IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v11y2019i15p4091-d252639.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Recursive Definition of Goodness of Space for Bridging the Concepts of Space and Place for Sustainability

Author

Listed:
  • Bin Jiang

    (Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Division of GIScience, University of Gävle, SE-801 76 Gävle, Sweden)

Abstract

Conceived and developed by Christopher Alexander through his life’s work, The Nature of Order , wholeness is defined as a mathematical structure of physical space in our surroundings. Yet, there was no mathematics, as Alexander admitted then, that was powerful enough to capture his notion of wholeness. Recently, a mathematical model of wholeness, together with its topological representation, has been developed that is capable of addressing not only why a space is good, but also how much goodness the space has. This paper develops a structural perspective on goodness of space (both large- and small-scale) in order to bridge two basic concepts of space and place through the very concept of wholeness. The wholeness provides a de facto recursive definition of goodness of space from a holistic and organic point of view. A space is good, genuinely and objectively, if its adjacent spaces are good, the larger space to which it belongs is good, and what is contained in the space is also good. Eventually, goodness of space, or sustainability of space, is considered a matter of fact rather than of opinion under the new view of space: space is neither lifeless nor neutral, but a living structure capable of being more living or less living, or more sustainable or less sustainable. Under the new view of space, geography or architecture will become part of complexity science, not only for understanding complexity, but also for making and remaking complex or living structures.

Suggested Citation

  • Bin Jiang, 2019. "A Recursive Definition of Goodness of Space for Bridging the Concepts of Space and Place for Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(15), pages 1-13, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:15:p:4091-:d:252639
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/15/4091/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/15/4091/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bin Jiang & Junjun Yin, 2014. "Ht-Index for Quantifying the Fractal or Scaling Structure of Geographic Features," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 104(3), pages 530-540, May.
    2. N A Salingaros & B J West, 1999. "A Universal Rule for the Distribution of Sizes," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 26(6), pages 909-923, December.
    3. Jiang, Bin, 2016. "A complex-network perspective on Alexander’s wholeness," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 463(C), pages 475-484.
    4. Peichao Gao & Zhao Liu & Gang Liu & Hongrui Zhao & Xiaoxiao Xie, 2017. "Unified Metrics for Characterizing the Fractal Nature of Geographic Features," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 107(6), pages 1315-1331, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zengwang Xu & Bin Jiang, 2022. "Effects of Social Vulnerability and Spatial Accessibility on COVID-19 Vaccination Coverage: A Census-Tract Level Study in Milwaukee County, USA," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(19), pages 1-13, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Boeing, Geoff, 2018. "Measuring the Complexity of Urban Form and Design," SocArXiv bxhrz, Center for Open Science.
    2. Michael J Dawes & Michael J Ostwald, 2020. "The mathematical structure of Alexander’s A Pattern Language: An analysis of the role of invariant patterns," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 47(1), pages 7-24, January.
    3. Taylor M. Oshan & Levi J. Wolf & Mehak Sachdeva & Sarah Bardin & A. Stewart Fotheringham, 2022. "A scoping review on the multiplicity of scale in spatial analysis," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 293-324, July.
    4. Tsiotas, Dimitrios, 2021. "Drawing indicators of economic performance from network topology: The case of the interregional road transportation in Greece," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    5. Zaheer Allam & Simon Elias Bibri & Didier Chabaud & Carlos Moreno, 2022. "The Theoretical, Practical, and Technological Foundations of the 15-Minute City Model: Proximity and Its Environmental, Social and Economic Benefits for Sustainability," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(16), pages 1-20, August.
    6. Nimrod Serok & Orr Levy & Shlomo Havlin & Efrat Blumenfeld-Lieberthal, 2019. "Unveiling the inter-relations between the urban streets network and its dynamic traffic flows: Planning implication," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 46(7), pages 1362-1376, September.
    7. Xiaoyang Han & Sijing Ye & Shuyi Ren & Changqing Song, 2023. "Using the DTFM Method to Analyse the Degradation Process of Bilateral Trade Relations between China and Australia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-22, April.
    8. Francisco Martínez & Bastian Sepúlveda & Hermann Manríquez, 2023. "Fractal Organization of Chilean Cities: Observations from a Developing Country," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-21, January.
    9. Wei Zhu & Ding Ma & Zhigang Zhao & Renzhong Guo, 2020. "Investigating the Complexity of Spatial Interactions between Different Administrative Units in China Using Flickr Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-12, November.
    10. Jiang, Bin & Ma, Ding, 2015. "Defining least community as a homogeneous group in complex networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 428(C), pages 154-160.
    11. António Dinis F. Santos & Duarte Valério & J. A. Tenreiro Machado & António M. Lopes, 2019. "A fractional perspective to the modelling of Lisbon’s public transportation network," Transportation, Springer, vol. 46(5), pages 1893-1913, October.
    12. Zaheer Allam & Simon Elias Bibri & Didier Chabaud & Carlos Moreno, 2022. "The Theoretical, Practical, and Technological Foundations of the 15-Minute City Model: Proximity and Its Environmental, Social and Economic Benefits for Sustainability," Post-Print hal-03997394, HAL.
    13. Ding Ma & Itzhak Omer & Toshihiro Osaragi & Mats Sandberg & Bin Jiang, 2019. "Why topology matters in predicting human activities," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 46(7), pages 1297-1313, September.
    14. Fangjie Cao & Yun Qiu & Qianxin Wang & Yan Zou, 2022. "Urban Form and Function Optimization for Reducing Carbon Emissions Based on Crowd-Sourced Spatio-Temporal Data," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(17), pages 1-17, August.
    15. Bin Jiang, 2019. "Natural Cities Generated from All Building Locations in America," Data, MDPI, vol. 4(2), pages 1-5, April.
    16. Chen, Yanguang & Wang, Yihan & Li, Xijing, 2019. "Fractal dimensions derived from spatial allometric scaling of urban form," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 122-134.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:15:p:4091-:d:252639. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.