Urban Autopoiesis: Towards Adaptive Future Cities

A city, defined as a unity of inhabitants with their environment and showing self-creating and self-maintaining properties, can be considered as an autopoietic system if we take into account its bottom-up processes with unpredictable behaviour of its components. Such a property can lead to self-creation of urban patterns. These processes are studied in well-known vernacular architectures and informal settlements around the world and they are able to adapt according to various conditions and forces. The main research objective is to establish a computational design-modelling framework for modelling autopoietic intricate characteristics of a city based on an adaptability, self-maintenance and self generation of urban patterns with adequate visual representation. The paper introduces a modelling methodology that allows to combine planning tasks with inhabitants` interaction and data sources by using an interchange framework to model more complex urban dynamics. The research yields preliminary results tested in a simulation model of a redevelopment of Tanjong Pagar Waterfront, the container terminal in the city of Singapore being transformed into a new future centre as a conducted case study.