| Abstract |
In recent years planning discourse and ideology have been dominated by the smart city movement and yet the past is full theories that address the challenges of the increasingly urban world drawing on scientific concepts and technological advances, in most cases unsuccessfully. This paper describes ekistics, a concept coined by architect-planner C.A. Doxiadis to describe the science of human settlements. It offered a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and systemic approach that explored worldwide urbanization drawing on mathematics, forecasting models, but also on social sciences. In parallel, the paper reviews Doxiadis Associates' Urban Detroit Area project to denote the clash of systemic methods and large-scale models with urban complexity. The aim is to provide a historical background for assessing the theoretical underpinnings and scope of the smart city model. |
