The algorithmic paradigm

The design of your house, neighborhood street, shopping center, or city region has an underlying model or framework. When you introduce something that goes against it, the algorithms go nuts.  

Most of the arguments that play out at your homeowners' association meeting, zoning board of appeals, or any other governing body is often a clash of paradigms for how we want to experience the spaces and places we inhabit.

Every built environment represents layers of algorithms that, over time, formed that place. The place development paradigm of each decade is on full in most cities in the United States. The Pre-1930's section is more vertical single-use structures (urban form). Everything after 1930 becomes more horizontal single-uses (suburban form) that take up more land.  

Fast forward to the 2000s, and the demand for mixed-use rather than single-use experiences grows with a more urban form.  

In some places, the underlying paradigm (suburban form) says no to an urban-styled development project.

Other communities begrudgingly accommodate the growing demand for integrated shopping, work, housing, and learning environments.

Some places will succeed differently. They thrive with negotiating a new place development paradigm. One that cultivates and nurtures equitable and diverse options that lead to housing affordability, kid and pet friendliness, walkability, entertainment options for all ages, and school quality.

Each one of us can influence how the algorithm works. Each decision and step you take sets the trajectory for the kind of place your neighborhood, commercial corridor, the city-region are becoming.  

Those steps put us on the path of defining a place paradigm that either becomes magnetic for others to join or keeps us frozen in place.