INTRODUCTION TO URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

PHINMA- University of Pangasinan

College of Engineering and Architecture

Department of Architecture

RESEARCH WORK NO. 1

IN
ARC 036- IIIII INTRODUCTION TO

URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

ARC 036

(“EKISTICS”)

DATE GIVEN: JANUARY 9, 2023

DATE DUE: JANUARY 12, 2023

SUBMITTED BY:

ZANELLE B. BEVERFORD
STUDENT

SUBMITTED TO:

AR. LESTER V. GARCIA

INSTRUCTOR
Contents
BASIC PARTS OF COMPOSITE HUMAN SETTLEMENTS:..........................................3
5 Principles of Human Settlements............................................................................3
CLASSIFICATION OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS.............................................................4
EKISTICS FRAMEWORK.................................................................................................4
Two Classificatory Dimensions:.................................................................................4
Five Environmental Elements:....................................................................................4
The Five (5) Environmental or EKISTICS Elements grouping in 2 Basic
Elements:......................................................................................................................5
Human settlements are no longer satisfactory for their inhabitans:.....................5
CLASSIFICATION OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS.............................................................6
Ekistics, the Science of Human Settlements
"Ekistics starts with the premise that human settlements are susceptible of systematic
investigation". Constantinos A. Doxiadis
Ekistics aims to encompass all scales of human habitation and seeks to learn from the
archaeological and historical record by looking not only at great cities, but as much as
possible, at the total settlement pattern.

BASIC PARTS OF COMPOSITE HUMAN SETTLEMENTS:

 Homogenous parts- fields;
 Central parts- built-up villages;
 Circulatory parts- roads & paths within the fields; and
 Special parts- a monastery contained within the homogenous part

5 Principles of Human Settlements

1. Maximization of man's potential contacts with the elements of nature (such as

water and trees), with other people, and with the works of man (such as buildings
and roads.
 It is in accordance with this principle that man abandoned the Garden of Eden
and is today attempting to conquer the cosmos. It is because of this principle that
man considers himself imprisoned, even if given the best type of environment, if
he is surrounded by a wall without doors.
2. Minimization of the effort required for the achievement of man's actual and
potential contacts.
 Which means the selection of such a distance from other persons, animals, or
objects that he can keep his contacts with them (first principle) without any kind
of sensory
3. Optimization of man's protective space.
 Gives structures the shape, or selects the route, that requires the minimum effort,
no matter whether he is dealing with the floor of a room, which he tends to make
horizontal, or with the creation of a highway.
4. Optimization of the quality of man's relationship with his environment.
 Which consists of nature, society, shells (buildings and houses of all sorts), and
networks (ranging from roads to telecommunications)
5. Optimization dependent on time and space, on actual conditions, and on man's
ability to create a synthesis.
 Settlements that have achieved a balance between man and his man-made
environment, by complying with all five principles.

CLASSIFICATION OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

1. By Ekistics Elements
2. By Ekistics Units
3. By Ekistics Functions
4. By Evolutionary Phases
5. By Factors & Disciplines

EKISTICS FRAMEWORK
Doxiadis posited a convenient way of organizing information and mapping out the
components and relationships of the elements within the human settlement’s realm. He
suggests to have a Classificatory System that will be a methodology to establish the
hierarchical structure and links among elements of system.

Two Classificatory Dimensions:

1. First Dimension - Relative to scale:
• Lower End – the individual, the room, and the dwelling; and increase in size all the
way into the…
• Other Extreme – the city, the urban continent, and the “world-wide city” – which he
called an ECUMENOPOLIS
2. Second Dimension – man’s five Environmental Elements:
 Nature
 Man
 Society
 Shells
 Network

Five Environmental Elements:

1. NATURE - represents the ecosystem within which rural settlements must exist
2. MAN
- constantly adapting and changing
- can contribute many important inputs to the better organization of urban life
 3. SOCIETY - comprises all those aspects of the urban or rural scene that are
commonly dealt with by sociologists, economists and administrators: population
trends, social customs, income and occupations, and the systems of urban
government.
4. SHELLS - the built environment, is the traditional domain of the architectural and
engineering professions
5. NETWORK
- provide the glue for all systems of urbanization
- To respond to man's demands, transportation, communication and utility
networks must all expand even faster than the anticipated growth of settlements
6. SYNTHESIS
- arises from a consideration of the interactions of all the ekistic elements in
terms of a single ekistic unit
- can comprise a single ekistic element in terms of the whole range of ekistic
units.

