Designing Networks Cities: Inclusive, Hyper-Connected, Emergent, and Sustainable Urbanism

designing networks cities presents a sophisticated, multi-disciplinary, and multi-dimensional approach to urban design. Emerging from years of practice, experimentation, and research by designers (landscape architects, urban planners, urban designers and architects), this approach engages with contemporary thought across a number of disciplines to re-invent the entrenched blunt instruments of the city making process.

A cry for flexible, sharp-instruments in urban design, designing networks cities presents a multi-dimensional way of seeing the essential components of the city (form, space-time, order and aesthetics). It purposefully links traditional architectural design derivation mechanisms to urban design, in the hope that cities will not only be pragmatic, but also become sophisticated iconographically, poetically, and syntactically. It provides the tools to enable decision making within a multiplicity of constraints and opportunities: a philosophy of becoming, not being; a science of dynamic systems, not stasis; and an art of sensations, not subjectivity. And finally, and most importantly, it argues why it is important that cities embrace these multiple dimensions of society on a planet that is facing increasing environmental challenges: an economics focused on equity for all, not for some more than others; a politics supporting a genuine representational democracy, not one representing the overly influential; and a culture [including history] that embraces difference, not one that encourages division.

designing networks cities not only provides the means to identify these issues and a methodology to deal with them within a complex emerging co-existence, but also demonstrates the development of cities that embrace and respond to the complexities of life in what some are calling the Anthropocene.

Steve Whitford, a former director of Cocks Carmichael Whitford Architects in Australia from 1970 to 2000, gained recognition for award-winning architectural and urban design projects. He also taught at RMIT and UoM while pursuing a Master of Planning and Urban Design in 1996. Steve later held visiting professorships at universities in China, France, and Japan. He became a partner at BAU in 2010, contributing to acclaimed urban design and architectural projects. He may one day complete his PhD at the University of Melbourne, focusing on the intersections between Deleuze, the complexity sciences, the sublime, and urbanism.

James Brearley is the founder of Brearley Architects + Urbanists (BAU) and serves as an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University. He completed his studies in building and architecture at the University of Melbourne and RMIT University in 1989. Before establishing his private practice in 1992, he gained experience in London under Will Alsop. James holds a Master of Planning and Urban Design from UoM (1998) and oversaw BAU’s expansion into China, focusing on large-scale projects. He co-authored Networks Cities in 2010, exploring contemporary Chinese urbanism, and has led award-winning projects in urban design, landscape architecture, and architecture.