Neural Cities or how cities teach us to design them better

Angelica Stan
University of Architecture and Urban Planning “Ion Mincu”
18-20 Academiei st, 010014, Bucharest
angelicastan@yahoo.com

Abstract
Many cities, through the way in which they are organized, help us to know them, and they
themselves have a certain ability to learn from the way in which people use them. As Jane Jacobs
argued, the city exhibits a high degree of order, an “organized complexity”. Meanwhile, we can
notice that in our very actuality, a big city can self-organizes in order to become “smarter”, due to
its ability to generate a great urban vitality with fewer resources. And this is possible only if their
“neurons” (people, options, interests, activities, feelings, ambiances) are able to be connected,
physically and virtually. The City’s Brain is exactly its inhabitants, not always those who are
managing and designing the city, but those who live it/consume it every day.
Starting from this point, the paper develops a sketch-model for an urban analyze based on the
idea that all vicinity in a city could generate „neural” connections, depending to the way in which
they are designed. First, we’ll explain the term of vicinity and we’ll adapt it to the reality of actual
city, in which the vicinity is both physical and virtual. Following this, the vicinity is no longer a
fixed / planned splitting into small parts with a specific character, but has to start from the very
dynamic-physical and virtual-connections. Vicinity overlaps some “neural” fields in the city
(activating such as the field of memory and forgetting), but not always matching the physical
locations of city’s identity.

Keywords: order, complexity, neural, connections

Introduction
It has long been regarded that cities grow because of their economic power and,
consequently, through the population growth. This power is conferred, in essence, by their
structure as command centers (political, administrative, cultural, etc.), able to coordinate all
processes by which they become competitive and increases their value. But recent decades have
shown that physical growth of cities involved many other factors, independent of the economic
and demographic ones. They lead to a new feature of urban life that becomes defining for its
whole emancipation: the attractiveness. It is closely related to a city’s state that can be correctly
expressed by the term of vitality - a combined function of spiritual energy and physical strength,
optimism and ability to overcome the obstacles.
As for human, for the city is important that this function is not deducted and cannot (yet)
being entirely programmed, but that we need at least to acknowledge. For a city at a certain stage
of development, to keep its brain youth and vitality may be a goal. For urban planning can
however reach a theory applicable in this direction, it needs an interdisciplinary approach, maybe
from where it was left by Christopher Alexander in "The city is not a tree". More recent studies
on this subject are, in their majority, tributary of a scientific attitude that removes them the chance
to look beyond the technology which makes them possible. Especially the urban dynamics at the
level of cities or regions, are trying to be interpreted and predicted by tools as Artificial Neural
Network ( ANN ), considering several processes - similar to neural ones – that are taking place in
urban areas, such as population displacement, land use dynamics, urban tissue morphology
changes (Mohammady et.al , 2013). The purpose of this article is not to present a competing
theory for these, but to open a door to creative possibilities of looking at the city as a neural
process, whose thinking and evolving possibilities are virtually endless.
At the same time, the present study moves far from some sociological approach of the
urban phenomenon that has tried to make a connection between the sociology of urban life and
the neuroscience of wellbeing in city living1.

