ABSTRACT
This chapter traces how our metaphors and ways of knowing are reflected in our cities, as planners are moving away from seeing cities as integrally engineered machines, and toward a conception of cities as ecosystems with emergent properties. We revisit the famed confrontation between city planner Robert Moses and activist writer Jane Jacobs, viewing the first as an icon of industrial modernity and the latter as an early proponent of complexity thinking. Drawing on examples from the city of Rotterdam, we examine how the commitment to self-organization plays out in practice – finding self-organization that is inherently uneven and incomplete, generating new inequalities.
