Adaptive and anti-adaptive neighbourhoods: Investigating the relationship between individual choice and systemic adaptability

Recent work on ‘anti-adaptive’ neighbourhoods has highlighted a number of common features, including scale of design, number of designers, mono-functionality, percentage of public space, planning rules and system of ownership. This article aims to provide a more general conceptual analysis of adaptability and anti-adaptability in terms of degrees of individual choice, where an individual’s choice set is understood as a combination of individual freedoms, both physical and normative, and of individual normative powers. Individual choice is constitutive of adaptability, and its ‘non-specific’ value helps to explain why adaptability is itself seen in a positive light. Thus, the article points to a potentially unifying explanatory factor that can help us to better understand the various common features of anti-adaptive neighbourhoods highlighted in the recent literature. The final part of the article discusses some of the implications of this reasoning for policy and design.