The city as an organism. The evolution of biological metaphors in urbanism

Since its early attempts to be recognized as an autonomous discipline, urbanism has made a large use of concepts borrowed from other fields of knowledge. Biology, in particular, has constituted a rich reservoir of metaphorical images from which urbanism has been able to forge a first set of conceptual tools. This chapter aims at conducting a non-exhaustive recognition of the use of the organic metaphor in the field of urban studies, trying to follow the fortune of the image of the city-organism and to illustrate some of the different possibilities it opens for urban theory and practice. From its first occurrences in Cerdà’s seminal work to some 20th century’s formulations, such as the modernist conceptions of Le Corbusier or the forerunner ecosystemic approaches of Gio- vannoni and Muratori, the text will explore the parting ways of the organic metaphor, particularly regarding the problem of the relation between the old and the new city.