These notes are a collection of notes and annotations directly from A Pattern Language (by C. Alexander, S. Ishikawa, M. Silverstein et al.), a book setting up a design pattern and language for urban design and development. I would highly recommend this book as just a general good read in understanding the physical spaces we all play around in. If you’re a software engineer (or any other engineer, really), I think the book is still a good read: it was the inspiration for the style and information layout of the seminal OOP guide Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software.
A (beautiful!) online index of the overall structure.
This is closely tied to another project, The Neighborhood, that I’ve been mulling over for a few years, now. A Pattern Language is large part of the research portion of The Neighborhood — you can find the kickoff and connection in Pattern Languages & The Neighborhood.
— Urban development has the high ground over agricultural and ecological preservation — and it should! *A Pattern Language* annotations on Pattern 4: Agricultural Valleys (2 min read)
— How dense is too dense? How sparse is too sparse? Annotations for A Pattern Language's proposals for the density of metro-adjacent country streets for agriculture, recreation, and preservation. (3 min read)
— Home isn't where the heart is — it's a single node on a very, very large graph. Annotations for the "Independent Regions" pattern of *A Pattern Language*. (10 min read)
— How close is too close? How far is too far? *A Pattern Language* annotations related to the statistical, economic, and ecologic concerns in balancing how dense human habitats ought to be. (5 min read)
— City, with natural stripes — or nature, with city stripes? Annotations for A Pattern Language, and tracking public opinion of where Americans want to live over the past 50 years. (4 min read)
— Is Jane Street run by soccer-loving ants? Inconclusive. We *can* conclude that they're fans of Markov Chains, though — an invaluable tool for understanding complex data structures. (1 min read)
— The beginning of a topological review of the 1977 urban design and architecture reference book A Pattern Language, and a journey to understand Earth's greatest graph: the Earth, itself. (12 min read)
