In this volume, the sixth in the seminal series on architecture, Christopher Alexander and his associates present a new theory of urban design which attempts to recapture the process by which cities develop organically. To discover the kinds of laws needed to create a growing whole in a city, the authors propose a preliminary set of seven rules which embody the process at a practical level and which are consistent with the day-to-day demands of urban development.
They then put these rules to the test, setting out with a number of graduate students to simulate the urban redesign of a high-density part of San Francisco, initiating a project that encompassed some ninety different design problems, including warehouses, hotels, fishing piers, a music hall, and a public square. This extensive experiment is documented project by project, with detailed discussion of how each project satisfied the seven rules, accompanied by floor-plans, elevations, street grids, axonometric diagrams and photographs of the scaled-down model which clearly illustrate the discussion.
A New Theory of Urban Design provides an entirely new theoretical framework for the discussion of urban problems, one that goes far to remedy the defects which cities have today.
