I’ve posted a digest of Dawes and Ostwald 2017 as a blog post, with the possibility of further discussion here.
The objections to Alexander’s second theory come from critics who work in built environments. If we’re working instead in social systems (or socio-ecological, socio-technical and/or socio-psychological systems), we not only should be dealing with those objections, but also ensuring appropriate theory in our domain of interest.
Reference
Dawes, Michael J., and Michael J. Ostwald. 2017. “Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language: Analysing, Mapping and Classifying the Critical Response.” City, Territory and Architecture 4 (1): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40410-017-0073-1.
