Title: A Pattern Language for Rapid Urbanization: Launching a Digital Pattern Language Repository
Presenters: Ward Cunningham, Michael Mehaffy, Yodan Rofé
This session will explore the dual proposition that the original classic book A Pattern Language was a seminal contribution to the literature of environmental design -- and yet it was also woefully incomplete, and even erroneous in places. That critique is not at all inconsistent with the original concept of falsifiable hypotheses, "all tentative, all free to evolve." Yet this original pattern language has become trapped inside a best-selling book resembling a bible.
Meanwhile, pattern languages in programming and other fields have had brilliant successes by going "open source," launching "repositories" in which patterns can be written, edited, shared, and even rejected. The session organizers believe it is time to learn from the software world by launching a new on-line pattern language, able to be easily combined with the original, yet able to be edited and extended in promising new directions.
We start with one of the most urgent issues of our time, the current era of unprecedented rapid urbanization, and a collection of proposed new patterns addressing that challenge. The session will present the patterns and the format of the on-line repository, and invite discussion and collaboration. The session format will start with short introductory presentations and then proceed to a workshop process.