Introduction

 For at least the past two centuries, discourse about human settlements has been largely linked to ‘the city’, and more recently the ‘urban’ condition. However the use of the terms ‘urban’ and its perceived opposite – ‘rural’ – have become increasingly suspect, demanding more sound understandings and emphasis on their synergies and interdependencies. An interrogation of these terms has recognized repercussions for political, economic, and social systems, so what about architecture? In this blig we question the rural /urban dichotomy and the very relevance of these terms as they relate to design thinking through weekly reading and writing assignments.   This page intends to critically analyze published text and other forms of related media.

URL, in computational terms, refers to a Uniform Resource Locator which we recognize as an address on the Internet to locate a document. However, OED defines uniform as “of one form, character, or kind”, resource as “Stocks or reserves of money, materials, people, or some other asset, which can be drawn on when necessary” and locator as “a device for indicating the position or direction of something.” The Internet represents an abstract and virtual space where resources are located, their hyperlinks are infinite, and yet the identities of these spaces remain distinct and locatable. In physical space, we can learn from the Internet in its ability to establish coherent links between relevant information. The hyperlink is a tool that allows us to comprehend how seemingly disparate information relates to one other. What is essential is the ability to locate these things in the ‘web’. Collectively, the various locations form a whole, a network, a system. 

We can think of the built environment in similar (but not the same) terms. There are nodes of residence, work, and play. There are nodes of resource extraction, resource reallocation, consumer redistribution, and waste. But it is ultimately the web connecting them that is essential. This web is not only linked to physical interdependencies and connections but also linked to social, cultural, economic, and political influences. Like the internet these factors form virtual ‘places’. As designers engaged with these systems, physical and virtual, architects must strive to better understand them. In this course we are interested in the hyperlinks between what we perceive as rural and urban spaces - our settlement systems - and what can be learned about their links for sustainable architectural practice.