Abstract

This paper is based upon a radical approach to urbanism and investigates found alternative solutions to the conventional and widely accepted standards of urban master-planning models. Similar to the Metabolists in the ’60s, the implications of such radical alternatives include innovative methods of interconnectivity and integrations of new social, infrastructural, and ecological systems. We can no longer afford to engage our built environments, natural and synthetic, by pretending that infrastructure are sub-systems in relation to public, urban space. The studies of active sites in Northeast Asia describe operational integrated systems of exchange through a series of productive layers. The revealing of layered commonalities between the various sites and cities through the analysis will identify and define new urban design principles. These design principles will propose ways that the localized, ad-hoc responses can be made into an organized collection of design approaches.