See also: GlobalVillages
also: VideoBridge/PatternLanguage
parallel effort in German: GlobaleDörfer/MusterSprache

Table of contents of this page What is a pattern language?    What are Global Villages?    Why A Pattern Language for Global Villages?    Pattern List    A - Planetary Patterns relevant to GlobalVillages    B - Value Based Patterns    C - ProcessPatterns?    D - Elements and Local Patterns of the Global Village    Comments and Suggestions:

What is a pattern language?

Pattern Languages seem to be a good way to describe a complex reality. The term is used for collection of various concepts and elements of reality that work harmoniously together cocreating individual structures: (a very rough idea comes from this diagram: http://www.conservationeconomy.net)

The core idea is that each "thing" in a system is not simply an "element", but rather the form and structure of each "thing" is deeply determined by its relations, having developed through many evolutionary steps. So we describe not "things" but patterns, the quality of things being able to "resonate" and create wholeness, life and beauty. Whatever is, has found its form in relations and informations about its environments, those environments spanning from very large to very small dimensions that "work" simultaneously and need to be understood as form-giving interactive relations. Patterns are the building blocks that we can describe and use to create living and sustainable realities

The Term "Pattern Language" was coined by Christopher Alexander.
Christopher Alexander was born in Vienna, Austria in 1936. He is Professor in the Graduate School and Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.

"A Pattern Language", a seminal work that was one of the first complete book ever written in hypertext fashion, appeared in 1977 at Oxford university Press. A small group of enthusiasts in Vienna have also made the book available in German. But you can go and read the book online! See:

• http://www.patternlanguage.com/ (Membership required)
• a childs story of pattern language
• /HowToWriteAPattern

What are Global Villages?

Our contemporary cities are solving problems which are not any more the main problems of our world. They effectivate the economy, they create bigger and bigger aggregations for production battles, which create winners and losers, but increasingly losers. This implies fierce competition and a even bigger need and run for the planets finite resources, which contributes to the rising environmental catastrophy.

Indeed we are in an antropocene age of this planet, man has the power to shape the surface of this planet like previously only vast natural forces did, but instead of leading us to a higher stage of evolution it seems like a catastrophy.

This evolutionary step is still a slight possibility - and exploring this possibility in all its consequences is the purpose of our organisation GIVE - Globally Integrated Village Environment. It is a dream with scientific foundations that we want to give to the world, a dream that might be realized in its full meaning maybe only within a thousand years.

Nevertheless a dream must be started. The dream that we offer is a dream of the optimum human living space, that at the same time serves to restore and beautify this planet. Its the dream of the Global Villages.

The technological revolutions of the 20th and beginning 21st century have enabled us to rethink of and redesign human living and settlement forms. Its not our aim to create a perfect world on the drawing board, and simply ask the world to realize it. Rather we want to create a radical conceptual impulse against the prevailing trend towards urbanisation, we want to ask the question "what if..?"

What if this planet was inhabited by people that in their mode of settlement are striving to be part of a living nature, of a symbiosis between technology and ecology. How would this world look like? This is the basic question of our group, and we seek to answer it by describing and discovering the new and exciting innovative patterns that emerge today.

GlobalVillages describes the starting conditions.

Why A Pattern Language for Global Villages?

From "Independent Regions" to "Mosaic of Subcultures" there are many patterns in Christopher Alexanders work that apply to GlobalVillages. Alexander underlines that the power and identity of place needs to be carefully considered.

But they are not enough to sufficiently describe the unique new form of human settlement enabled by post - industrial technologies that we envision, overcoming deficiencies of the urban and the rural, giving new meaning and density to places because they work with access to global information as a prime resource of creation, production, education, healing and so on.

(something close is also P.M.s unique Pattern Language "Bolo'Bolo", (see in this Wiki: BoloBolo) which translates roughly as "The Life Maintaining Neighbourhoods" and which is one the most visionary books I have ever read. Here we see the vision of a world created on the base of working neighborhoods, yet with too little emphasis on the irreversible and potentially positive changes technology has brought to our lives.)

My deepest thanks go to Tony S. Gwilliam who has written the first, yet unpublished book on Global Villages "Bring Your Mind Home". Many of the patterns are his discovery. The book is available in its full visual expression here:

• http://www.tonygwilliam.com/book/Bring-Your-Mind-Home-I.pdf
• http://www.tonygwilliam.com/book/Bring-Your-Mind-Home-II.pdf
• http://www.tonygwilliam.com/book/Bring-Your-Mind-Home-III.pdf

Pattern List

So here is the very first idea of a pattern list. (started 2010, expanded 2014)

The Core Pattern “GlobalVillage”: a polyfunctional, organically designed human living space based on todays technical innovations with the following key characteristics:

• create a positive synthesis between Urban and Rural by merging urban sophistication with village dimension and spirit
• create a system which manages this miniaturisation by sufficient internal complexity (village based on functional differentiation)
• create a System with high degree of matter and energy autonomy
• create a place for a rich and fulfilling life by matching environment and values
• create a place that in itself is a positive contribution to the biosphere.

A - Planetary Patterns relevant to GlobalVillages

• The OneWorldConscsiousness?
• Commons
• PlanetOfRegions?
• CulturedLandscape
• InterplayOfUrbanAndRural?
• Bioregions?
• TheNet
• Mothercities?
• VillageAlliance?

• Automation and Standards
• Inventories and Repositories
• Networks and Noospheres
• Governance and Borders
• Corporations and Communities
• Creative Individuals
• Attached Communities

B - Value Based Patterns

• LivingInCommunity?
• LivingWithNature?
• CreatingCultures?
• CooperativeDiversity?
• WholenessAndHealth?
• ApproachingStandardsByValuingHighestPossibilities?

C - ProcessPatterns?

• NetworkedEducationSystem? (to enhance local possibilities)
• TurningVirtualThematicNetworksIntoSpatialRealities?
• DesignCommunities? (like OSE)
• SupportEconomyForsteringCommunities?
• VillageCreationNetworks?
• PayItForward?

D - Elements and Local Patterns of the Global Village

• MicroRegionWithComplementingFunctions?
• TheVillageCulture? (Nima)
• TheNaturalSphere?
• TheVillageGestalt?
• TheVillageMetabolism?
• Agrotectures
• MultifunctionalVillageCenter?
• The House of Knowledge
• The House of Tools
• The Piazza
• The Global District
• PedestrianOrientation? (Greenways)
• ZonesBetweenPublicAndPrivate?
• ServiceWays?
• TheSpiritualDistrict?
• TheHealingDistrict?
• ResourceSharing?

Comments and Suggestions:

(taken into consideration)

Helmut Leitner: As always, I'd suggest that patterns are not observations like "fine weather" but something you can create like "development plan". They are less like ephemeral ideas or wishes like the dismissed pattern "global consensus" but more like real structures like a "learning center" or an "glass fibre tutorial video".

Pattern should be creatable, reachable by personal decisions and actions. If you want some goal like "world peace" then you probably have to create one or more pattern languages to get there. There is no value in a pattern if you can't answer the question "what can I do to get there". The desire for foreign countries is fruitless as motivation for ship-building, if the know-how and the wood is lacking: then the way is to grow trees and to grow ship-building know-how in many small steps. It is no use to follow Alexander in the "pattern language" concept and to violate the "pattern" concept and the "stepwise" concept. -- HelmutLeitner July 15, 2010 10:15 CET