Urban Complexity and Vitality

Not so obvious, between the order inside the physical city structure and the city’s
“mental” vitality, there is a direct relationship. Like in a human brain, an increased level
of complexity of internal processes is also evidence for that brain vitality. A “neural
brain” is something that is not necessarily localized, not binding controlled by planning,
but diffuse, always active and acting. Beyond projects and strategies, there is an intrinsic
intelligence of the city that makes all the urban life attractiveness to become obvious by
itself. It consists of all the processes of reception – processing - learning – interpretation-
creation that people themselves daily run, and at the same time, is the expression of a
higher order, due to its increased ability to process a large number of stimuli. On the
contrary, physical disorder and weakening of certain links with the aging process, with
the decreased speed in all actions, appears as signs of a decay state.
The complexity of the urban life and city intrinsic vitality are two traits that
influence each other and which relied on the concept of “neural city”. More than a
metaphor, the neural city is not the sum of all brains composing it and - thankfully! – is
not a single brain - of a dictator or a sage who conceived the order from above. From a
humanistic perspective, city as brain is the opposite of “city as a device”, or “city as a
machine”. If we accept that the city is an organic entity, progressive and able of self-
sustaining processes, capable of thinking and interpretation of all stimuli, if we accept the
complexity and vitality as mirrors of its order and beauty, acquired by culture and
experience, the neural city has a quasi-human behavior as opposed to technocratic,
machinist one. At the limit, we can say that the "city as device" is one so sophisticated, so
creative, so unpredictable and humanistic in its reactions, that is a total unknown device,
a machine that has not been invented yet.
Through the concept of neural city we can also re-discuss the idea of “smart city”
beyond the precepts of new urbanism doctrine, already waste. Smart City is a city-brain
with the ability to generate and maintain its vitality and complex order, using fewer
resources. Today, based on recent research, in the human brain there is permanent
cognitive reserve: “the brain’s ability to develop and maintain extra neurons and connections
between them via axons and dendrites. Later in life, these connections may help compensate for
the rise in dementia-related brain pathology that accompanies normal aging.”
From this perspective, we can say that in the future, the main role of the urban
planner would be to assist the mental processes of the city brain and protect its cognitive
reserve, 'clearing' mental channels affected by unfortunate use. Resources of urban
vitality should be preserved, searched or - why not? - re-invented. The worn places, the

1
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/sshm/research/Research-Groups/Biomedicine-Ethics-and-Social-
Justice/BESJ-Projects/Urban-Brain-Lab.aspx
carelessness intoxicated spaces, the corrupt ambiances, the broken identities, the spatial
jams, the blackouts, etc., may become the domain of a new kind of therapy of urban
spaces, able to understand the city beyond its image and politics, beyond cosmetic
gestures of repairing. In this aim, the urban re-vitalization would be this complex therapy
of restoring the city brain processes and connections.

Figure 1. Similar images of New York City (1) and of neurons in human brain (2)
source: Google Earth (1) and http://transductions.net/2010/02/04/313/neurons/ (2)

The Neural City’s Architecture

(…) cities worldwide are deploying technology to address both the timeless challenges of
government and the mounting problems posed by human settlements of previously
unimaginable size and complexity (Anthony M. Townsend)

Christopher Alexander has shown that the city has not a tree structure, and that is a
mistake of planners and architects to consider such; notable failures of new cities such as
Chandigarh, designed by a simple model of branched relationships, proving that. On the contrary,
says Alexander the semi - lattice is the structure of a complex fabric, it is the structure of living
things - of great paintings and Symphonies (Alexander, 1966).
Further on, we assert that the city has a neural structure and function essentially creative,
beyond the aesthetic - a natural creativity as effect of its inside vitality. Definitely, the neural
architecture of the city is given by a certain kind of order, never the order of a tree hierarchical
relationships, which leaves from the trunk and branch more or less and which involve essentially
centralized processes, dependent on the stronger branch in the structure. As a mathematician,
Alexander was looking to improve the design process of our cities in a scientific way, guided by a
strong social spirit. This social basis of his approach has been ignored by architects, together with
the fact that he considered the 20th century architecture styles as meaningless, a varieties of
elaborate decoration, masking an underlying kind of fragmented, objectified structure that is
incompatible with evolved, sustainable form2.
The architecture of neural city is one of unavoidable overlapping, of embraced circuits,
an accepted "chaos" facing the urban order sitting not in opposition, but complementarily. The
city’s vitality is reflected in vibrant, active, untiring life, in his concurrent rhythms and

2
http://complexitys.com/, accessed at 8.02.2014
connections. This is the result of simultaneity of activities, interests, choices, feelings, moods,
movements and gestures of the people who live it, of those that think about the city or those who
try to control certain "circuits ". That’s why maybe so obvious that is a city can never be
controlled until the end, no matter how subtle and sophisticated methods would be. Because it is
alive, because it’s a permanent active intelligence increasing its connections in multi –
dimensional system, the neural city can not be completely controlled and its architecture will
never be the work of an urban planner. The city’s architecture, the urban space it’s not an empty
one, it’s filled out with many, different meanings (Lefebvre, 1974), that express its huge
possibilities to cover the reality.
The neural city produces itself, being its own architect/urban planner: we might just hope
to understand it. The complexity of the mode of production of what we might call thinking city
(city's thinking) is similar to the higher mental processes - analysis, interpretation, creation and
innovation. Also, urban space commands bodies, prescribing or proscribing gestures,
routes and distances to be covered. It is produced with this purpose in mind; this is its raison
d'être. (Lefebvre, 1974); through raison d'être, and through its language and poetry, the
neural city proves a power of self- thinking and self-producing values.

