Nowadays, the process of growth and development almost never seems to manage to create this subtle balance between the importance of the individual parts, and the coherence of the environment as a whole. One or the other always dominates.

But in practice master plans fail - because they create totalitarian order, not organic order. They are too rigid; they cannot easily adapt to the natural and unpredictable changes that inevitably arise in the life of a community.

We define organic order as the kind of order that is achieved when there is a perfect balance between the needs of the parts, and the needs of the whole.

Christopher Alexander Quotes