8 A new approach to urban space: first forming a three-dimensional plan of hulls

Coordination needs some form of plan or diagram

Since it is true that such space is hard to shape, and that shaping it must come first, before shaping buildings — then there must be some way of giving the creation of this system of hulls the mental and social priority it needs, then using it as a common goal for the town, and getting all the individual acts of construction to participate and complete the geometry of the spaces.
That, in turn, requires a new form of representation, a new form of plan or diagram. It must be something which is three-dimensional, which is flexible (so that it can absorb the variations and local needs of different building projects), yet something which maintains a real handle on the shape of the space, and on the shaped system of spaces, that are required to keep the hulls of space throughout the town in good order.
I used to think that this large-scale structure — the hulls of space for a town — had to be created piecemeal, as a forest is created from the growth and interaction of the trees, without a plan. That is partly true. But I have become convinced, after years of trying to make it work, that it is after all necessary to have some kind of plan.
Pure piecemeal growth just does not work well enough to create the structure of the larger wholeness needed in a city. The reason is, that it is the large-scale organization of the space, the actual geometric order of the streets and spaces, which matters most.

The unfolding process, in the case of a town, is complex and difficult. It cannot always go on, romantically, “by itself”. It needs guidance of a disciplined kind, through which the emerging space is defined, agreed, and visualized in some public and sharable form of a three-dimensional model. Once we have a way of doing this, the whole thing can go forward easily enough.

#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/3 The hulls of public space#