Emergence
Bin Wang
In the two articles , the authors seem to use natural phenomena as examples or analogies to imply the growth of the cities and means of city planning. I appreciate some points while can not agree some others.

In Jacobs’s writing, she mentioned “the life sciences and cities happen to pose the same kinds of problems does not mean they are the same problems.” However her point that “city planning cannot possibly progress” is compared to the progress of life sciences, which is a different problem. Even city planning cannot progress, it is not because “it lacks the first requisite for a body of practical and progressing thought” but because city planning have to solve more and more problems on the existing cities, which is a big constraint. On contrast, in life sciences, the existing knowledge and materials will help for the next step. What’s more, city planning is a kind of design but not discovery. Just like we cannot say Picasso’s paintings are better then De Vinci’s(that may another problem), but we also cannot say art has no progress at all in the last 500 years. Actually, city planning has progress , at least it seems to me. We have multiple transportation, high rise residents, global networks, which was only in human’s imagination. Of course we have unsuccessful city planning as well, just like those failure in life science experiments.

Analogy sometimes misleads the understanding. As reading the articles I have the sense that the authors are trying to let me recognize cities as natural phenomena, on some extend. To me city planning has a huge difference with the natural phenomena because cities are not nature. The progress of cities are not natural selections. Cities are growing by human’s intention, successful or not. In most cases I feel we are conflicting with natural selections. For example, most city plannings try to preserve the old city fabric which may not match the new life at all. The reason we do it may related to the deepest essence of the meaning of the cities. When we tear the old building down, we kind of feel some human history has been destroyed. The life of human being as a whole is tightly tied with the context and growth of the cities. Cities are the bodies we live in.

In conclusion, I am not very care about the relation between cities and natural phenomena. I don’t think the “emergence” of city is similar with that of nature, science, whatever. City is itself. We maybe cannot tell why blood is red, why elephant is bigger than ants. But we can definite tell what is Baroque , what is modernism; what is Chinese and what is European. And we probably will know what the city will be like in the future because we will design it.