Swarm territories- Decoding the urban fabric through

computational strategies

"The network attack appears as something like a swarm of birds or

insects in a horror film, a multitude of mindless assailants, unknown,
uncertain, unseen, and unexpected. If one looks inside a network, however,
one can see that it is indeed organized. rational and creative. It has swarm
intelligence " 1
Swarm intelligence is primarily a term that describes events of
interaction between agents. The identity of these agents is fluid, not yet to
be defined; any population that expresses qualities of collective dynamics
has been used as a case study. What will be discussed here is how the
studies of humble organisms, such as ant colonies or bird flocks, can decode
and reshape the way that humans behave and form highly complex urban
structures. This hybrid field, where technological advances converge with
biological concepts, will be approached in two different levels: one that
focuses on computational tools and aspects, and one that draws conceptual
links between the city and the swarm system, attempting to influence the
way that we understand and analyze it as a superorganism.
The concept of swarm intelligence is based on the effectiveness of
multiple simultaneous interactions that follow three simple rules:
2
avoidance, alignment and cohesion . "Look at your neighbors state, and
change your state accordingly", as Steven Johnson describes 3. In a
computational environment, these rules are transformed to vectorial
relationships that enable a dynamical simulation of the flows. The simplicity
of the behavioural rules and the absence of a centralized system of control
are key concepts in swarm intelligence: every action emerges from a local
level, but these local acts form a global behaviour 4. This logic shatters the
concept that a perceptual knowledge of the global, a sense of "seeing the
whole" is a necessity for intelligence to emerge.
Through the intrusion of such biological concepts in the realm of
architectural and urban design, the urban web can be viewed as an
aggregate of highly complex relationscapes, open to dynamic processes of
differentiation. As changes in global economy, climate and ecology are
reflected in technological advances, decoding and reshaping the urban
network, there is a necessity for the architect to acknowledge these
unforeseeable trajectories of forces and intensities, as well as the potential
of the synergetic properties that happen in low-level interactions. The
realization that the city cannot be viewed as a stable environment, as a
static array of buildings, can be seen as an echo of the poststructuralist
thought, and namely of the works of Deleuze and Guattari. This concept
attacks the tendency to favour stability over fluidity, a tendency which is so
strongly entwined in the Western thought that it is almost not realistic to
believe that it can be shifted. In this context, the superorganism of the city
is the composition of the fluid relations between its different autonomous
networks 5.
A computer-based simulation of the urban web using swarm logic
could demystify these complex processes. There has been a strong interest
especially in the study of big infrastructure networks and how these could
contribute in the concept of the adaptive city. All organic or non-organic
bodies that shape the daily routine of the urban life have the potential to
participate in simulating it: From cars and boats, to pedestrians or bike
riders, groups with very different attributes are regularly used as particles
with individual movement, that are attracted to certain destinations and
programmed to avoid other points of the urbanscape, while retaining the
behavioural rules of the swarm. Additional behavioural parameters can be
added in the performance of these particles, allowing multiple divisions into
subgroups according to commonalities in the quality of their movement. A
network of traffic flows could be simulated as a juxtaposition of
subnetworks, allowing each group to keep its characteristics, such as the
different times that the group is active. Still, the majority of the studies of
urban morphologies, as Michael Weinstock points out 6, consider each
network as a singular phenomenon, not discussing possibilities of mutations
that rise from interactions. When harvesting data flow, it is crucial to
evaluate how the increase or decrease of data in one system will affect the
performance of the others, causing them to reorganise, merge with other
systems or even collapse. Sebastian Vehlken explains this process as a sort
of "fast forwarding" the process of evolution, in an attempt to grasp the
possible futures of the city 7
Apart from analyzing the dynamics of existing urban spatial
configurations, the attempt to approach urban systems computationally,
through the logic of swarm intelligence, involves also potentialities for
geometry generation; a discussion in which simulation itself as a tool has a
crucial role. The team of Hyperbody has been involved in the exploration of
such computational applications in the past decade: an example is the
development of a Distributed Network-city along the A2 highway,
Netherlands, that focused on experimentation on urban generative
morphologies, using functional units as agents and examining how their
interactions could form self-organizing clusters.8 What is particularly
intriguing in this case is the nature of the agent: while it makes perfect
sense to consider humans or cars as the agents of the swarm, the designer
