Dimensions increase and will continue to increase

for a few generation and thus the most probable

future in definable terms will mean a very large
increase of population and energy in the city of
Anthopos (man). This is the city where the whole
mankind will live or tend to live.
C.A.DOXIADIS

CONSTANTINOS A. DOXIADIS
Born 1913
comes from a family that played an important role in the settlement of
Greek war refugees in between the two World Wars
Worked
Chief Town Planning Officer, Greater Athens Area (1937 - 1938).
Head, Department of Regional and Town Planning, Ministry of Public
Works, Greece (1939 - 1945).
Major Projects
In the application of his theories on Ekistics, C.A. Doxiadis studied,
programmed, planned and designed, in collaboration with his colleagues,
a great number of human settlements and other development projects.
These projects cover several fields, like rural settlements, agriculture and
irrigation, industrial settlements, manufacturing, power and public works,
commerce and tourism, transportation and communications, housing,
urban renewal and development of new cities,etc.

EKISTICS FRAMEWORK
Doxiadis posited a convenient way of organizing information and mapping out
the components and relationships of the elements within the human
settlements realm. He suggests to have a Classificatory System that will be a
methodology to establish the hierarchical structure and links among elements
of a system.
Ekistics is the science of human settlements;
this characteristic refers to functions
expressed in space by area of certain
dimensions. In practice, Ekistics has set the
goal of human happiness
His two Classificatory Dimensions
1. First Dimension- relative to Scale:
* Lower End- the individual, the room,
and the dwelling; and increases in size all
the way into the...
* Other Extreme- the city, the urban
continent, and the "world-wide city"-which he called an Ecumenopolis

EKISTICS FRAMEWORK

2. Second Dimension- man's five

Environmental Elements:
* Nature
* Society
* Shells
* Networks
* Culture
i. The first principle is maximization of man's potential contacts with the elements
of nature (such as water and trees), with other people, and with the works of
man (such as buildings and roads).
ii. The second principle is minimization of the effort required for the achievement
of man's actual and potential contacts.
iii. The third principle is optimization of man's protective space, which means the
selection of such a distance from other persons, animals, or objects that he can
keep his Contacts with them (first principle) without any kind of Sensory Or
Psychological discomfort.
iv. The fourth principle is optimization of the quality of man's relationship with his
environment, which consists of nature, society, shells (buildings and houses of
all sorts)and networks (ranging from roads to telecommunications). This is the
principle that leads to order, physiological and aesthetic, and that influences
architecture and, in many respects, art.

EKISTICS FRAMEWORK

v. Finally, and this is the fifth principle, man organizes his settlements in an attempt
to achieve an optimum synthesis of the other four principles, and this optimization
is dependent on time and space, on actual conditions, and on man's ability to
create a synthesis.
Ekistics & other Disciplines:
In the first five volumes, it is interesting to note
that out of a total of 105 papers, 66 (or 62.9%)
are papers in economics, mainly regional
economic analysis. Six papers(or5.7%) are on
geography, and 16 (or 15.2%) on regional
science in general. Physical planning is
represented by 6.7% political aspects by 3.8%,
sociology by 3.8% and transportation by 1.9%.
It is quite clear where the center of gravity lies.

ANALYSIS
To achieve this we must clarify what
we mean by cities. If we have the
wrong conception -- for example, that
cities are all like the City of London,
densely built, small, traditional central
parts of urban areas, or like the city of
New York, multimillion people
agglomerations with many
skyscrapers-- we cannot go very far.

Preston in Lancashire presents the

confusion created by the random
development of cities in the 19th
century.

In all these cases we fail, not because the cities of the future may not
be like these prototypes, but because we approach our subject with
preconceived ideas about numbers of people, physical size, buildings,
and styles which are a major hindrance to the conception of the cities
of the future.

ANALYSIS

SOME OF HIS PROPOSALS

INCLUDED:
According to Doxiadis, the

Limiting all buildings to three levels

greatest problem facing cities
or less, with permission to build
worldwide was the problem of
higher
managing growth.

Separating automobile and

He proposed several solutions
pedestrian traffic completely.
to leave room for expansion of
Constructing cities as a "beehive"
the city core.
of cells each no bigger than 2 by 2
kilometers, the maximum
comfortable distance for
Central mall
in a recently
pedestrians.
built shopping centre
outside Los Angeles where
pedestrians are able to
move free of automobile
traffic.
Doxiadis limited the number of roads on campus.
All the educational buildings are interconnected to
permit people to walk from one to the other.
Courtyards provide a place for meetings between
people.

DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN SETTLEMENT

VILLAGE in Pre Urban

area

Dynapolis:-Industrial
Era

City in Begining Urban

area

Metropolis:-Industrial
Era

Early
dynapolis

Megalopolis (Large political

units)

DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN
SETTLEMENT

Ecumenopolis :- As
Ecumenopolis :Ecumenopolis :- As Dead
City of Life
Settlement Of Future
City
One of the major problems is the great confusion created by a mixing of two
elementsof man and machinewithin the cities of the present. This
confusion, which brings man and machine into conflict in all urban areas, has
been resolved satisfactorily in favor of the machine only for major lines of
transportation where man as a free agent has been completely separated from
machine and has been confined within it.

ARGUMENTS
RATHER QUESTIONS

Are dimensions actually increasing?

Is population growth a boon or a taboo to
a society?
Do we really need to have control
measures to curtail this growth or rather
use our intellect, which puts us at par viz
a viz animals and other life forms?
Why then cities still live, without
succumbing to this devastating growth?

