Urban planning as an open system
Introduction
The urban structure is the urban relationship (both from a spatial, economic and social point of view) existing within the urban space between the different parts that make up the city, composed in the case of ancient cities of successive zones usually added concentrically from the initial nucleus where the city was founded.
The notion of Structure presupposes that the city is governed by a certain order and it constitutes the essential organization that governs it.[1] This organization is made up of recognized urban elements such as the road system, green spaces), plots, layouts, fabrics and equipment that appear with particular characteristics in the formation of each city. Some of them, due to their arrangement, acquire connotations of primary and others of secondary.
In addition, they are close to the cities but are not part of them. I would understand the terms organization and systems; The first represents the static order of its components, and the second refers to the relationships of these components in space and time. In this sense, the Urban Structure refers to the organization adopted by the constituent elements of the city at a specific moment in time.
Main features
The Structure is made up of a set of parts and components in a unit that we recognize as a city. It constitutes systems and subsystems of relationships that determine its organization and modes of growth. Their purpose is to guarantee the internal functioning of the city. The relationships established make it possible to identify variables and undertake the analysis that leads to the recognition of the existing structure. Among them: morphology or material physical composition, allows defining the arrangement and organization of the elements of the physical structure of the city.
The functional organization constitutes the set of urban, economic, social activities and the way they relate in time and cultural space. The set of urban activities and the relationships they maintain among themselves constitutes the urban system. Likewise, certain subsets of activities and relationships can be identified, which constitute different subsystems. In particular, it is interesting to identify those subsets of components and relationships that present a certain durability: they are the characteristic structures of the system. The change in the type of components and relationships of these structures or structural change implies qualitative modifications in the very characteristics of the urban system. Specifically, we are interested in analyzing the internal spatial structure of the urban system, that is, the set of component activities of the city and the relationships they maintain among themselves, from the point of view of the arrangement of said activities in the urban space and the spatial dimension of these relationships.