Urban Grammar: The City as a Structure of Discourse

Abstract

Like spoken and written language, the environmental structure of the City provides a communicative map or paradigm that may act as intrinsic devices to elaborate and organize shared communication and the communal experience. The complex systems of the City are filled with challenge, with complexities, its magnitude often masking its purpose as a built environment. However, like the complex systems of language, the City offers structures for interpreting, interacting and manipulating our experience. This essay explores over fifty years of theoretical framework that has sought to articulate the legibility of the world through humanistic constructs.