WHAT LACKS
Long term planning is needed to determine whether such lands are destined to
become urban or not
But that ideal works only if the urban planning is for green field projects. Since
most urbanisation is not green field, are our policies encouraging this integration, or
is development just chaotic?
Todays chaos may be more visible in Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru,
Chennai, Kolkatta & Hyderabad. But more serious chaos is probably in other cities
like .
Our modern day cities too can be planned in such a manner that limits are set to
accommodate a certain population and the city is buffered by an equal area of
countryside before another new city is created.
This equitable land distribution between the city and the village would be an intercomplementary arrangement.
Mega-cities interconnected with high speed transport with green fields in between.
Integration, if at all necessary should be evolutionary and not enforced.
A city where the scale is within the horizon of the human mind. With the
planner no longer planning the city since being overtaken by greedy politicians an
builders, emergence of so called millennium city like Gurgaon which lack the
minimum social facility is evident.

ARGUMENT

The garden cities were created

outside the built-up area (a) in order
to avoid its
pressures, but later were absorbed
by the dynamically expanding city
(b).

In spite of the continuing surgery, the

dynamic city cannot be relieved of
pressures; with more roads, more
functions move in.

The centre has to grow within the built-up

area, and the dynamic city is choked to
death.

EKISTIC PRINCIPLES

DESIRABILITY OUTCOME

Maximization of potential
contacts

Each individuals need for access to other people, work, goods, and
services, is met in ways that score positively in terms of accessibility,
technology and cultural appropriateness.

Minimization of effort in
terms of energy, time and
cost

People can satisfy their needs (e.g. as above) without having to expend
unnecessary time and energy.

Optimisation of
Anthropos protective
space when alone

People live in a human scale neighborhood which is safe and secure,

where culturally sensitive provisions meet these needs.

Optimisation of the quality People have levels of access to opportunities, and economic and social
of Anthropos relationship benefit which are fair and culturally sensitive.
with the system of life
Optimization in the
synthesis of all principles

The humane habitat exhibits a sensitive balance in the desirability outcomes

where quality of life and social justice reinforce the desirability to achieve a
sustainable environment.
Human scale re-established within the
human community as in this one in Mosul,
Iraq.
Street for pedestrians only in
Islamabad,
Pakistan.

amabad :Application Of Doxiadis Principles

Islamabad was an idea to create a City of the Future with the concept
of dynapolis, that is, a planned unidirectional linear city as the only
solution to cope with the growth of an explosive urbanization era,
relying on strong environmental elements and a synthesis of town
planning and Architectural principles.

Landscape
Pattern &
Highways

3 Parts Of
Metropolitan Area

amabad :Application Of Doxiadis Principles

Dynamteropolis

National Park

Islamabad The sketch indicates growth of functions

in the direction of the city's future expansion.

Unity Of Scale

amabad :Application Of Doxiadis Principles

Social Planning

Pedestrian & Vechicle

Traffic
The making of the plan of Islamabad4 is an
investigation and prospection
into the landscape of the area chosen as project site for the new capital of
Pakistan. The idea, concept and proto-form of Dynapolis, as conceived by
Doxiadis, is bound to find its manifestation in Islamabad. The translation
of dynapolis into a physical plan, guided by its proto-form, Landscape and
the intuition of the architect is what I describe as the making of the plan

CONCLUSION
The
the
the creation
of not mean that we cannot create
Thekey
factto
that
thesolution
frame is is
extra-human
does
the
human
community
as awill
part
of to
a create once more a human scale
a human
scale
within it. Man
have
much
city.
withinlarger
an extra
human frame, which has many inhuman parts.
The problem, therefore, is reshaped as a
problem of an organized Ecumenopolis,
consisting of many human communities
that will be its fundamental cells,
interconnected by the tens, hundreds,
thousands, and tens of thousands into
major urban complexes that will be the
parts of Ecumenopolis.
In this way, what was a natural
human community can be immensely
enlarged into a human city. With
proper organization of transportation and Chandigarh, the new capita! of
telecommunications networks, the extra- the Punjab
in India, designed by Le Corbusier
human scale of the large city can be
in the
turned into a human one and the
year 1950. The drawing shows the
inhuman conditions now existing in many initial
parts of the city can be eliminated.
master plan by Le Corbusier with
the city
divided into major sectors within

CONCLUSI
ON
The centre has to grow within the
built-up
area, and the dynamic city is choked
to
death.
More and more, man will do all the
tasks that present an interest and a
challenge and leave everything else
to automated process.
Ecumenopolis, the unique city of
man, will form a continuous,
differentiated, but also unified texture
consisting of many cells, the
human communities.

If, in the same system as the

preceding figure, we create
new arteries and new cities, we
can avoid all problems of
abnormal growth.

REASON
WHY CITIES STILL LIVE
Vital cities have marvelous innate abilities for
understanding , communicating, contriving and
inventing what is required to combat their
difficulties.
Perhaps the most striking example of this ability is
the effect that big cities have had on disease.
Cities were once the most helpless and devastated
victims of disease, but they became great disease
conquerors. All the apparatus of surgery, hygiene,
public health measures, etc. which people not only in
cities but also outside them depend upon for the
unending wars against premature mortality are
fundamentally products of big cities and would be
inconceivable without big cities.
The surplus wealth, the productivity, the closegrained juxtaposition of talents that permit society to
support advances such as these are themselves
products of our organization into cities, and especially

CONSTANTINOS A. DOXIADIS
Sources:
Ekistics: the science of human settlements
Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-morrow
John G. Papaioannou, The City of the Future
W. W. Wagar, The City of Man
Website
www.ekistics.org
www.doxiadis.org
www.csiss.org/classics