I’ve been reading Networks Cities (and their Chinese Application) draft edition edited by James Brearley. The book looks at new urban design and architectural projects in China which have been conceptually driven by using the idea and the form of networks to design how the city should be laid out, especially to decide how program and density should work.

The idea of Networks Cities as it appears in this book, is largely influenced by the work of Steve Whitford; an architect, urban designer and academic at The University of Melbourne. Steve has written an essay in the book where he gives a history of the development of city form/design and a sense of how his networks city fits in:


“No Zone City”
Whitford describes this as the city as it was before the introduction of planning – some of the urban spaces most loved by tourists and locals would fall into this category – all those old medieval fortress cities. But they tend to only work on a small scale, they can’t cope with contemporary traffic and other hazards, and Whitford points out - the only way to sort out programming conflicts (i.e someone has built an abattoir next to my second bedroom) is to take it to court after the fact.



“Ghetto City”target="new"
This is the zoned city popular in the middle of last century. The kind of city planning which Jane Jacobs rallied against, which separates city activities into discrete enclaves: Industry separated from offices, culture centres separated from retail, retail separated from restaurants. And residential apart from everything else. Besides creating cities which have little pedestrian life, and feel ‘dead’ or ‘boring’ (see Canberra, Brasilia, Chandigarh) – these cities privilege the motor vehicle, and require huge amounts of travel from one program to the other – so they’re not a good solution for sustainability.


“Mixed Use City”
A response to the problems of what Steve refers to as the “ghetto city”, this is a bit of a return towards the “No Zone City”. You get the juxtaposition of program again, and the diversity – but on a city wide level it tends to be homogenous. That is to say – one part of the city tends to look and feel like another.



“Mosaic City”
This is where Whitford places Alexander’s response to the “Mixed Use City” where he calls for a city made up of little distinct clusters of program or culture or form; which can start as small as 4-6 houses. Whitford calls this a “both/and solution which would no doubt please Robert Venturi.”

These clusters are still mixed use (meaning they mix different programs, for example, retail, open space, residential, together) - but instead of the program being distributed evenly throughout the city, it’s focused in various points throughout the city, creating diversity and a sense of place.

“Banded City”
The “banded city” takes Alexander’s clusters and turns them into bands –allowing someone who walks through the city to have a continuous experience, they could choose to have “a green experience, a high culture experience, or a commercial experience”.

Whitford points to Rem Koolhaas’ proposal for the La Villette competition as a precedent – in the proposal a visitor experiences continuous program as long as they walk along a band, if they walk across them “they experience a variety of programs compressed within a short space-time.”



And finally we get to Steve Whitford’s idea of the “Networks City”:

“Networks City”
The idea is that you copy the long continuous strips of program that you might find in a “Banded city” and rotate them around and overlay over the original bands to create a lattice.

This way you can travel across the city within one continuous experience – so you could have a “green city experience” or a “retail experience” across the whole city. The city is continuous and connected – while at the same time being diverse. Programs are distributed all through the city without creating homogeneity, or a sense of sameness.

“Surprisingly the answer to the question: Where is the housing, the commerce, the (clean) industry? Is everywhere. Importantly the answer to the question: are there ghettos of housing, commerce or (clean) industry? Is no.”