A much-needed revamp of the best way to approach design

This review is part of a special collaboration between Planetizen and Booked on Planning, a biweekly podcast where AICP planner Stephanie Rouse and Jennifer Hiatt chat with authors of the latest books shaping urban planning today. Listen to the episode with today’s author in the player below. 

Elena Porqueddu’s “Designing the Complex City: A Systemic Approach to Spatial Design” offers a recalibration for the built environment professions — planners, landscape architects, architects and interior designers. For decades, urban planning has oscillated between two equally flawed theories: the heavy-handed, top-down master plan that doesn’t allow for spontaneous activities, and the hands-off, market driven approach that abandons vulnerable areas to urban decay. Porqueddu cuts through this false dichotomy with a new theory: spatial design should not attempt to control the city nor abandon it. Rather, spatial design should use its self-organizing nature to guide cities through precise, systemic interventions.

What makes Porqueddu’s work stand out is its ability to translate complex systems theory, which draws from life sciences, social sciences and cognitive theory, into actionable tools for spatial designers. For those that have read “Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World” by Elizabeth Sawin, Porqueddu’s book takes the idea of systems thinking in spatial design a step further and applies the concepts directly to the built environment. 

Porqueddu presents spatial design as a way to create  “good perturbation,” or positive small changes, and recommends making a “living atlas” to transform abstract ideas into tangible methodology. Her idea of the living atlas goes beyond just mapping various layers of information: it also emphasizes keeping this information up to date and tracking how the small changes are impacting the urban environment in larger ways. 

Porqueddu shows architects, landscape architects, interior designers and urban planners how to spot hidden leverage points where modest, highly targeted interventions can break the cycles of stagnation and jumpstart organic revitalization. One challenge that remains unclear in her concept is how design professionals can remain engaged with the communities after implementation when the resulting design work is largely completed by out of town design firms.

The book particularly shines in its cross-disciplinary vision. Rather than treating interior design, building design, landscape and urban planning as isolated silos, Porqueddu shows how these disciplines can act as complementary layers within a single, adaptive ecosystem. Case studies provide real life examples of her theoretical arguments, proving that open-ended, incremental design does not diminish the designer’s agency. Instead, it can amplify their long-term impact. None of the case studies took place in North America, so it will be interesting to see how these concepts stand up against a more regulated development environment and what changes are necessary to accommodate a more integrated and incremental development process.

“Designing the Complex City” provides a thoughtful roadmap from an academic lens for creating cities that are resilient, flexible and responsive to the messy but wonderful reality of human life.