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Ancient and Modern People Followed Same Mathematical Rule To Build Cities
An anonymous reader writes with news of a study that shows similarities in how cities are built throughout time. "A study of archeological data from ancient Mexican settlements reveals remarkable similarities between pre-Colombian cities and modern ones, lending support to the idea that urban spaces are shaped by universal social behaviors. Sure, each city has its own local quirks, architecture, language and cuisine. But recently, some theoretical scientists have started to find there are universal laws that shape all urban spaces. And a new study suggests the same mathematical rules might apply to ancient settlements, too. Using archaeological data from the ruins of Tenochtitlan and thousands of other sites around it in Mexico, researchers found that private houses and public monuments were built in predictable ways."
What they are actually saying is that ancient and modenr chities can *be described* by the same formula.
Referring to the article: When a modern city doubles its population, it grows 83% in size (ther than 100%); this seems to hold true for ancient cities.
When a moden city doubles its population, it's per-capita GDP (and wages) increase 15%. Using the number of monuments per-capita as a guide, the researchers found this also correlated with ancient cities.
It's an interesting article (I'd like more details) but, per Slashdot norms, a lousy title.
One other AC posted this, but it will probably stay buried at zero.
If you're interested in why some spaces feel nice to you and others don't, there's a series of books you want to read, by "Christopher Alexander"
The first one is "The Timeless Way of Building". The next is "A Pattern Language"
This guy was writing about the human factors in architecture -- why certain spaces make all people feel good, and how that developed over human history, and how it's largely been lost in modern architecture.
His next book, "A Pattern Language", enumerates 253 patterns his team rediscovered that help resolve social problems in architectural spaces.
The problem he noticed is that people could understand if they felt good in a space or not, but it was difficult to predict ahead of time if a building would have this quality or not. And that's obviously a huge problem if you want to build things that people love, because buildings are expensive and stay around a long time. Just cloning old buildings that people like doesn't quite do it either - because people didn't really understand what made those spaces great.
This series of books is what the Gang of Four looked at, and one of them said "hey, this applies to building software also - when the problem looks like this, there's a pattern that can be implemented many different ways to address that problem".
Thus, the design patterns movement in software was born.
If you're at all interested in houses, cities, planning, design, etc, I really recommend the books.
However, read them before you buy/build your next house -- not right after you just moved. You'll start to find explanatinos about where you currently live that explain why you don't use or don't enjoy certain things, and you'll be frustrated and want to start changing things :)
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Just like... Mexico City!
I am Mexican, living in Mexico City. My wife is an Argentinian, from a mid-sized province capital. She often finds it laughable how this city lacks any logic. Of course, until it becomes clear that most quirks come from agricultural, old villages that got slurped into the Blob. Then its shape is explainable... Not that it makes much sense, of course.