Complexity is one of the great problems in environmental design.

Everyone is aware that most of the built environment today lacks a natural order, an order which presents itself very strongly in places that were built centuries ago

But in practice master plans fail - because they create totalitarian order, not organic order. They are too rigid; they cannot easily adapt to the natural and unpredictable changes that inevitably arise in the life of a community.

People are deeply nourished by the process of creating wholeness.

When you make something, cleaning it out of structural debris is one of the most vital things you do.

There is a myth, sometimes widespread, that a person need only do inner work...that a man is entirely responsible for his own problems; and that to cure himself, he need only change himself....The fact is, a person is so formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings.

Nowadays, the process of growth and development almost never seems to manage to create this subtle balance between the importance of the individual parts, and the coherence of the environment as a whole. One or the other always dominates.