Slow improvement of *all* social processes

The processes at work in society take a great variety of ordinary outward forms. All these processes can be modestly improved. We are beginning to see that making changes in the social process is possible, even when conceived in a vast array of different spheres, all having effect on eat shape of the world.

Which kinds of processes Alexander tried to influence with each of his books

These proposed innovations have all been innovations of process.
I made the innovations long ago, and in most cases, long before I wrote this book, simply because I knew the living architecture I was aiming at would be dependent on changes in the character of process.
Furthermore, these processes all embodied (in one form or another) the fifteen transformations at every stage of their action. They were, therefore, morphogenetic processes (as defined below).
At the time when I first made them, these process innovations were often dismissed as dreaming, as too radical for an architect to propose.
Nevertheless, fundamental practical innovations of process are inevitable consequences of thinking correctly about the nature of living structure in buildings, and of facing honestly the task of creating living structure in the world.

Notes on the Synthesis of Form, 1964

More subtle analysis of a design task in terms of its functional roots.

A Pattern Language, 1977

Involvement of users and lay people in the design process of their houses and workplaces.

The Production of Houses, 1985

Management of construction. Inventions in construction technique designed to create physical processes that could allow formation of well-adapted, cheap, buildings. Mechanical innovations in setting out the foundations of a building. Processes where users play a major role in construction, even in ordinary projects. Innovations in the relative sequence of items in a construction procedure.

The Mary Rose Museum, 1995

New forms of construction contract. Innovations in engineering process and analysis to get better results in engineering design.

The Grass Roots Housing Process, 1973

Innovations in the flow of money.

Battle: …?, …?

Proposals for the nature of the human process that is used to lay out a building.

The Linz Cafe, 1983

Various experimental human processes needed to improve layout of building interiors.

A New Theory of Urban Design, 1987

Changes in process for consecutive layout and siting of buildings in urban design and construction of city downtown.

The Oregon Experiment, 1975

Innovations in public diagnosis of a community environment leading to changes of process. Proposals for changes in the maintenance of buildings, and the maintenance budget and its distribution over the lifetime of the building.

The Personal Workplace: A System of Office Furniture Designed for Comfort, 1989

Innovation in the manufacturing process for office furniture designed to make the furniture better adapted to individual needs.

It is precisely those innovations which attempts to change the system of processes most deeply, that are hardest for society to accept, and therefore hardest to implement.
This is because the really deep changes are ones which change jobs, and which therefore actually alter the capacity of the social system to let people create wholeness in the world, or to allow it to be created. These kinds of changes — the fundamental ones which are actually needed in society — are at odds with many institutions, not only with individual processes, but in some cases with the whole structure of our institutions as they have developed during the last sixty years.

Up until now, we have simply misunderstood the nature of architectural process. We have not understood how profoundly living process in design and building is related to life, altogether, and how life then emanates directly out of living process in society.
The practical impediments to the creation of living structure in the world will gradually be removed, I believe, once we begin to recognize that social process must necessarily be architectural process, and that architectural process must necessarily be life-creating, a process which can support the continuous creation of an emerging living structure in the world.
That requires not merely that we improve the sequences and processes of our society. It requires, specifically, that we make these processes architectural. That means they must be morphogenetic.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/18 Encouraging freedom#