Ekistics is the

science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...

human settlements In geography, statistics and archaeology, a settlement, locality or populated place is a community in which people live. The complexity of a settlement can range from a minuscule number of dwellings grouped together to the largest of cities ...

Doxiadis, Konstantinos ''Ekistics'' 1968 including regional,

city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

community A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, t ...

planning and dwelling design. Its major incentive was the emergence of increasingly large and complex

conurbation A conurbation is a region comprising a number of metropolises, cities, large towns, and other urban areas which through population growth and physical expansion, have merged to form one continuous urban or industrially developed area. In most cas ...

s, tending even to a worldwide city. The study involves every kind of

human settlement In geography, statistics and archaeology, a settlement, locality or populated place is a community in which people live. The complexity of a settlement can range from a minuscule number of dwellings grouped together to the largest of citi ...

, with particular attention to

geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, an ...

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...

, human

psychology Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...

politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...

, and occasionally

aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...

. As a scientific mode of study, ekistics currently relies on

statistics Statistics (from German: '' Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, indust ...

and description, organized in five ekistic elements or principles: nature, anthropos, society, shells, and networks. It is generally a more scientific field than

urban planning Urban planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning, or rural planning, is a technical and political process that is focused on the development and design of land use and the built environment, including air, water, ...

, and has considerable overlap with some of the less restrained fields of

architectural theory Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...

. In application, conclusions are drawn aimed at achieving harmony between the inhabitants of a settlement and their physical and socio-cultural environments.

Etymology

The term 'ekistics' was coined by

Constantinos Apostolos Doxiadis Constantinos A. Doxiadis (); also spelled Konstantinos. (14 May 1913 – 28 June 1975), often cited as C. A. Doxiadis, was a Greek architect and urban planner. During the 1960s, he was the lead architect and planner of Islamabad, which was t ...

in 1942. The word is derived from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

adjective more particularly from the neuter plural . The ancient Greek adjective meant: "concerning the foundation of a house, a habitation, a city or colony; contributing to the settling." It was derived from ('' oikistēs''), an ancient Greek noun meaning "the person who installs settlers in place". This may be regarded as deriving indirectly from another ancient Greek noun, (''oikisis''), meaning "building", "housing", "habitation", and especially "establishment of a colony, a settlement, or a town" (used by

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

), or "filling with new settlers", "settling", "being settled". All these words grew from the verb (''oikizō''), "to settle", and were ultimately derived from the noun (''

oikos The ancient Greek word ''oikos'' (ancient Greek: , plural: ; English prefix: eco- for ecology and economics) refers to three related but distinct concepts: the family, the family's property, and the house. Its meaning shifts even within texts. The ...

''), "house", "home" or "habitat". The ''

Shorter Oxford English Dictionary The ''Shorter Oxford English Dictionary'' (''SOED'') is an English language dictionary published by the Oxford University Press. The SOED is a two-volume abridgement of the twenty-volume ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED''). Print editions ...

'' contains a reference to an ecist, oekist or oikist, defining him as: "the founder of an ancient Greek ... colony". The English equivalent of ''oikistikē'' is ekistics (a noun). In addition, the adjectives 'ekistic' and 'ekistical', the adverb 'ekistically', and the noun 'ekistician' are now also in current use.

Scope

In terms of outdoor recreation, the term ekistic relationship is used to describe one's relationship with the natural world and how they view the resources within it. The notion of ekistics implies that understanding the interaction between and within human groups—infrastructure, agriculture, shelter, function (job)—in conjunction with their environment directly affects their well-being (individual and collective). The subject begins to elucidate the ways in which collective settlements form and how they inter-relate. By doing so, humans begin to understand how they 'fit' into a species, i.e. ''Homo sapiens'', and how ''Homo sapiens'' 'should' be living in order to manifest our potential—at least as far as this species is concerned (as the text stands now). Ekistics in some cases argues that in order for human settlements to expand efficiently and economically we must reorganize the way in which the villages, towns, cities, metropolises are formed. As Doxiadis put it, "... This field (ekistics) is a science, even if in our times it is usually considered a technology and an art, without the foundations of ascience - a mistake for which we pay very heavily." Having recorded very successfully the destructions of the ekistic wealth in Greece during WWII, Doxiadis became convinced that human settlements are subjectable to systematic investigation. Doxiadis, being aware of the unifying power of systems thinking and particularly of the biological and evolutionary reference models as used by many famous biologists-philosophers of his generation, especially

Sir Julian Huxley Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthesi ...

