Christopher Alexander on Architecture in Democracy

This is from the opening text of the third section of book 2 … looking forward to diving into it 🙂

“Processes which are living ones, are step-by-step structure-preserving adaptive processes whose main characteristics is their ability to focus on the whole, and to improve and deepen the whole … And the sequence in which the steps occur is always vital to their ability to be effective …

In order to work these living processes – especially when applied to the large urban areas … require freedom of action, freedom within the process …. each process must allow every step of each adaptive sequence sufficient latitude to go wherever it needs to go, IN THE CONTEXT OF THE WHOLE, to make the whole more alive …

For the most part, the necessary freedom of action cannot be provided within the context we came to know in the 20th century as totalitarian democracy  … the system of thought and action which is prescribed by the rules, procedures, lock-step processes of the modern democratic state … freedom of the kind necessary to create profound wholeness is hampered by our institutional norms and by the normal processes of our society …

… our own democracy, though originating in the ideal of freedom, has nevertheless created a system of thought and action, [in the sphere of architecture], which makes living structure all but unattainable – at best BARELY attainable.

… To create living structures, we need a kind of freedom which the founding fathers of the American constitution (for example) did not dream of, because the issues involved in the creation of life in the environment simply were not visible to them .. we must now find ways of turning society beyond its too-regimented path, and towards paths of design and planning and construction which allow the life of every whole and the life of every part to emerge freely from the process by which we make the world.”

Christopher Alexander – The Nature of Order – Book 2: The Process of Creating Life