9 Some morphological invariants that will typically be generated by the fundamental process in any evolving neighborhood

Repeated use of the fundamental process, dynamically creating and recreating a new community, will generate layouts in which the following geometric features are typically present.
Streets are likely to be irregular, reflecting adaptive growth, not pre-planned layout. Streets will follow lines of least effort on contours. Lots will typically be irregular, often polygonal, not rectangular, with some off-90-degree angles. Houses and buildings will usually be long and narrow, and approximately rectangular in form, but will often be adjusted to fit neatly into the lot lines, without leaving leftover bits of space. Houses will be placed along streets, forming street walls — so of course the rectangles will be imperfect, the shape of each one tempered by the next building, the dips in the land, and so forth. Gardens are likely to be positive-shaped, nearly rectangular spaces, in the position which gets best sun, shade, breeze (or whatever is relevant in the given climate). Overall lot design will often not be regular, but may even be composed of separate adjacent portions, not co-linear, a portion for the house, and a portion for a positively shaped garden, each shaped and sized and placed according to its necessity.
What is important is the way such a dynamic process works at different scales. […]
In each case, the forms, because they are generated in time, not designed at the drawing board, display qualities of life, and do have life.

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/11 Necessary further dynamics of any neighborhood which comes to life#