Lefebvre and De Landa

The De Landa text accompanying Week 3, discusses theory of Urban design and development and looks at the opposite forces of 'planned' versus 'organic' architecture/urbanism.  De Landa endeavors to promote a self-policing/development of metropolitan fabric and despairs of the unnaturally forced current system for planning and deterministic design.  De Landa, like Lefebvre, sees a 'systems' type relationship within contemporary society - all things linked and feeding one another but approaches writing with a more microscopic lens, framing specific examples of his research in action.  He sees in contemporary scientific society, a fall-off in the subjective analysis of nature with human society as having an opinion like: 'culture is the made, nature is the given'.  He attempts to challenge the traditional culture/nature divide in conceptual human thinking, again like Lefebvre, promoting a role of overseer for humanity - using coercive methods to extract necessitous resource from the natural world.
He writes too, about the ability of nature to provide stimulus for the propagation of human advancement.  The example of sewer systems resulting from the widespread contraction of cholera is a potent example of nature's ability to exercise influence over Urban society, which De Landa considers a combination of 'genetic' influence and 'learned' influence.