The Five (5) Environmental or EKISTICS Elements grouping in 2 Basic

Elements:

(Container) NATURE – providing the foundation upon which the settlement is created
and the frame within it can function
(Content) MAN – an individual, Homo Sapiens - biological needs (oxygen, nutrition) -
sensation and perception (5 senses) - emotional needs (satisfaction, security, sense of
belonging) - moral values
(Content) SOCIETY – a group of individuals sharing the same culture, values, norms,
and traditions
(Container) SHELLS or the structures within which man lives and carries out his
different functions, the built component.
(Container) NETWORKS or the natural and man-made system which facilitate the
functioning of the settlement, or links within

Human settlements are no longer satisfactory for their inhabitans:

ECONOMICALLY SPEAKING - don’t have the means to satisfy their basic needs -
remain homeless or live in houses of very low quality
SOCIAL POINT OF VIEW - man appears to be lost in the big cities - feels abandoned
by progress in many small towns/villages
POLITICAL LEVEL - new types of societies and new types of people have not found
their corresponding political institution.
TECHNICAL POINT OF VIEW - most settlements don’t have the facilities indispensable
to their proper functioning in spite of the technological achievements
AESTHETICALLY - the ugliness of human settlements around

CLASSIFICATION OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

By Ekistics Units Four Basic Groups:
1. Minor Shells or Elementary Units – man (anthropos), room, house
2. Micro-settlements – units smaller than, or as small as the traditional town where
people used, do and still achieve interconnection by walking (House group, Small
Neighborhood)
3. Meso – settlements – between traditional town & conurbation within which one can
commute daily (small polis, polis, small metropolis, small megalopolis, small eperopolis,
eperopolis
4. Macro – settlements – whose largest possible expression is the Ecumenopolis

The Extent of Human Settlements

Each one of us can understand that he is guided by

the same five principles; but we are not aware of their
great importance unless this is pointed out to us, and
we make great mistakes in our theories about human
settlements.
This is because we live in a transitional era and
become confused about our subject, even about the
nature and extent of human settlements, confusing
them with their physical structure ("the built-up area is
the city") or their institutional frame ("the municipality
is the city"). But human settlements have always been
created by man's moving in space and defining the
boundaries of his territorial interest and therefore of
his settlements, for which he later created a physical
and institutional structure.
The Quality of Human Settlements

We can now face the important question of quality in human settlements since we can
refer to a specific unit by first defining its size. A small town, especially in older
civilizations, can satisfy many of our aesthetic needs for picturesque streets and
squares, and this is why we like it. But most people want to visit it, not to become its
permanent inhabitants, as they are guided by the first of the five principles discussed
above and try to maximize their potential contacts in the big cities, in order to have more
choices for a job, for education and health facilities, and for social contacts and
entertainment.
In our era, which begins with London at the time it was
approaching a population of 1 million, about two centuries
ago, and in other areas later, we lost the ability to satisfy all
five principles. Guided by principles 1 and 2 we reached
the stage of the big city, but in these cities we do not satisfy
the other principles, especially principles 4 and 5, and we
are not happy. We say that our settlements have no quality,
and this is true in many respects, but we have to define
what we mean. We need such a definition because we
must remember that we now have much more water and of
better quality in our homes that man has had at any
previous time, and we have much more energy available
for conditioning our environment and for making contacts.
A statement closer to the truth would be that our cities are
better than the small cities of the past in many respects
and worse in others.
Judgement about quality can be made in several ways in
terms of the relation of every individual to his environment -
that is, his relation to nature, society, shells, and networks -
and the benefit that he gets from these contacts. We can
measure his relations to air and to its quality; to water in his
home, in the river or lake, and at sea (its quality and his
access to it); and to land resources (their beauty and
accessibility) and the recreational and functional facilities
provided by them; and we can express judgements based
on the measurements of many physical and social aspects
of the cities. Out of the great number of cases that I might
cite I have selected three of the most complex ones.
 We often talk about the greater contacts that the big city
offers us, but we do not measure these contacts at every
unit of the ekistic scale. If we do so, we will discover that in
units 2 and 3 (room and home) we have fewer personto-
person contacts that we had before, because of smaller
families and new sources of information (radio and
television); that in units 4, 5 and 6 (that is, in the dwelling
group and neighborhoods) we have far fewer contacts
because of the multi-storey building and the intrusion of
automobiles in the human locomotion scale (Ref. 9); and
that in the larger units we have increased contacts because
of the news transmitted to us by telecommunications
media, the press, and so on (Fig. 10). In this way, we see
that we increase our one-way and (by telephone), two-way
potential contacts with people and objects far away from
our living area and decrease potential contacts with those
close by. Is this reasonable for any of us, and especially for
the children who cannot cross the
street? This is a problem of
quality of life seen in human terms. The answer to this
problem is, I think, a city designed for human development (Ref. 10).