Figure 2. City-brain Paris: collage of city transportation map and a brain map, source: author

Urban vicinity and “neural” connections

A nerve cell can receive impulses from hundreds of thousands of connectors points every second.
Each individual neuron can embrace up to 10 000 surrounding brain cells.
It does not exist yet a human being able to use the full potential of the brain.

What about the percentage of we know to use the city’s intelligence? Certainly, it is
insignificant, especially because we did not recognize its existence. Neural city is still very
present: it's a brain thinking us, daily, but also at the historical time, using us as its neurons. The
urban form - this spectacular synthesis of everything that the city has brought to the surface in the
physical plane, is in turn, a seemingly heterogeneous composition of points, images, landscapes,
actions, habits, crimes, so on - each produced by any of us, apparently disparate and chaotic, but
which have the ability to synchronize when the brain tells them to do this. Through a certain
"chemistry " (which we could call it now, empathy) we can make visible this form. A nerve cell,
an inhabitant is such a "hook" for information, feeling, opinion, option, desire. In all connections
(in real or virtual environment) that we could establish, we generate such micro-forms of urban
life, physical or behavioral patterns (routes, uses, exchanges, landmarks, etc). Some of them come
to shape the physical urban space, but many of them remain as an inspiring background. In a city,
a street is a street as long as it is used, but this use can make it a good street or bad street, a
remarkable place or commonplace, and the pattern from which is used generate a pattern. As in
human brain, the repetition increases the probability of repetition, but the “background of
inspiration” assures the necessary, fertile soil for new connections.
So, looking at the city like this, we can assert that citizens are neurons: they look
different from all other cells in the body, and from one another, they are cells that make up the
brain and nervous system functioning. “In a sense, neurons are like snowflakes,” says Kristen
Harris, a neurobiologist at the University of Texas who studies how changes in neuron structure
affect learning and memory. “They have recognizable shapes, but no two look exactly alike.”
Connections within a city spread out various networks whose “meshes” we are caught –
but we don’t always feel as we are "used". City-brain not only "thinks us", sending us in some
directions, leaving us to create our own benchmarks, but also facilitate our knowledge and
learning in the environment in which we live. It only remains to recognize and respect this
Maestro teaching - would be an act of maturity!
Beyond that, as individuals caught in such anchors within the city’s thinking, we are able
to regionalize our knowledge. Our neighborhoods - family, home, working place, holiday place,
and internet - are domestic production meshes of this cortex, having an unsuspected associative
capacity. The urban vicinity deserves re-thinking by this point of view, of the individual
association possibilities within an over- cognitive structure. It is nothing but a smart interface
between the cell level (micro, individual, sub- conscious) and the collective level of a superior,
self-awareness intelligence.
Between the two levels, with the simultaneous immersion in the urban life of the virtual
one, the vicinity can act as an interface. Bogdan Ghiu says, because "vicinity becomes unstable
flux, permanent mutability (...) the proximities, the vicinal configurations are disrupted, become
unstable and non-relevant, simple meetings”3. I’ll add saying that these "simple meetings" are
exactly connections, nodes of individual presence and co-presence of the neural city dynamics. It
needs this vicinity to function, to move in one or other directions, to adapt, to relate and to
increase the selection base of its creative processes. Neural city vicinity cannot be understood
only as a set of places defined in Heidegger's sense, it is not an archipelago4, but tends to become
an overlay network, inter-connected net, possible extending in each point, from the virtual to real
and vice versa.
As planners we used to say that the vicinity can be designed, guided by urban regulations,
“draped” by a special architecture. “The vicinity is useful both for the particular interests of
household and informally, but systematically, to the local administration” 5. However, between
the concept of vicinity in social and spatial sense we found a theoretical distance, and this gap
increases in urban environment as much as society evolves under the impact of new information
technologies. Already in the ‘90s, sociologists had found the social “weight” of vicinities,

