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Definition Ekistics is the scientific study of human settlements, including regional, city and community planning and dwelling design. It involves the study of all kinds of human settlements, with a view to geography and ecology - the physical environment- , and human psychology and anthropology, and cultural, political, and occasionally aesthetics.
Currently it is found to rely on staticstics and description, as a scientific mode of study. It is generally a more academic field than "urban planning", and has considerable overlap with some of the less restrained fields of architectural theory, Urban planning is concerned with the ordering and design of settlements, from the smallest towns to the worlds largest cities. ...
Architectural theory is the act of thinking, discussing, or most importantly writing about architecture. ...
In application, conclusions are drawn aimed at achieving harmony between the inhabitants of a settlement and their physical and socio-cultural environments.[1]
The scope of ekistics The notion of Ekistics implies that understanding the interaction between and within human groups -- infrastructure, agriculture, shelter, function (job) -- in conjunction with their environment directly affects their well-being (individual and collective). The subject begins to elucidate the ways in which collective settlements form and how they inter-relate. By doing so, humans begin to understand how they 'fit' into a species, i.e. homo sapiens, and how homo sapiens 'should' be living in order to manifest our potential -- at least as far as this species is concerned (as the text stands now). Ekistics in some cases argues that in order for human settlements to expand efficiently and economically we must reorganize the way in which the villages, towns, cities, metropoli are formed.
Etymology Look up ekistics in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. EKISTICS (modern Greek: OIKIΣTIKH) is derived from the ancient Greek adjective oikistikoV more particularly from the neuter plural oikistika (as physics is derived from fusika, Aristotle). The ancient Greek adjective oikistikoV meant: "concerning the foundation of a house, a habitation, a city or colony; contributing to the settling." It was derived from oikistikhV, an ancient Greek noun meaning "the person who installs settlers in place". This may be regarded as deriving indirectly from another ancient Greek noun, o kisiV, meaning "building", "housing", "habitation", and especially "establishment of a colony, a settlement , or a town" (already in Plato), or "filling with new settlers", settling", "being settled". All these words grew from the verb oikizw, to settle and were ultimately derived from the noun o koV, "house", "home" or "habitat. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...
Wiktionary is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 150 languages. ...
The shorter Oxford English Dictionary contains a reference to an oecist, oekist or oikist, defining him as: "the founder of an ancient Greek ... colony". The English equivalent of oikistikh is ekistics (a noun). In addition, the adjectives ekistic and ekistical, the adverb ekistically, and the noun ekistician are now also in current use. The French equivalent is ekistique, the German oekistik, the Italian echistica (all feminine). The Oxford English Dictionary print set The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), and is generally regarded as the most comprehensive and scholarly dictionary of the English language. ...
Ekistic units[2]
- Settlement sizes by number of habitants:
anthropos - 1
room - 2
house - 5
housegroup - 40
small neighborhood - 250
neighborhood - 1,500
small polis - 10,000
polis - 75,000
small metropolis - 500,000
metropolis - 4,000,000
small megalopolis - 25,000,000
megalopolis - 150,000,000
small eperopolis - 1,000 million [1,000,000,000]
eperopolis - 7,500 million [7,500,000,000]
ecumenopolis - 50,000 million [50,000,000,000]
Details of the study of human settlement | | The neutrality and factual accuracy of this section is disputed.
Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page. | | One of the primary tenets of Ekistics is the development of human settlements based on hexagonal infrastructures. Rectilinear urban planning is shown to fail miserably in the ability to efficiently handle the various zones (residential, commercial, and industrial) in ways that support homo sapiens that are collectively and demonstrably well and fit (integrated and balanced spirit, mind, and body). That the horrendus traffic in such places as Washington, DC and Los Angeles exist as a result of this type of 'methodology', or more aptly phrased a lack of foresight and control in urban design, is testament to the inability of rectilinear planning to adequately provide the means to effectively handle the growth of metropolitan settlements. Noded and hierarchical hexagons (think of a structured bi-directional tree, or map, in computer science, a more geometric neural network, or the refinement (not the Baroque adornment) of the Academie des beaux-arts d'architecture evolved into a hexagonal infrastructure), or weighted hexagons and connected based on their proximity (think of a circulatory system), relative importance to the central function of the settlement, eg. a commercial center or an industrial sector, or 'neural center' (if you will), and flow of human bodies or material resources, not only provides for free-flowing circulation, but enables the expansion and promotion of hexagonal sectors to higher weights of arrangement as the settlements increases in population and/or importance. It is important to remember though that the ekistical planning and development of human settlements based on such a scientific approach need not be considered a conversion into a collective machine. Rather, Ekistics provides the means by which individual settlements based on their ethnic background and geographic location to incorporate their heritage while arranging it in a manner that supports their collective intent. Literally, much of the wasted time and resources can be significantly reduced so that the duty of the individual can be smoothly performed in order to allow ample time for the creative quality-of-life (story-telling, the arts - martial, applied, and fine -, cultivation of one's relationship with nature, relaxation time, and conversation, etc.), to emerge by means of the interpersonal relationships within and between settlement(s). Essentially, the structure of Ekistics enables humans to synergize their cultural heritage with technological evolution. Image File history File links Circle-question-red. ...
Image File history File links Unbalanced_scales. ...
Publications Ekistics is a book by Konstantinos Doxiadis, published 1968. (often titled "Introduction to Ekistics" ISBN: 0090803000) Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis (1913 - 1975) was a significant Greek architect. ...
Ekistics is also an academic periodical, overlaping the fields of human geography, environmental psychology, and the sciences of the built environment, published monthly from Greece since the mid 1960s, in English. The phrase built environment refers to the manmade surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging from the large-scale civic surroundings to the personal places. ...
Notes - ^ Encyclopædia Britannica
- ^ Ekistic Units
"ekistics." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 11 Nov. 2006 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9032180>.
"Ekistic Units" <http://www.ekistics.org/Eindex.htm>.
See also The Try2004 Arcology or Megacity as featured on the Discovery Channels Extreme Engineering programs. ...
A conurbation is an urban area comprising a number of cities or towns which, through population growth and expansion, have physically merged to form one continuous built up area. ...
In American local government, a consolidated city-county, metropolitan municipality or regional municipality is a city and county that have been merged into one jurisdiction. ...
A global city or world city are a concept which postulates that globalisation can be broken down in terms of strategic geographic locales that see global processes being created, facilitated and enacted. ...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Megalopolis (term). ...
It has been suggested that Megacity be merged into this article or section. ...
A Metroplex is an area of 2 or more very close statistical metropolitan areas that converge upon one another. ...
A metropolitan area is a large population center consisting of a large city and its adjacent zone of influence, or of several neighboring cities or towns and adjoining areas, with one or more large cities serving as its hub or hubs. ...
External links - Website of the World Society for Ekistics The World Society for Ekistics WSE is a non-political and non-religious body with limited
membership, formed to study human patterns of living and their physical expression in the past, present and future. |
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