ABSTRACT
This chapter explicates the discursive foundation for speculations on alternatives to teleological modes of development, with principles of uncertainty, complexity, and emergence embraced in the current era, termed the “age of indeterminacy.” The chapter surveys the multidisciplinary discourses associated with an understanding of the city as fundamentally dynamic, and as having a future that is never fully determinable. It also elucidates concepts associated with computational approaches to urbanism, the methods and applications of which will be further elaborated on in later chapters. Finally, the theoretical lineage of the study of dynamic patterns is investigated as a fundamental issue in evolutionary urbanism.
