Swarming Landscapes, New Pathways for Resilient Cities

Abstract

Current spatial planning and design practice regards urban and rural spatial systems as simple systems. The proposed design strategies are often one-dimensional, one-problem and one- solution oriented. As a consequence, they often decrease the flexibility of urban systems to cope with uncertainty and the occurrence of weather extremes. Spatial systems need to be looked at as complex adaptive systems, in order to improve their capability to deal with these circumstances. Translating the properties of Complex Adaptive Systems to spatial planning results in a new approach: Swarm Planning. Swarm Planning uses the concepts of self- organisation, emergence and adaptive capacity as the basic principles of design, thus increasing flexibility, diversity and resilience in urban and rural systems. Swarm Planning has proven to be successful in pilot designs at dealing with uncertainties and has led to future spatial visions that are capable of dealing with unknown changes and surprises in weather and climate. These Swarming Landscapes not only increase the resilience of cities and landscapes, they also provide society with an attractive and imaginable spatial future.