Autonomous Urbanism MA

Algorithmic Urbanism: Growing Autonomous New Towns How should we make new towns? Modernist visionaries opted for utopian ideologies – the notion of starting again from nothing (tabula rasa). Today similar thoughts have become taboo; we now want to preserve ‘heritage’ and ‘character’ and seek desperate measures to retain that which incites local identity and prevents global uniformity. In our haste to develop systems capable of maintaining the mystical ‘sense of place’, we have allowed our towns to stagnate within their own ‘heritage’. Production has been replaced by reproduction – character no longer emerges, it is a manufactured commodity. The future is bright; the future is neo-traditional. What happens if we deprive architects of their precious copy and paste buttons? What are the alternative systems of control and can our new towns ever be free from the nostalgic tentacles of bureaucracy?