Morphogenesis

The question now arises, if we know how to analyze

and define quality, can we do anything to ameliorate
conditions in cities where quality is not high? The
answer is that man has often faced many of these
problems (not all) by giving his static settlements
proper structure. By this I mean the settlements which
were created up until the 17th century and which
ranged in size from No. 2 units - that is, from rooms
which, once created, did not grow - to No. 9 and 10
 units - large cities, very often surrounded by walls,
that seldom grew. Peking is probably the only No. 10
settlement created before the 17th century. This is the
structure which led to the shape and forms of the
cities we admire today. It is time we tried to see how
the changes came about; it is time we examined the
morphogenesis of human settlements.
Morphogenesis in human settlements varies with the type of unit we are dealing with.
From the many types of units I will select the room (the No. 2 unit) and will follow its
formation. We do not know how and when the formation of a room started. It probably
started in many parts of the world, and probably the rooms had many forms and sizes.
We have reason to believe that the first rooms were of moderate size (according to
today's standards), but they may have been very small one-man/ one-night huts similar,
in a way, to those built and used by the apes (Ref. 12). In any case the moment came
when some primitive people had round huts and others had orthogonal ones, and when
there were different types of roofs or, in some cases, no roofs at all. In at least one
modern instance - that of the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in southwest Africa - there
is no door to the hut; the Bushmen jump into it over a wall (Ref. 13).

