A city is not a tree- Christopher Alexander

-Artificial and Natural cities

-Semi-lattice cities, not tree cities
-Artificial Urbanity: densifying urban spaces into a staged realm of interaction
and livelihood.
- To many designers, today seem to be yearning for the physical and plastic
characteristics of the past, instead of searching for the abstract ordering
principle which the towns of the past happened to have, and which our modern
conceeptions of the city have not yet found.
- Imitating appearences won't stand in account for the old, its inner nature has to
be dealt with.
- Changing and unchanging elements/ receptacles work together by inner binding
forces
-Fixed parts are defined as units
- Subsets are paired eleements
- collections are made from choice subsets
- Semilattices are based from the overlapping of of sets, they require an inherent
binding force
- Axioms are principles
- Semilattice axioms: Collection of sets formed by the overlapping sets on
commonalities, (1) (123) (345) are semilattice sets
- Tree axiom: collection of sets if elements of one is wholly contained in another
(123) (12345) are sets, (123) (345) are disjoint
- Because tree axioms lack the structural complexity, their presence in urban
systems is to be questioned, which is crippling the conception of cities
- Ruth Glass Middlesbrough redevelopment plan. Nodal systems, spatial
characteristics made up around some kind of nodes people use.
- Different units, do not coincide or disjoint, they overlap*
- Informal structures are oftentimes based within a larger formal structure and is
controlled by public action, varies timely and problematically, no body is under
any other's control.
- Although they may seem as trees on a macro level, their authority is semilattice-
like.
- The column root analogy- where aged branches connect to roots, forming a semi-
lattice
- Breaking the tree conception
- Overlap for its own sake can also result in choas, right overlap has to exist
- Historic overlaps cannot be implemented in today's cities since they existed with
a different set of socio-political sub-sets. They will be inappropriate
-Since relationships between functions have changed, therfore the overlapping
systems will evidently change
- Every time a piece of city is torn-out and a tree made to replace the semi-
lattice that was there before, the city takes a step toward dissociation.
- In any organized object, extreme compartmentalization and the dissociation of
internal elements are the first signs of coming destruction. In a society,
dissociation is anarchy. In a person, dissociation is the mark of schizophrenia and
impending suicide.