This study is based on the narrative investigation of the Village of Oak Park as an urbanized ecosystem. Instead of addressing each component independently, this holistic approach views the village as an ecosystem in which components are interconnected and interdependent. This approach allows for a complex, dynamical system model based on scoping, inventorying, and assessing the system’s critical variables and relationships, as represented by the flux and cyclic processes of energy, materials, costs, and information.
A system model serves as a basis for how energy, materials, information, people and costs interact on a complex and dynamic urban scale. How energy and materials are processed, the impacts of densification, economic performance, and the rate at which change occurs can all be informed by a model of the system that links size to scale and form through information, material, and social networks that constitute the essential functioning of communities.
Michael Roy Iversen 