(2020-04-21) Is It Time To Revive The Pattern Language

Is it Time to Revive the Pattern Language? Wiki, the methodology that powers Wikipedia, was invented by a computer scientist named Ward Cunningham to create a web-based system of the "pattern languages of programming"—an idea exported from architect Christopher Alexander's 1977 classic.

Pattern languages are, at heart, nothing more than "a method of describing good design practices or patterns of useful organization within a field of expertise,"

The genius of the method is that each pattern is nested within many other patterns, connected by hyperlinks, to form a relational web-network.

Pattern languages have had other phenomenal applications too, growing out of software (leading directly to Agile, Extreme Programming, and Scrum) and also an astonishing range of other fields, from molecular biology to sociology to engineering to manufacturing to seemingly countless others. One can find online citations to papers on pattern languages for music composition, pattern languages for weddings, and even pattern languages for writing patterns(!).

The one field that has lagged most conspicuously is, curiously, the very one for which pattern languages were invented: the built environment.

perhaps the most powerful explanation is the very success of the 1977 book. Resembling nothing so much as bible, A Pattern Language is full of pronouncements that were forever locked in print, and never allowed to be tested and refined. The cult-like veneration shown by some was matched only by the contempt held by others. Yet this outcome was contrary to the explicit aims of the authors, as they made clear in the introduction... But that evolution never happened

So what can be done now to push forward more productive work in the built environment? Two developments offer an opportunity for a fresh start. One of them is the development of a new framework agreement on urbanization, adopted by acclamation by all 193 countries of the United Nations, and known as the New Urban Agenda (New Urbanism). Many of the elements of the New Urban Agenda can be expressed in pattern-like forms, offering the potential for a new collection of patterns based on this document.

The other development is a new generation of wiki, authored by the original inventor. This federated wiki allows copies to be made, shared and altered more easily, using handheld or desktop devices. Its limitations are as broad as the limitations of new app capabilities—data calculations and modeling, field measurements, augmented reality visualization, and a host of other new capabilities unimagined by the original pattern language authors.

Accordingly, our team, based at the Centre for the Future of Places at KTH University in Stockholm and at Sustasis Foundation in Portland, Oregon, have partnered with Ward Cunningham and other collaborators to develop a new pattern language collection, together with a companion wiki. A New Pattern Language for Growing Regions contains 80 new patterns, many encapsulating elements of the New Urban Agenda. The companion wiki, at http://npl.wiki, contains the same patterns in wiki form.

The new patterns reflect not only the New Urban Agenda, but the new thinking about urbanization and its requirements for a more sustainable age—reformist ideas going back to the work of Jane Jacobs and others.

this project is meant not as an end but a beginning. The first collection of 80 patterns is only a small and partially representative sampling of what is possible, and surely necessary, as we confront a new generation of challenges

Whether or not this particular project is the spark of a revival of pattern languages in the built environment, we are convinced that such a revival is long overdue. A profound transformation is under way in our technological systems, reflected by Agile Methodology, Scrum, wiki, and yes, patterns. The transformation is driven by a recognition that the old linear methods have failed, and we need better web-networked ways of working (Network Society), built on better evidence. The current coronavirus pandemic throws these issues into sharp relief, surely.