might feel an uneasiness when it comes to including in the swarm
something abstract, that is not necessarily connected with the conceptual
notion of physical movement. In the case of the Distributed Network-city, we
speak of functional units, of entities which might be abstract, but have
certain attributes and behavioural rules that can lead to study models of
urban clusters based on their interactions. The rules are familiar to any
scholar in the field of urban studies: functions have a tendency to attract
similar functions, and keep a certain distance from other functions. The
model of the modern city, so well analyzed by Paul Krugman in his book
"The Self-Organizing Economy" can be described by mathematical,
location-based rules. As he explains, regarding his study on a simplified
model-city composed only of businesses, "a specialty store likes it when
other stores move into its shopping mall; because they pull in more
potential customers; it does not like it when stores move into a rival mall
ten miles away" 9. In the aforementioned Distributed Network-city, this
spirit is clearly evident; local micromotives are the element that is fuelling
the self-organization of the city, letting the global behaviour emerge.
In this case, space can be described as "an environment created by
the vector which draws one being towards another, whether it be a living,
an organic or an inorganic being."10. Data flows are turned into point clouds,
which describe semi-formalized domains, not permanent but open to
alliances or cohesions. As we move towards a more synthetical rather than
analytical approach of using swarm logic, the potential that unfolds as these
cohesions are shaped and dissolved is close to the theorization of simulation
that Manuel De Landa has attempted: the simulation is the tool to retain an
openness towards the realm of possibilities that exists in parallel to the
versions of the self that are actualized. There is a "pool of pure potentiality",
as Bernd Herzogenrath puts it 11, an " infinity of actualizations possible at
every instant" ; numerous scenarios as well as their iterated runs can be
compared, giving an advanced sense of exploring the implications of each
possible form in a long-term performance. In the end, the generative urban
form emerges from the rules that govern the micro-relations between the
agents. Multi-agent design methodologies, thus, revolutionize the notion of
the master-plan, proposing the concept of a flexible urbanism and bringing
forth the master-algorithm as an alternative 12, as Kokkugia propose. The
advantage of the master-algorithm, as it is evident in their speculative
redevelopment project for the Melbourne Docklands, is that it does not
produce a singular solution, as it usually happens in the traditional
sequential design processes; instead it remains in a near-equilibrium state,
always able to adapt and dynamically reconfigure itself 13.
Beyond the applications of swarm intelligence in computer-based
simulations, an intriguing approach by Steven Johnson shows how we could
study the actual interactions that happen between the residents of the city,
focusing on how and where do these interactions take place. The street and
its elements are at the core of these discussions on social swarming: the
sidewalks are the vessel where the choreography of the city inhabitants
takes place, where information flows as strangers walk by and learn from
each other 14. These local, low-level interactions that happened on the
sidewalks enable the emergence of a self-organized order in the city. These
remarks should not lead though to a mistaken interpretation of the sidewalk
as a physical form that should be favoured as a specific form; the city
benefits from any sort of space that enables local interactions. In this
context, swarm intelligence can serve more as a conceptual tool, a socio-
cultural analogy that helps us to shed new light on how we understand and
intervene in the urban network.
 In the end, there is no concrete answer to the question if a complex
system such as a city can be studied through applying the logics of swarm
intelligence, without simplifying its processes at a certain degree. Certainly,
when we make the transition from ants to humans, there are differences
between the subjects of these systems which cannot be ignored; there is a
certain level of consciousness involved in the decision-making, that
increases the complexity of the social patterns. The top-down mechanisms
that are involved in city planning are also affecting these social patterns;
though, by observing the humble ant colonies and drawing conclusions from
their behavioural patterns, we form an awareness that any top-down
decisions from central planning commissions could never substitute the
ability of an emergent system to dynamically reconfigure itself. Zoning laws
can shape cities, but unplanned demographic clusters can still emerge and
reshape the urban network. Even by taking into consideration the non-
linear agent systems and allow a bottom-up organization to emerge, the
evaluation of the different solutions involves a more classical approach of
decision-making15. One way to involve the city inhabitants more actively in
the design of the urban fabric is to integrate interfaces that allow direct
participation of the public16. In any case, we have to embrace the realization
that the notion of complete control over the behaviour of such complex
superorganisms as the city, never belonged to the city planners in the first
place; the real choreography of the city will always emerge from below.

