Local Code: 3,659 Proposals About Data, Design & the Nature of Cities

by Nicholas de Monchaux, Easterling Keller (Introduction)

With three billion more humans projected to be living in cities by 2050, all design is increasingly urban design. And with as much data now produced every day as was produced in all of human history to the year 2007, all architecture is increasingly information architecture. Praised in the New York Times for its "intelligent enquiry and actionable theorizing," Local Code is a collection of data-driven tools and design prototypes for understanding and transforming the physical, social, and ecological resilience of cities.

The book's data-driven layout arranges drawings of 3,659 digitally-tailored interventions for vacant public land in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and Venice, Italy. Between these illustrated case studies, critical essays present surprising and essential links between such designs and the seminal work of urbanist Jane Jacobs, artist Gordon Matta-Clark, and digital mapping pioneer Howard Fisher, along with the developing science of urban nature and complexity. In text and image, Local Code presents a digitally prolific, open-ended approach to urban resilience and social and environmental justice; At once analytic and visionary, it pioneers a new field of enquiry and action at the meeting of big data and the expanding city.

176 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2015

Reviews

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I initially received this book I was quite disappointed by the graphics, however the essays (ranging in topics from Gordon Matta-Clark's art to Supernovas) more than made up for them, and the case studies are interesting glimpses into how some of the ideas discussed can be applied.

The book does a good job of presenting both the opportunities and challenges associated with taking a data driven approach to cities, and uses great historical vignettes to illustrate these points. Highly recommend for urban designers, landscape architects, architects, and anyone interested in data, design and the nature of cities.

[Justin Crane · Rating 4 out of 5]

The essays were wonderful - big ideas with a clarity that’s difficult to find in architectural theory. The graphics were inscrutable, but maybe intentionally so given this concluding paragraph: “…natural processes …are also inseparable from the reality of crafting buildings and landscapes: chance, contingency, complexity, and luck…. It is to this vision of indirect causation, and inescapable complexity, that “Local Code” aspires.”

[L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seeing an installation based on the studies within this book at the SFMOMA convinced me to become an urban forester.

So, this book changed my life.