CorporateNature No 146
Self-organising systems of a feather flock together.
Ever wondered how starlings coordinate perfectly with each other to create flocks of such beautiful shapes? The driving principle is that of self-organising systems.
A flock of starlings is a self-organising system where each bird interacts with a fixed number of its neighbours. When a bird reacts to an external stimulus (a gust of wind or an approaching predator) by changing its direction of flight, this triggers an immediate response from its neighbours, which in turn triggers the other neighbours in a chain reaction. Very quickly, the initial response becomes an avalanche-like reaction of the whole flock. So, what looks like a masterfully choreographed dance is nothing more than well-organised chaos.
Chaos theory describes the elements of a self-organising system as “islands of predictability in a sea of chaotic unpredictability”. In a flock of starlings, each bird is an “island of predictability”, while what the flock will do next is the sea of “chaotic unpredictability”.
Just like a flock of birds, a city can be viewed as a self-organising system. The “islands of predictability” in a city are the individual people and the social norms they live by. The “sea of unpredictability” is the way in which the whole city develops over time. Examples of such developments are:
- the gentrification of some neighbourhoods (but not of others);
- the clustering of ethnic minorities in some parts of the city (e.g. Chinatowns, Little Italy, etc.);
- the decline and disappearance of entire cities in history.
A flock of birds (image source: Wikipedia)