Biloria, Nimish. (2008) Morphogenomic Urban and Architectural Systems. In ACADIA 08: Silicon Skin
: Biological Processes and Computation : Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the
Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) .United States: Association for
Computer-Aided Design in Architecture.

Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2004). Multitude: War and democracy in the age of Empire. New York: The
Penguin Press.

Johnson, S. (2001). Emergence: The connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software. New York:
Scribner.

Herzogenrath, Bernd. (2010).An American Body-politic a Deleuzian Approach. Hanover, N.H.:

Dartmouth College Press.

Oosterhuis, K. (2006). Swarm Architecture II. In Game, Set and Match II. Netherlands: Episode
Publisher.

Vehlken, S. (2014). Computational Swarming: A Cultural Technique for Generative Architecture. In

Footprint: Delft Architecture Theory Journal : Dynamics of Data-Driven Design.

Weinstock, M. (2011). The Architecture of Flows. Integrated infrastructures and the metasystem of
urban metabolism. In ACADIA 2011: Integration through computation : Proceedings of the 31st
annual conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA). United
States: Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture.

West, R. (2009). Space in theory: Kristeva, Foucault, Deleuze. Amsterdam [etc.: Rodopi.
1 Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2004). Multitude: War and democracy in the age of Empire. New York: The
Penguin Press. 91

2 Vehlken, S. (2014). Computational Swarming: A Cultural Technique for Generative Architecture. In

Footprint: Delft Architecture Theory Journal : Dynamics of Data-Driven Design. 10

3 Johnson, S. (2001). Emergence: The connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software. New York:
Scribner. 88-89

4 ibid, 74

5 West, R. (2009). Space in theory: Kristeva, Foucault, Deleuze. Amsterdam [etc.: Rodopi. 177

6 Weinstock, M. (2011). The Architecture of Flows. Integrated infrastructures and the metasystem of
urban metabolism. In ACADIA 2011: Integration through computation : Proceedings of the 31st annual
conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA). United States:
Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture. 51

7 (Vehlken, p.43)

8 Biloria, Nimish. (2008) Morphogenomic Urban and Architectural Systems. In ACADIA 08: Silicon
Skin : Biological Processes and Computation : Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the
Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) .United States: Association for
Computer-Aided Design in Architecture. 154

9 Krugman, Paul R. (1996). The Self-organizing Economy. Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell Publishers

10 (Pavlov, p.180)

11 Herzogenrath, Bernd. (2010).An American Body-politic a Deleuzian Approach. Hanover, N.H.:

Dartmouth College Press. 48

12 See the site of Kokkugia, http://www.kokkugia.com/swarm-urbanism , accessed on 10 October 2015

13 Leach, N. (2009), Swarm Urbanism. In Architectural Design, 79: 5663

14 (Johnson, p.94)

15 (see Sebastian Vehlken, p. 62)

16 Oosterhuis, K. (2006). Swarm Architecture II. In Game, Set and Match II. Netherlands: Episode
Publisher. 62