New characters for new places

Street scene in Kowloon, Hong Kong

House construction in Celebration, Florida

What kind of place characters are appropriate for multiple, complex, non-hierarchical and non-concentric places? How make a busy multiplex place without losing a sense of confidence? How through architecture and planning create a spacious sense of inhabitation that need not rely on a single fixed identity?

My guess is that answering these questions will involve new kinds of unities within an architectural and visual complexity that we will have to learn to distinguish from clutter.

Even traditional harmonious and centered places, and their contemporary equivalents such as New Urbanist developments, will come to show new place characters, not because they look much different than before, but because of their explicit and self-conscious insertion into wider processes and more complex grammars.

• [Nearby: Place grammar outline -- Bland and brash characters ]