Further difficulties of sequence caused by the separation of construction from design
The mystification of professional expertise causes further difficulties.
In order to achieve local adaptation of the millions of centers in a living structure, it is necessary that decision-making control over these centers is decentralized as far as possible, placed in the hands of the people who are closest to it.
Yet in modern society an extraordinary number of men, women, and children are convinced that they do not know enough to lay out a house or an office or a road — that it is an arcane matter for professionals which only professionals can do.
This deep-seated and wrong-headed belief has been inculcated by the heavy-handed tone and legal character of design and engineering professions, leaving people as impotent recipients of the designs handed to them by their more competent “betters”.
The architect’s claim to be the only person in society who can manage design capably, is not only manifestly false (because architects have done such a bad job). It is also, from a deep theoretical point of view, inimical to the growth of a living environment, because it concentrates too much design authority in a handful of people, making successful adaptation impossible.
We see here, a principle of autonomous adaptation, needed for successful adaptation of the larger system. It requires a level of knowledge and expertise in the hands of people of society at large.
That means, simply stated, that the layout process for different pieces of the environment must be widely available to millions of players. The possibility of such widespread knowledge and empowerment lies in the generative capacity of different pattern languages — generative sequences.
But the critical issue lies in the matter of competence and permission. It is necessary for people to have access to the minimal competence to lay out small parts of the environment, in a way which is living, and which is good for the whole, supportive of the larger wholes in the world.
This competence must lie within individual hands of people who do not have special training. And it requires, also, that some similar competence for local design of streets, public space, shared space, is in the hands of groups of individuals, again unskilled, again using rather simple generative sequences to create well-adapted plans.
And, most important of all, it requires a system of social arrangements which allow people to have control over these parts of their environment, which touch them so deeply.
In the computer age it has become possible, in principle, to create such generative schemes, and to make them widely available, in our mass society. But, so far, this fact has only just started to influence the process of development.
#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/19 Massive process difficulties#