and Life, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2007.
- 37.
Hugo Letiche, Albert Cath & Arthur C. Petersen, Struggle by Metaphor. Social-Ecological Systems theory versus Social Complexity theory, EGOS, Barcelona, 2009.
- 38.
A centering is the (wooden) framework used to support an arch or dome while it is under construction.
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Sijmons, D. (2012). Simple Rules: Emerging Order? A Designer’s Curiosity About Complexity Theories. In: Portugali, J., Meyer, H., Stolk, E., Tan, E. (eds) Complexity Theories of Cities Have Come of Age. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24544-2_16
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