Two Myths

Another question now arises: if we can analyze the problem of quality and understand
the morphogenetic process which should enable people to build properly and improve
an undesirable situation, why are conditions so bad in our cities? The answer, apart
from the fact that some problems are not related to the physical structure of the city, can
run along the following lines.
1. Man, who understood the morphogenetic process for the small units, thought that the
forces and laws valid from the small units were valid for the big ones that we build
today, and this is not true.
2. New forces - like motor vehicles - have entered the game, and their impact on the city
has not been understood.
3. Man did not seem able to learn about the new problems, and did not even seem
interested in them, before the crisis came. He became confused, to the point of
mistaking poverty for an urban problem, whereas it is simply a huge human problem
which becomes more apparent in the urban areas because of the proximity of the rich,
who have not been previously exposed to poverty, to the poor.
We can prove the foregoing three points in many ways, by considering some myths
which still prevail in the mind of many people. I have selected two characteristic ones. I
will start with the myth of the city of optimum size.
The city of optimum size. A long discussion is taking place throughout the world about
the need to build new cities of optimum size, and proposals have been made by many
experts and adopted in government policies, but no one can prove his case in a
convincing way.
Some define optimum size as being related to the income of the people; but in a
developing world, where the average per capita income increases by 2 percent a year
(and by more in urban areas), what is the meaning of this optimum over a long period?
Others argue in terms of optimum numbers of people and of organization and, more
specifically, municipal efficiency, but they are not able to produce any convincing proof
(Ref. 17). Even if they could, comparisons of one city with another have no meaning in a
world where people no longer live in isolated cities but live in urban systems. But if I
could prove that one city of 200,000 people had greater municipal efficiency than a city
of 1 million, I must also prove that the people in the two cities were equally satisfied
(otherwise what is the meaning of efficiency for them?) or that a system of five cities of
200,000 was as efficient as the city of 1 million, which is not the case.
Others base optimum size on organizational aspects such as one school or one hospital
for so many children or people. But, in a world of changing ratios between age groups
and of changing technical and managerial abilities, this line of thinking cannot lead
anywhere. Such considerations are very useful for calculating needs which have to be
satisfied in certain areas and periods, but not for calculating the optimum size of the city.
Technological calculations based on the means of transportation cannot be helpful
either. Since speeds change continuously, how can we speak of an optimum distance?
We can have an optimum distance expressed in terms of time, but this means a
continually changing physical distance. Are we going to stop the development of
technology?
In this changing world there is no optimum size for a city. The dynamic cities have no
optimum size, but only an optimum speed of growth. And what this optimum speed of
growth is, is a very complex question, the answer to which depends on many factors
concerning the city itself and its relationship to the total space around it. For example,
the answer for two dynamic cities, one 10 and one 30 kilometers from a metropolis, are
completely 13 different.
Is there no optimum size with which we can deal? The answer is that there is, because
there is one relatively constant element, and this is man, insofar as his body and senses
are concerned. I think that, for the foreseeable future, we can reckon with a man whose
body and senses will not change. If this is so, we are led to the conclusion that there is
a unit of space which will continue to serve his needs as it has done in the past; this unit
is the circle that can be inscribed in a square 2 by 2 kilometers (Ref. 4). The importance
of this unit is demonstrated by the growth of actual traditional cities and by the diagram
of synthesis in space (Fig. 20), which shows that direct human forces do not go beyond
the circumference of this circle. With traditional population, this unit contains 50,000
people.
The conclusion is that the optimum-size city is a myth. But any city can be divided into
physical units of optimum size, and these may be used as a basis for planning that
envisions an optimum number of people in a community. However, this latter goal is
much more difficult to attain. I do not believe we are ready for it, although we have the
necessary arguments and data.
The static plan. Another myth which still prevails is that we can solve the problems of
our cities through the conception, and official recognition, of a physical plan expressed
by a two- or three-dimensional drawing. But our cities are growing organisms. They
need a development policy leading to a development program which is expressed, in
space, by physical development plans, but they also need economic, social, political,
administrative, technological, and aesthetic programs.
This does not mean that there are no areas where a physical plan can be final; if there
were none, we would all be mentally ill. We need a room with constant dimensions, a
home that gives us a feeling of permanency, a street and a square which do not change
and which are aesthetically satisfying. Such considerations lead to the question to what
extent can our environment be a constant one? The answer is that, if there is a unit of
optimum size such as a room, a home, a community (up to the one of 1-kilometer
radius), this can and should be constant. In this way we can face a world of changing
dynamic cities by building them with constant physical units within which we can create
quality - units meant for a certain purpose and containing a certain desirable mixture of
residences, cultural facilities, industry, and commerce. These would be designed on the
basis of the long human experience which led to the natural growth of cities, such as
Athens and Florence, or to the building of planned cities such as Miletus and parts of
Paris, which we admire today.
We can design these small units if we understand the processes of synthesis and
morphogenesis of the past and if we do not try to discover new patterns of life
expressing nonexistent principles, just for the sake of changing the traditional ones. On
the other hand, for the larger units and for the dynamically changing ones with which
man has had no experience or a very bitter one, we must proceed in a different way. Not
knowing what is going to be good or bad, we must use a completely different approach.
We must build all possible alternatives and compare them in terms of the quality of life
they offer their citizens. This approach is impossible in practice (we cannot play with the
happiness and the incomes of millions) and would have been impossible in the
laboratory even 20 years ago. But now we can build simulation models and compare
them by means of computers.
To do this we have developed the IDEA method (the acronym stands for Isolation of
Dimensions and Elimination of Alternatives). We first build all alternatives for the future
of an urban system (this is possible if, through experience, we concentrate on the most
important dimensions for every type of unit and every phase) and then eliminate the
weakest ones. It is only in this way that we can avoid errors based on the mistaken
belief that "I know", and can avoid the long period required for learning by trial and error,
as primitive man learned.
This method certainly does not eliminate mistakes, but it reduces them to a minimum.
Its application to the very difficult problem of the Urban Detroit Area (Ref. 11, 16) has
demonstrated how useful it can be for large-scale areas for which there is no human
experience at all.
Experience has convinced me that, if we can develop a science of human settlements
and, through it, recognize the guiding principles, laws, and procedures of man's action
regarding terrestrial space, we can build much better human settlements in the future.
This will be, not through the repetition of past solutions, but through their synthesis
within a new frame formed on the basis of the new forces that have entered the game.
The physical features of future cities can be at least as impressive as those of the
famous cities of history or of today. At the same time, the guiding principle of real
freedom of choice for everyone, not for certain classes only, can be implemented for the
benefit of every person, and thus man's cities of the future can be better and far more
important for all their inhabitants than the famous cities of the past.
References:
https://www.doxiadis.org/Downloads/ecistics_the_science_of_human_settlements.pdf