The structure of a system reflects…

by javier on 17/11/2010

Bruno Teixidor brought me a wall map of the Moscow’s metro network some time ago. I have it hanging on a wall to remind me this exact quote:

The structure of a system reflects the structure of the organization that built it.

Richard Fairley

Now check the metro map:

How much information about the city and the country who build it, right? You can tell it has a strong, centralized and authoritarian political power just by looking at how the lines converge at the very center. Their concept of traffic transversality isn’t lines that doesn’t cross the center but a circular line that reinforces this idea.

But is the metro network what shapes that reality or was it there before? Let’s check a regular roadmap of the city:

Very much the same: strongly centralized, everything that needs to go from A to B needs to pass through the center first. Everyone, every matter.

If you check New York or Barcelona, for instance, you’ll se something different. Everything seems more rational and decentralized. Both cities have a strong grid shape reflecting that interactions between people (being social or business) are more important than political power.

The funny thing about this quote is that it was said regarding software and programming, not urbanism. Do you thing it applies to the design of interactive systems as well? Do we end up shaping structures that reflect the organisation behind. Is that good or bad? Are there powerful examples?

There are 10 comments in this article:

  1. 17/11/2010Juan says:

    Creo que no son buenos ejemplos los de Nueva York o Barcelona. Nueva York es una Isla alargada y Barcelona una ciudad en la costa. La topologia de su red tiene que tener esa forma por los accidentes geográficos en los que están circunscritos.

  2. 17/11/2010Sergi says:

    Madrid is between both concepts.

    By the way, not if you know the alternative to the current map of the Madrid underground (made by Rare) http://www.abstrait.es/rfi/

  3. 17/11/2010Tweets that mention The structure of a system reflects… - THE COSMONAUTS -- Topsy.com says:

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by sergiors_rss, Javier Cañada. Javier Cañada said: POST: The structure of a system reflects… http://www.vostok.es/blog/the-structure-of-a-system-reflects [...]

  4. 17/11/2010Ale Muñoz says:

    Pretty much every decent quote about programming can be applied to design : )

    I consider them both as crafts, and think the tools and techniques they use are very, very similar.

    BTW, that quote is another way of stating Conway’s Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Law

    “Any organization that designs a system (defined more broadly here than just information systems) will inevitably produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure”

    Source: http://www.melconway.com/research/committees.html

  5. 17/11/2010Purjo says:

    A un nivel poético, es aceptable el uso de metáforas y todo eso. Pero sacar conclusiones acerca de la realidad en base a ellas no me parece uso sino abuso. Hay explicaciones “no holísticas” mucho más aburridas, pero más sencillas.

    Para empezar, ese plano no es el único plano posible. De hecho, no es el plano oficial del metro de Moscú. Según como se diseñe, puede reforzarse visualmente ese concepto de “centralidad”, sin que ello refleje exactamente el nivel de “centralidad” que tiene realmente el sistema.

    Luego hay otras consideraciones técnicas. Este diseño no se lo ha sacado de la manga El Kremlin en un alarde de autoritarismo centrista. Es un modelo repetido más o menos fielmente en muchos sistemas de transporte, comunicaciones, donde hace falta trasiego de cosas. Se llama hub-and-spoke y tiene sus ventajas y sus inconvenientes.

    No digo que el pensamiento centralista de algunas personas no haya podido, en algún momento, alterar en mayor o menor medida el trazado de una línea, otorgándole mayor centralidad a un sistema que ya era centralista por consideraciones técnicas. Pero de ahí a decir que un sistema es un “reflejo” de otro va un trecho.

  6. 17/11/2010Sergio says:

    @Juan I would say that, constraints involve (or force) to create a plan, if you have a lot of space you can expand on either side like an oil slick.

    In architecture planning there are always political implications. E.g. on Barcelona Cerdà is A side, but Porcioles the B.

  7. 18/11/2010Javier Cañada says:

    @Juan I don’t see the correlation that you state between being a city with a seashore and having this or that topology/urbanism. Think of Valencia or Sircaussa and then Seattle or San Francisco. They have been shaped by different pasts and social structures although they all are shoreline cities.

    @Purjo, I know that a metro map is an abstraction. That’s why I posted a more topological one. They both show the same idea that Moscow has a strong centrality just as Spain if you look at the 20th century infrastructures (roads made between 1920 and 1980). Even if you look at a micro level (autonomic govs) you’ll see the same pattern as if it was a fractal. We spaniards have centrality in our social genes.

    @Purjo I’ve never said that Moscow structure was made by the soviets. I just said it was the phisical projection of an authoritarian system. Most of it was probably inherited from the Czar regime, which was authoritarian and centralised too.

    @Sergio and @Ale Thanks. I agree with you :)

    I’m posting another image on the subject now. Please check it.

  8. 18/11/2010Purjo says:

    @Javier When I mentioned the Kremlin I was informally referring to the Russian government including the Tsar regime.

    @Javier Are you aware of concepts like “transport hub” or “central station”? Do you rule out that civil engineers had a word to say? Or would you concede that, at least partially, the centrality of Moscow’s metro system owes to purely technical transport planning considerations such as efficiency and commuting patterns?

  9. 18/11/2010Javier Cañada says:

    @Purjo

    > Are you aware of concepts like “transport hub” or “central station”?

    C’mon, save the sarcasm for some other ocasion.

    > Do you rule out that civil engineers had a word to say?
    > Or would you concede that, at least partially, the centrality
    > of Moscow’s metro system owes to purely technical transport
    > planning considerations such as efficiency and commuting patterns?

    Of course I understand that engineers plan a system based on needs but I presume those needs based on polítical/social structures: you need to go to the inner city if offices are only there. The more bureaucratic and centralized a political structure the more people need to relate to it for almost anything: central market, central offices, central sports fields.

    In a social structure where services can be offered by individuals and established wherever they want (as in trade-based societies), structures tend to be more grid-based because busines and individuals live wherever they like, it’s less planned. Hence commuting patterns are not that strong.

  10. 18/11/2010Purjo says:

    Pardon my sarcasm, no mockery intended. It’s just part of my usual rhetoric, but I’ll cut it out if you don’t like it.

    So, the Moscow metro isn’t a physical projection of an authoritarian regime, it’s a system designed by engineers who follow clever and rational methodologies to meet an underlying system of transportation needs… which presumably rests upon another underlying system of socioeconomic patterns, which is backed, at last, by a political structure.

    Sorry, but you can’t ignore that the notion of structure-reflecting-structure gets diluted among this stack of layers. Complex systems are not just shaped by the scheming overlords of the political structure. They’re full of historical contingency, chaotic events, black swans, emergence, multiple causation, etc. To me, teleological explanations are as simple and persuasive as they are unsatisfactory.

    Moreover, trade-based societies can also lead to centrality. Think of big trading hubs like important markets, sea ports and trading posts. See, centrality doesn’t need to reflect authoritarianism, and vice versa.

    So, going back to the quote by Richard Fairley, this is my opinion: maybe true to some minor extent, but mostly poetry.

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