See Pattern Template.
**Pattern Name:**
Patterns
**Introduction:**
Knowledge of regularities can be documented for reuse, integration, and improvement.
**Illustration:**
There is a regularity, a "hammer pattern", that includes a handle and a head for applying sudden force to objects. There are many types of hammers but there is a general pattern that can be further specified to make different hammers for different uses.
Derivatives of "Hammer Pattern"
**CONTEXT:**
The most common way to innovate is to make variations on a theme or to combine themes. Patterns can be thought of as themes, they provide the variable parts that allow rapid advances in design. We need to be better innovators to keep up with change.
A pattern is a flexible recipe for producing a good result.
**PROBLEM:** **Change is happening to us where we live and much faster than we can gracefully adapt.**
**Forces:**
**THEREFORE (SOLUTION):**
**Accumulate records of knowledge about what works well. Learn to do this in ways that allow anyone to fit them to their situations.**
**Actions:**
**Consequences:**
**Known Uses:**
- Built environment, Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language".
- Michael W. Mehaffy's New Pattern Language 
Work in groups. Practice encoding knowledge using the Pattern Template.
**Notes**:
Any tool and method can be shared as a pattern.
**RELATED PATTERNS:**
- Pattern Languages are records of useful interactions between recurring patterns within a domain such as education or gardening.
- Pathways provide useful sequences of patterns that get you from a to z.
- Neighborhoods have a meta Language of Pattern Languages. It is not yet a written language. That is our job.
- Mentors provide knowledge as patterns and they show others how to connect them in real world situations.
- Programs both use and improve current patterns and they produce new patterns.
- ReLocalize Creativity is intended to become a living global pattern repository for neighborhood development and survival.