EKISTICS

Charles François (2004). EKISTICS, International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(1): 1045.

Collection	International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics
Year	2004
Vol. (num.)	2(1)
ID	◀ 1045 ▶
Object type	General information, Human sciences, Methodology or model

The science of human settlements.

Ekistics views any human settlement as a living organism having its own laws and, through the study of the evolution of human settlements from their most primitive phase to megalopolis and ecumenopolis , develops a transdisciplinary approach in order to better manage its problems.

These views were introduced by C.A. DOXIADIS, a greek architect and urbanist, from 1942 on.

The goal of ekistics is to develop a methodology and models to study any kind of human settlements, of any size , location, population and biotope , in order to draw general conclusions in each case.

Ekistics studies each settlement as a whole , integrating all of its elements .

According to DOXIADIS the five elements which compose human settlements are: nature, anthropos (man), society, shells and networks.

Ekistics includes a territorial scale of classification based on the respective areas of territories. The scale starts from the total habitable land area of the planet (about 136 million km ² Antarctica excluded). It is based on Christaller's hexagonal space filling concept. The scale extends for 17 levels , starting from the total habitable planetary space to the basic unit considered to be 4 m² as a minimum requirement for an individual.

Ekistics also includes “population units”: Unit 1 being the individual; Unit 2 two individuals; Unit 3 a medium family of 5 members and so on at a logarithmic scale . Each unit is supposed to be 7 times larger than the lesser one.

DOXIADIS also introduced the concept of \term“{ecumenopolis}” as the coming planetary organism through which “anthropos”is destined to cover the whole earth as a continuous system forming a universal settlement. This corresponds to the man-planet system as it is presently coming into existence.

See also