Understanding Emergent Urbanism: The Case of Tirana, Albania (The Urban Book Series)

The ideas presented in this book are a conceptual leverage to correct the rigidity of top-down practices and bring the real city, or the city of everyday life, closer to the city of conventional planning. Considering self-organization as the starting point at the base of complex systems, this book tries to understand how specific qualities emerge and evolve from this behavior. For this, the book discusses new ways of looking at and understanding cities by applying holistic methods and approaches based on the conceptual grounds of quantum, fractal, and complexity theories. The book highlights the fact that the information on how to transform and build a city is contained within the city itself. In this regard, some methodological steps to unpack complexities and translate the essential qualities of space into potential generators for city design and planning are provided. The book urges courageous experimentation and proposes a methodology where the computational nature of urban phenomena goes along with historic anthropological ideas, thus emphasizing the characteristics of a specific reality in a model. They do not exclude each other; in fact, they are part of the unbroken web of wholeness. Importantly, the proposed methodology supports gradual and natural coevolution process in the city through combining planned and unplanned actions and the involving multiplicity of actors, impacting on Urban Planning and Design Practice. Acknowledgments Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 The Setting 1.2 Tirana as a Case Study 1.3 Methodology 1.4 Structure of the Book References 2 The Natural City 2.1 The Natural City as an Emergent Phenomenon 2.2 The Natural City as Complementary Nuanced Variety 2.3 The Role of Architects and Urban Planners 2.4 Conclusions References 3 Additional Theoretical Lenses to Understand the City 3.1 From a Broken Mirror to a More Holistic View 3.2 Understanding the City from the Quantum Paradigm’s Holistic Reality 3.2.1 Emergent Reality and the Wave–Particle Duality 3.2.2 Multiple In-Between Gradients 3.3 Understanding the City from the Fractal Perspective 3.3.1 Relational Emergent Order 3.3.2 Principle of Scale, Repetitions, and Self-similarity 3.3.3 Form as a System Structure 3.4 Understanding the City from the Complexity Perspective 3.4.1 Self-organization and Emergent Realities 3.4.2 Urban Patterns as a Complex Behavior 3.5 Conclusions––Emergence as a Key Concept References 4 Historical Notes on Tirana 4.1 Transformations and Events 4.1.1 The Emergence of the Organic City (1614) 4.1.2 King Zog and Stile Littorio 4.1.3 Framing the City (Fig. 4.12) 4.1.4 Spontaneous Waves of Urbanization 4.2 Conclusions References 5 Tirana Patterns at a Glance 5.1 Patterns Representative Areas in Tirana (Fig. 5.1) 5.2 Pattern #1: Historical Organic 5.2.1 The Essence of the Pattern 5.2.2 Brief Description of the Representative Areas 5.2.3 The Simulacrum of the Historical Organic 5.3 Pattern #2: Recording Over 5.3.1 The Essence of the Pattern 5.3.2 The Main Elements of the Recording Over 5.3.3 The Representative Areas 5.4 Pattern #3: New Organic 5.4.1 The Two Species of New Organic 5.4.2 Compressed New Organic 5.4.3 The Representative Area 5.4.4 Inflated New Organic 5.4.5 Characters of the Inflated New Organic 5.4.6 The Representative Area 5.5 Conclusions References 6 Holistic Approach to Tirana Pattern Analysis 6.1 Understanding Wholeness Through Relationships 6.1.1 The Unbroken Web of Relationships 6.1.2 The Relational Order and Dynamic System Structure 6.1.3 Relationships as Self-organized Behavior 6.2 Quantum Approach—Patterns as Overlaps Within the Unbroken Web 6.2.1 Historical Organic as a New Emergent Reality 6.2.2 Recording Over as a New Emergent Reality 6.2.3 New Organic as a New Emergent Reality 6.3 Fractal Approach—Patterns as Relational Order 6.3.1 Historical Organic 6.3.2 Recording Over 6.3.3 Compressed New Organic 6.3.4 Inflated New Organic 6.4 Complex Approach—Urban Patterns as the Human Capacity to Self-organize 6.5 Conclusions References 7 Methodology for Holistic Understanding of the Urban Patterns 7.1 Measuring Patterns as Complex Behavior 7.2 Methodological Steps: From Observation and Analysis to Essential Quality and Information 7.3 Modeling That Reflects the Specific Urban Phenomena 7.4 Conclusions References 8 Conclusions 8.1 Analytical Categories to Observe and Analyze Emergent Qualities 8.2 Looking at Patterns as Emergent Realities 8.3 Self-organization at the Base of the New Emergent Realities 8.4 The Role of the People in an Open System 8.5 Methodology Supporting Co-evolution––Impact on Urban Planning and Design Practice 8.6 Education––Greater Focus on Relationships than on Objects 8.7 Tirana and Beyond References Appendix A The Measurement Process A.1 General Information A.2 Elements, Factors, and the Measurement Process A.3 Conclusions Appendix B Patterns Emerging from a Set of Rules B.1 Random-Walk B.2 EXPLAB: Speculative Model to Foresee Emergent Strategies for Urban Development B.3 Conclusions References