3 Ghiu, B., 2011, “Neutralizarea si politizarea vecinatatii”

http://atelier.liternet.ro/articol/4410/Bogdan-Ghiu/Despre-vecinatate-colocratia.html, accesat in 2.02.2014
4 Ioan, A., Vecinatatea ca arhipelag, http://www.arhiforum.ro/agora/vecinatatea-ca-arhipelag-i, accesat in 3.02.2014

5 Stahl, H. H., 1936, “Chestionar pentru studiul vecinătăţilor”, în “Sociologie Românească”, nr.1, pp.18-31
resulting that they are holders of a spontaneous sociability stock, mutual support spaces, meeting
places of individual resources that facilitate cooperation (Lăzăroiu & Burcea, 1997). Somehow,
from this perspective, the vicinity as physical space becomes negligible, excelling social reports
which substantiate it. Like in a thinking process, it would not matter "where" produce a certain
idea, but only "what" idea is and if it can communicate with others! But in neural city the space,
the time and the meaning become a single substance, as in a brain the place of a synapse is a
micro spatio-temporal and chemical synthesis, irradiating similar processes in its vicinity.
Looking beyond the vainglorious literatures of different discipline, the vicinity has the
concreteness of a "factory of ideas", as it is the daily synthesis of needs, choices, actions,
pleasures and anxieties of each individual, offering itself as discharge space, stimulating or
inhibiting it. It is true that nowadays, under the massive impact of IT, the vicinity gets a neutral
position, tending to be diffused or even refused. The Neighbor is not as close as it was before
computer era, but he continues to be conceived as "what exists immediately, even if minimal:
flicker of existence, co-existence and co-assistance." 6 But the city continues to develop different
types of vicinity, in an order based on overlapping and nested connections and through this we
learn something about its creativity hidden in each "cell", in each resident. Urban planning should
begin maybe not from immediate data related to urban activities, traffic, population, pollution,
and so on, but from the infra-data contained in this previous, direct connected to people and their
options.
However, if we accept that between the human brain and neural town there is a similarity,
then, the need for vicinity is one intrinsic. Just its expression gets different spatially coordinates,
expands its boundaries, becomes multi-layered, multi-dimensional, colder and impersonal,
accepting more easily the disguise, the falsehood, hypocrisy, voyeurism and other non-criminal
sins of our contemporary society. Between “the-neighbor-from-the-block-of-flats" (important
character as long as he carries a displaced territoriality, from rural to urban) and "the-neighbor-
from-blog" there is not a high structural similarities, but they may overlap the same idea – the
need of communication and of extending the inside mental processes to an outside.

Conclusions:

Neural city is sketched here as a concept which starts from the observation that city is, as
the brain it is, the most sophisticated thing of humanity, with a huge potential of development,
partially undiscovered yet. Leading on Christopher Alexander's theory of non-tree structure of the
city, this concept is meant to bring to light the connection as the driving element of all internal
processes attended by people, both in the real and the virtual world. On the quality, the scope and
the frequency of these neural connections depend on the city attractiveness and vitality. These are
two traits which bring up the question of control the city evolution through urban planning-
taking in consideration not only the separate social, spatial, economic, cultural layers, but the
entire synthesis of them, which is the city’s brain, the city’s intelligence. As the neural city is able
of self-thinking and self-re-inventing, the idea of the vicinity in our postindustrial and over-
technical urban environment is approached in terms of attempt to "engage" neural connections
and making them visible. This coupling may be just the big step from Knowledge to Creation,
step that our cities have to do.

6Ghiu, B., “Neutralizarea si politizarea vecinatatii”

http://atelier.liternet.ro/articol/4410/Bogdan-Ghiu/Despre-vecinatate-colocratia.html, accesat in 2.02.2014
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