Synergetics’ two foundations and the city

Cities accompanied complexity theory from its day one—first as a metaphor and later as a domain that applies the various complexity theories to cities. Of all complexity theories Haken’s Synergetics is the one that suggests the most comprehensive view on cities as complex systems, due to its top-down slaving principle and its internal development during the years, first on the basis of analogies to material systems—the Synergetics 1st foundation – and at a later stage on the basis of, or rather as a, cognitive-information theory, termed by Haken as Synergetics 2nd foundation. Applied to cities, Synergetic suggests a single theoretical foundation to two aspects of urban dynamics that for years were treated, and studied, as two independent research domains: urban dynamics and cognitive mapping. In this paper, in memoriam Herman Haken—my dear friend, and colleague—I follow this temporal development of Synergetics which gradually has led to the development of a comprehensive Synergetic theory of cities.