OASIS OF SELF-ORGANISATION : RE-VISITING THE KOWLOON WALLED CITY

Abstract

In postulating the potential of informal communities to self-organise and evolve, this dissertation wishes to probe further into the hypothetical emergence of informal communities by analyzing them as complex systems; and discover the inter-relationship between these communities and the larger, formal urban system that they emerge from.

Within this paradigm, models tend to be seen as abstract analogues of some real world phenomena – surrogate, predictive tools directed towards problem solutions. Hence, rather than submit to systemic models based on mechanistic prediction and quantitative analysis, the aim here is to focus on the qualitative dynamics that underpin system behaviour; that is, to investigate possible intra-urban dynamical trajectories to which self-organising systems are prone.

The investigation of this dissertation is organised around the discussion of relationships between the self-organising and the organised, based on the framework of an oasis of self-organisation. By seeking to verify interdependence of the two, this dissertation hopes to increase the capacity to understand human-environment co-evolution as recursive, where small events can have cascading consequences.