Ekistics
What it is
Ekistics was a proposed science of human settlements developed by the Greek architect-planner Constantinos Doxiadis, who set out its framework most fully in his 1968 book Ekistics: An Introduction to the Science of Human Settlements. It sought to study settlements systematically across a hierarchy of scales, from the single room and dwelling up through the city and metropolis to a hypothesised worldwide continuous city he called ecumenopolis. Doxiadis organised settlements around five elements: nature, man, society, shells (buildings) and networks. His firm applied these ideas to large planning and development commissions across the Middle East, Turkey and beyond.
Why it matters
Ekistics offered an ambitious attempt to make settlement study an interdisciplinary, data-informed science and gave mid-century development planning a comprehensive intellectual scaffold. Its global, systems-oriented outlook influenced large-scale planning in developing countries during the 1950s to 1970s.
Plans it shaped
- Plan for Tokyo 1960 (unbuilt) (1960)
- Tsukuba Science City Plan (1960s–)
- Islamabad (1960)
- Marne-la-Vallée (ville nouvelle) (1965)
- Skopje 1963 Master Plan (1965)
- Lahore Master Plan (1966)
- Navi Mumbai (1967)
- Auroville (1968–)
- Cergy-Pontoise (ville nouvelle) (1969)
- Greater Cairo Master Scheme (1970s)
- Singapore Concept Plan (1971/1991)
- Karachi Development Plan 2000 (1973–2000)