(1887–1975),

Theodosius Dobzhansky Theodosius Grigorievich Dobzhansky (russian: Феодо́сий Григо́рьевич Добржа́нский; uk, Теодо́сій Григо́рович Добржа́нський; January 25, 1900 – December 18, 1975) was a prominent ...

(1900–75),

Dennis Gabor Dennis Gabor ( ; hu, Gábor Dénes, ; 5 June 1900 – 9 February 1979) was a Hungarian-British electrical engineer and physicist, most notable for inventing holography, for which he later received the 1971 Nobel Prize in Physics. He obtained ...

(1900–79), René Dubos (1901–82),

George G. Simpson George Gaylord Simpson (June 16, 1902 – October 6, 1984) was an American paleontologist. Simpson was perhaps the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century, and a major participant in the modern synthesis, contributing ''Tempo ...

(1902–84), and

Conrad Waddington Conrad Hal Waddington (8 November 1905 – 26 September 1975) was a British developmental biologist, paleontologist, geneticist, embryologist and philosopher who laid the foundations for systems biology, epigenetics, and evolutionary deve ...

(1905–75), used the biological model to describe the "ekistic behavior" of anthropos (the five principles) and the evolutionary model to explain the

morphogenesis Morphogenesis (from the Greek ''morphê'' shape and ''genesis'' creation, literally "the generation of form") is the biological process that causes a cell, tissue or organism to develop its shape. It is one of three fundamental aspects of deve ...

of human settlements (the eleven forces, the hierarchical structure of human settlements, dynapolis, ecumenopolis). Finally, he formulated a general theory which considers human settlements as living organisms capable of evolution, an evolution that might be guided by Man using "ekistic knowledge".

Units

Doxiadis believed that the conclusion from biological and social experience was clear: to avoid chaos we must organize our system of life from anthropos (individual) to ecumenopolis (global city) in hierarchical levels, represented by human settlements. So he articulated a general hierarchical scale with fifteen levels of ekistic units: *anthropos – 1 *room – 2 *house – 5 *housegroup (

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

) – 40 *small neighborhood (village) – 250 *neighborhood – 1,500 *small polis (town) – 10,000 *

polis ''Polis'' (, ; grc-gre, πόλις, ), plural ''poleis'' (, , ), literally means "city" in Greek. In Ancient Greece, it originally referred to an administrative and religious city center, as distinct from the rest of the city. Later, it also ...

(city) – 75,000 *small metropolis – 500,000 *

metropolis A metropolis () is a large city or conurbation which is a significant economic, political, and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections, commerce, and communications. A big c ...

– 4 million *small megalopolis – 25 million *

megalopolis A megalopolis () or a supercity, also called a megaregion, is a group of metropolitan areas which are perceived as a continuous urban area through common systems of transport, economy, resources, ecology, and so on. They are integrated enoug ...

– 150 million *small eperopolis – 750 million *eperopolis – 7.5 billion * ecumenopolis – 50 billion The population figures above are for Doxiadis' ideal future ekistic units for the year 2100, at which time he estimated (in 1968) that

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's sur ...

would achieve

zero population growth Zero population growth, sometimes abbreviated ZPG, is a condition of demographic balance where the number of people in a specified population neither grows nor declines; that is, the number of births plus in-migrants equals the number of death ...

at a population of 50,000,000,000 with human civilization being powered by

fusion energy Fusion power is a proposed form of power generation that would generate electricity by using heat from nuclear fusion reactions. In a fusion process, two lighter atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus, while releasing energy. Devices de ...

Publications

The ''Ekistics and the New Habitat'', printed from 1957 to 2006 and began calling for new papers to be published online in 2019. ''Ekistics'' is a 1968 book by Konstantinos Doxiadis, often titled ''Introduction to Ekistics''.

References

External links

The Institute of EkisticsWorld Society for Ekistics
*
City of the Future
{{Land-use planning , state=expanded , selected=CTM Urban studies and planning terminology Architectural terminology