Order vs Chaos in the Urban Advance

Adam Greenfield takes on an interesting real estate development in Tokyo in The arrogance of architects, and other lessons from SimCity. His critique of Roppongi Hills is spot on, as was his original one. How long before architects learn that Le Corbusier's ideas just don't translate to reality?

Architects and urban planners have long been infected with the idea that cities need more greenery. And don't get me wrong there is a need for some degree of open space and wild vegetation in any city. But the truth is that parks are highly overrated in city design. What makes urban centers so great is their density. The tighter you pack people into a city the more potential for serendipity. There are more chance encounters, more demand for unique niche stores, more opportunities for cultural mutation. Why are people willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money to live in tiny Manhattan apartment? Because its worth it, cities like New York offer social opportunities that just can't exist in a less dense space.

The 4 story max school of urban planners like Christopher Alexander and J.H. Crawford miss this point entirely, despite being completely on point and visionary in many other areas. Le Corbusier and, from what I've seen, Roppongi Hills designer Minoru Mori understand the need for density to a degree, but what they misunderstand the need for the proper balance of chaos and order to make the density work properly.

Chaos is essential to serendipity, people need to meet randomly, stumble upon new stores and thoughts and generally be stimulated by the people around them. They also need to get places quickly though. New York achieves this balance by placing its dense population on an orderly grid with an extensive underlying subway system. You can bounce around town pretty damn quickly, but at the same time you'll be interacting with massive amounts of people. Throw up a big park around a dense building Le Corb style and you shatter the density. People wind up in cars isolated from outside stimulation. They don't interact and the density is dispersed onto the highways.

What's interesting about Roppongi Hills is that their marketing rhetoric makes it seem like they understand this need for a chaordic urbanscape.

"Open-mind" is the will to actively absorb information and the power to accept new ways of thinking.

It is an open heart, a state of spirit that continues to change.

In a safe city that welcomes people from around the world, many people exchange conversations.

From the latest art and wonderful food to challenging issues of the day, the people who spend time at Roppongi Hills will touch upon diversity of thought and enjoy a variety of experiences.

Here you are given a chance to imagine and think.

And from there, dreams, hopes and ideas are born.

By creating open conversations with the world, Roppongi Hills will load the nation and the Asian region and from here, visions that will shape our future will emerge.

This is the kind of place we want to become.

Its enticing words, a subtle and different marketing approach that I find quite seductive. Plus they got Jonathan Barnbrook to do the logo and of course its great. But looking at pictures and reading Adam's review I just don't see the actual development living up to the dream. Its a couple big buildings settled into some greenery. I've never found huge buildings very amiable to serendipity. They are too well organized, the only place of good chaos is in the elevator ride, which is often too short for great ideas to bloom. Its on real streets with diverse building types that chaos really leads to chance encounters and new ideas.

Been interesting to see how this development turns out in the long run. It smells a lot like a good idea ruined by the reality of actually realizing the ideal. Clay Shirky has a new essay on what he calls the Permanet and Nearlynet, that might enlighten. He's looking at the telecom industry, but the essence is the same. Big compressive projects offer the promise of a better result then small ad hoc developments. But in the end run the small, cheap, ad hocs are the ones that succeed. In other words cities need to grow not be planned. But pure growth is chaos, so some order is needed two. In networking and telecommunications that order is an open standard. In cities its the grid, transit system and utility infrastructure that require planning. What gets placed on top of all that should be free to evolve in the way large developments rarely can.