Common Pattern Pool / Evolution of a Common Language

Original term: Common Pattern Pool / Evolution of a Common Language | Chapter/location: 17 | Chapter start page in the English edition’s table of contents: 325

Definition and core idea

A shared stock of spatial knowledge and solutions that forms within a community and changes through use, experience and gradual correction.

Explanation and elaboration

Spatial knowledge is not only in books; it also lives in habits, construction, maintenance and repeated decisions. A pattern language has to allow learning: some patterns adapt to new conditions and some need to be changed or set aside.

Notes and limits of interpretation

Caution in attribution

Evolution should not be seen only as the natural selection of good patterns; power, economics, regulation and inequality also affect whether a pattern survives.

Relations to other concepts

• Pattern Language
• The Breakdown of Language
• The Structure of a Language
• The Slow Emergence of a Town

Review questions

• What problem does this concept clarify?
• Which part is Alexander’s explicit claim and which part is analytical interpretation?
• What observations or evidence are needed to assess it in a real environment?

Sources

• Book and chapter list on Open Library
• Dawes & Ostwald (2017), research on the critical response to Alexander’s theory