Ekistics

The term Ekistics (coined by Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis in 1942) applies to the science of human settlements. [Ekistics Summary] It includes regional, city, community planning and dwelling design. It involves the study of all kinds of human settlements, with a view to geography and ecology - the physical environment- , and human psychology and anthropology, and cultural, political, and occasionally aesthetics.

As a scientific mode of study is currently found to rely on statistics and description, organized in five ekistic elements: nature, anthropos, society, shells, and networks. It is generally a more academic field than "urban planning", and has considerable overlap with some of the less restrained fields of architectural theory.

In application, conclusions are drawn aimed at achieving harmony between the inhabitants of a settlement and their physical and socio-cultural environments. [Encyclopædia Britannica]

The scope of ekistics

The notion of ekistics implies that understanding the interaction between and within human groups -- infrastructure, agriculture, shelter, function (job) -- in conjunction with their environment directly affects their well-being (individual and collective). The subject begins to elucidate the ways in which collective settlements form and how they inter-relate. By doing so, humans begin to understand how they 'fit' into a species, i.e. homo sapiens, and how homo sapiens 'should' be living in order to manifest our potential -- at least as far as this species is concerned (as the text stands now). Ekistics in some cases argues that in order for human settlements to expand efficiently and economically we must reorganize the way in which the villages, towns, cities, metropoli are formed.

As Doxiadis put it “Ekistics is a science, even if in our times it is usually considered a technology and an art, without the foundations of a science. This is a mistake for which we pay very heavily.” Having recorded very successfully the destructions of the ekistic wealth in Greece during WWII, Doxiadis became convinced that human settlements are susceptible of systematic investigation. Doxiadis being aware of the unifying power of systems thinking and particularly of the biological and evolutionary reference models as used by many famous biologists-philosophers of his generation, especially Sir Julian Huxley (1887-1975), Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-75), Denis Gabor (1900-79), René Dubos (1901-82), George G. Simpson (1902-84), and Conrad Waddington (1905-75), used the biological model to describe the "Ekistic behavior" of Anthropos (the five principles) and the evolutionary model to explain the morphogenesis of human settlements (the eleven forces, the hierarchical structure of human settlements, dynapolis, ecumenopolis). Finally, he formulated a general theory which considers human settlements as living organisms capable of evolution, an evolution that might be guided by Man using "Ekistic knowledge".

Etymology

EKISTICS (modern Greek: OIKIΣTIKH) is derived from the ancient Greek adjective "οικιστικός" more particularly from the neuter plural "οικιστικά" (as physics is derived from φυσικά, Aristotle). The ancient Greek adjective "οικιστικός" meant: "concerning the foundation of a house, a habitation, a city or colony; contributing to the settling." It was derived from "οικιστής", an ancient Greek noun meaning "the person who installs settlers in place". This may be regarded as deriving indirectly from another ancient Greek noun, "οίκισις", meaning "building", "housing", "habitation", and especially "establishment of a colony, a settlement , or a town" (already in Plato), or "filling with new settlers", settling", "being settled". All these words grew from the verb "οικίζω", to settle and were ultimately derived from the noun "οίκος", "house", "home" or "habitat.

The shorter Oxford English Dictionary contains a reference to an oecist, oekist or oikist, defining him as: "the founder of an ancient Greek ... colony". The English equivalent of "oikistikh" is ekistics (a noun). In addition, the adjectives ekistic and ekistical, the adverb ekistically, and the noun ekistician are now also in current use. The French equivalent is "ekistique", the German "oekistik", the Italian "echistica" (all feminine).

Ekistic Units

Doxiadis believed that the conclusion from biological and social experience was clear: to avoid chaos we must organize our system of life from Anthropos (individual) to Ecumenopolis (global city) in hierarchical levels, represented by human settlements. So he articulated a general hierarchical scale with fifteen levels of Ekistic Units [Ekistic Units] :

Names of Units and Population Scale(final version, from C.A.Doxiadis' last book, "ACTION for Human Settlements", p.186, Athens Center of Ekistics, 1976):

*Anthropos – 1
*room – 2
*house – 5
*housegroup (hamlet) – 40
*small neighborhood (village) – 250
*neighborhood – 1,500
*small polis (town) – 10,000
*polis (city) – 75,000
*small metropolis – 500,000
*metropolis – 4 million
*small megalopolis – 25 million
*megalopolis – 150 million
*small eperopolis – 750 million
*eperopolis – 7,500 million
*Ecumenopolis – 50,000 million [City of the Future]

Details of the study of human settlement

One of the primary tenets of Ekistics is the development of human settlements based on hexagonal infrastructures. Rectilinear urban planning is shown to fail miserably in the ability to efficiently handle the various zones (residential, commercial, and industrial) in ways that support homo sapiens that are collectively and demonstrably well and fit (integrated and balanced spirit, mind, and body). That the horrendus traffic in such places as Washington, DC and Los Angeles exist as a result of this type of 'methodology', or more aptly phrased a lack of foresight and control in urban design, is testament to the inability of rectilinear planning to adequately provide the means to effectively handle the growth of metropolitan settlements. Noded and hierarchical hexagons (think of a structured bi-directional tree, or map, in computer science, a more geometric neural network, or the refinement (not the Baroque adornment) of the Academie des beaux-arts d'architecture evolved into a hexagonal infrastructure), or weighted hexagons and connected based on their proximity (think of a circulatory system), relative importance to the central function of the settlement, eg. a commercial center or an industrial sector, or 'neural center' (if you will), and flow of human bodies or material resources, not only provides for free-flowing circulation, but enables the expansion and promotion of hexagonal sectors to higher weights of arrangement as the settlements increases in population and/or importance. It is important to remember though that the ekistical planning and development of human settlements based on such a scientific approach need not be considered a conversion into a collective machine. Rather, Ekistics provides the means by which individual settlements based on their ethnic background and geographic location to incorporate their heritage while arranging it in a manner that supports their collective intent. Literally, much of the wasted time and resources can be significantly reduced so that the duty of the individual can be smoothly performed in order to allow ample time for the creative quality-of-life (story-telling, the arts - martial, applied, and fine -, cultivation of one's relationship with nature, relaxation time, and conversation, etc.), to emerge by means of the interpersonal relationships within and between settlement(s). Essentially, the structure of Ekistics enables humans to synergize their cultural heritage with technological evolution.

Publications

"Ekistics" is a book by Konstantinos Doxiadis, published 1968. (often titled "Introduction to Ekistics" ISBN 0-09-080300-0)

"Ekistics" is also an academic periodical, overlaping the fields of human geography, environmental psychology, and the sciences of the built environment, published monthly from Greece since the mid 1960s, in English.

References

* [http://www.doxiadis.org/files/pdf/ecistics_the_science_of_human_settlements.pdf Ekistics Summary]
* [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9032180 Ekistics] , Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 11 Nov 2006
* [http://www.ekistics.org/Eindex.htm Ekistic Units]
* [http://www.doxiadis.org/files/pdf/City%20of%20the%20Future.pdf City of the Future]

See also

*Arcology
*Conurbation
*Consolidated city-county
*Global city
*Megacity
*Megalopolis (term)
*Metroplex
*Metropolitan area
*Permaculture
*Principles of Intelligent Urbanism
*Human ecosystem

External links

* [http://www.ekistics.org/ Website of the World Society for Ekistics] The World Society for Ekistics WSE is a non-political and non-religious body with limited membership, formed to study human patterns of living and their physical expression in the past, present and future.