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Here is a book that I read a while ago and that I find truly inspiring. Stephen Marshall is Senior Lecturer in Transport Planning and Urban Design at the Bartlett School of Planning and his books explores how one can understand cities and urban fabric as I wrote a review for Planning Theory & Practice and what follows is a condensed version of this review.

Marshall starts his book with a thought-provoking question. Why is it, he asks, that of all habitats available to man, modern planned urban environments are often perceived as “inhuman, alienating environments: with ugly and brutal ‘concrete jungles’, landscapes of barren tarmac, looming slab blocks and gloomy undercrofts.” (2009: 1)? After all, the modern planned city is the pinnacle of man’s efforts in changing the environment to suit its needs for living, working and recreation. It therefore seems paradoxical that it is exactly this type of urban environment that is detested and is seen as inhospitable to the same people who created it. He then asks the important question: “In what other field of human endeavor would the deliberate, professionally designed product be routinely assumed to be worse than products arising in the absence of the efforts of that profession?” (2009: 2). This paradox is the starting point for an evolutionary revision of the city and the purpose and methods of urban planning.

Thinking about the city and the paradox mentioned above can be discerned into two major debates: [1] modernism versus traditionalism, i.e. Le Corbusier versus Jacobs; and [2] planning as a deliberate activity versus absence of planning. Marshall rightly notes that modernism is criticized by traditionalists who offer an alternative that is equally modernist because it still assumes that a planner is able to create an ideal city by carefully planning it. He argues that we need to understand the city as tempo-spatial order without deliberate design of the city as a whole.

Cities, Design and Evolution by Stephen Marshall (Routledge, 2009)

The focus of this book is therefore on emergent, evolving urban order, not superimposed order. In urban planning it is clear what is evolving (i.e. the city as witnessed by its physical records of built layers) and how it is evolving (through human imagination, design and construction). Both elements are explained in great detail and the case for understanding urban design as order without a master planner or designer is convincing. Emergence holds that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. The argument of emergence here builds on the work of Michael Batty but also resonates strongly with Allen and Portugali. Here it appears that Marshall’s work is not only based in evolutionary theories but also in complexity theory because he defines cities as complex adaptive nested systems. By merging (intentional) design, evolution and emergence, he defines urban evolution as adaptive emergence: “[…] the recognition of evolution as an emergent effect that […] may include local purposive intervention as well as non-purposive interactions. And hence, we can have functional order without overall design but with individual design increments.” (2009: 175, italics original) The claim is persuasive.

Does this evolutionary revision answer the paradox presented in the first chapter? First of all, modernism should not be regarded as a deviation from what is (supposedly) normal. From an evolutionary perspective, modernist planning was just a phase of variation and mutation. But where does that leave the urban planner? Marshall believes that there are concrete lessons to be learned. Most of his proposals are about removing barriers and rules instead of creating new ones. And will the result be good, one may ask? Time will tell. It is through evolution that successful adaptations of urban order appear. It is also through evolution that it will be determined whether Marshall’s proposals are useful in supporting urban evolution. The final verdict: this book is highly recommended.