Ekistics

Ekistics
By:
N.Nikhila.[20]
Praharsha baddy[21]
INTRODUCTION
• The term Ekistics applies to the science of human settlements. It
includes regional, city, community planning and dwelling design.
It involves the study of all kinds of human settlements, with a
view to geography and ecology — the physical environment —
and human psychology and anthropology, and cultural, political,
and occasionally aesthetics.
• As a scientific mode of study is currently found to rely on
statistics and description, organized in five ekistics elements:
nature, anthropos, society, shells, and networks. It is generally a
more academic field than "urban planning", and has
considerable overlap with some of the less restrained fields of
architectural theory.
• It is a system of natural, social, and man-made
elements which can be seen in many ways - economic,
social, political , technological, and cultural.
• In order to create the cities of the future, we need to
systematically develop a science of human
settlements. This science, termed Ekistics, will take
into consideration the principles man takes into
account when building his settlements, as well as the
evolution of human settlements through history in
terms of size and quality.
Functions of a settlements
• The function of a settlement relates to its economic and social development

and refers to its main activities.
settlement functions:-
• mining town
• route centre
• Port
• manufacturing
• cultural/religious
• tourist resort
• residential
• Administration
• commercial
• market town
settlement hierarchy
• It’s a way of ranking settlements in order of
their size and importance
hamlet dwelling
village
town
city
conurbation
Isolated
Principles
• The first principle is maximization of man's potential contacts
with the elements of nature (such as water and trees), with
other people, and with the works of man (such as buildings and
roads). This, after all, amounts to an operational definition of
personal human freedom. It is in accordance with this principle
that man abandoned the Garden of Eden and is today
attempting to conquer the cosmos. It is because of this
principle that man considers himself imprisoned, even if given
the best type of environment, if he is surrounded by a wall
without doors. In this, man differs from animals; we do not
know of any species of animals that try to increase their
potential contacts with the environment once they have
reached the optimum number of contacts. Man alone always
seeks to increase his contacts.
• The second principle is minimization of the
effort required for the achievement of man's
actual and potential contacts. He always gives
his structures the shape, or selects the route,
that requires the minimum effort, no matter
whether he is dealing with the floor of a room,
which he tends to make horizontal, or with the
creation of a highway.
• The third principle is optimization of man's protective space, which means
the selection of such a distance from other persons, animals, or objects
that he can keep his contacts with them (first principle) without any kind
of sensory or psychological discomfort. This has to be true at every
moment and in every locality, whether it is temporary or permanent and
whether man is alone or part of a group. This has been demonstrated
very well, lately, for the single individual, by anthropologists such as E. T.
Hall (Ref. 1) and psychiatrists such as Augustus F. Kinzel (Ref. 2), and by
the clothes man designs for himself, and it may be explained not only as a
psychological but also as a physiological problem if we think of the layers
of air that surround us(Ref. 3) or the energy that we represent (Fig.1). The
walls of houses or fortification walls around cities are other expressions of
this third principle.
• The fourth principle is optimization of the
quality of man's relationship with his
environment, which consists of nature,
society, shells (buildings and houses of all
sorts),and networks (ranging from roads to
telecommunications) This is the principle that
leads to order, physiological and aesthetic, and
that influences architecture and, in many
respects, art.
• Finally, and this is the fifth principle, man organizes his
settlements in an attempt to achieve an optimum synthesis of
the other four principles, and this optimization is dependent
on time and space, on actual conditions, and on man's ability
to create a synthesis. When he has achieved this by creating a
system of floors, walls, roofs, doors, and windows which
allows him to maximize his potential contacts (first principle)
while minimizing the energy expended (second principle) and
at the same time makes possible his separation from others
(third principle) and the desirable relationship with his
environment (fourth principle), we speak of "successful
human settlements". What we mean is settlements that have
achieved a balance between man and his man-made
environment, by complying with all five principles.
Classification by Size
• The changing dimensions of human settlements and the change in their
character from static to dynamic, which gives them different aspects with
every day that passes, makes the settlements confusing places in which to
live, and people, instead of facing this new problem with realism, start
trying to escape from the confusion. Some mistakenly support the
utopian thought of returning to the system of the small city, but they do
not define how this can be achieved without loss of some of the
advantages that the great city has given us. Others, feeling that they
cannot return to the small-city system, support the big city concept but
do not dare to face the big city's real structure; this is the attitude that
leads to dystopia to the big city that lacks quality. But there is another
road: to realize that the big city is an inevitable phenomenon, but that the
quality of life within it is bad, and to try to improve the quality of that life.
This is the only desirable and realistic road
The Quality of Human Settlements
• We can now face the important question of quality in
human settlements since we can refer to a specific unit by
first defining its size. A small town, especially in older
civilizations, can satisfy many of our aesthetic needs for
picturesque streets and squares, and this is why we like it.
But most people want to visit it, not to become its
permanent inhabitants, as they are guided by the first of
the five principles discussed above and try to maximize
their potential contacts in the big cities, in order to have
more choices for a job, for education and health facilities,
and for social contacts and entertainment.
• In our era, which begins with London at
the time it was approaching a population
of 1 million, about two centuries ago, and
in other areas later, we lost the ability to
satisfy all five principles. Guided by
principles 1 and 2 we reached the stage of
the big city, but in these cities we do not
satisfy the other principles, especially
principles 4 and 5, and we are not happy.
We say that our settlements have no
quality, and this is true in many respects,
but we have to define what we mean. We
need such a definition because we must
remember that we now have much more
water and of better quality in our homes
that man has had at any previous time,
and we have much more energy available
for conditioning our environment and for Outward movement of the
making contacts. A statement closer to the higher-income groups in the Detroit
truth would be that our cities are better
than the small cities of the past in many Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area.
respects and worse in others The curves show the per capita income
of people residing at several distances
from the central business district
Site factors
• Some sites had specific advantages that meant settlements
developed in that place. These are called site factors.
Bridging point:-Site Factors Where a river was shallow
enough to be crossed (a ford) or narrow enough to easily
build a bridge (e.g. Oxford).
Dry point:- Where natural routes meet, such as several
valleys (e.g. York) or at the confluence of two rivers (e.g. St
Louis on the Mississippi).
Nodal point:- In especially wet areas, settlements were built
on slightly raised land to avoid flooding or the unhealthy
marshland (e.g. Ely in Cambridge shire).

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Ekistics

• The function of a settlement relates to its economic and social development

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