ABSTRACT
The general tenor of the book, and indeed of much of our thinking these days, has been to reflect on the bewildering variety and unpredictability of the changes which are affecting urban life and the environment in which it develops. These reflections are perhaps inevitably both undisciplined and undisciplinary — although more often the latter — and it behoves us to try to see our way through to a better understanding of the complex reality which we face in these circumstances. Certainly, more information will provide us with more enlightenment; but I would add to this the thought that information becomes intelligence only through interpretation. Many of our interpretive capabilities arise out of the same kind of intellectual activity that is employed in the construction and use of models.
