Urban studies and planning

commoner. This was the urban plan, or the central idea of the design of the city. Since this was a capital city in the Egyptian empire, the nobles cannot be living at the same level or area as the people they rule over. That would be a disgrace! The city designers too this ideal and made all their designs for the city around that image. When any large metropolitan area is created, the organization of necessary buildings and spaces are always taken into consideration. This urban plan has many…

She seemed excited to have a visitor who was interested in the town 's history. I asked her about the urban renewal project that modernized the town 36 years ago. She brought out some documents, but I didn 't have the time to plow through them. I just wanted to know why they bulldozed the downtown and replaced it with strip malls instead of trying to preserve…

Though American progressives of the early 20th century were dedicated to issues regarding networked technologies, those efforts were actually based on an interest in cities and urban development. As increasing amounts of the population moved from the countryside into urban areas, cities represented economic, social, and cultural opportunities. They also exposed stark realities that would need to be addressed in order for people to live and work there without hazardous threats. As the…

In the documentary “Suburban America: Problems and Promises” by Ron Rudaitis, focuses on the examination of the changing communities within the suburban homes and cities. This is documentary educates on the history of the suburbs, how it changes politically, and socially. It also demonstrated their developmental challenges, as well as a form of sustainable living styles in the suburbs. The documentary mainly focuses on the political changes, social change, ethics, matters of individuals that…

1. Discuss Activities 1.1(2), 1.2(1), 1.3, 1.4 Activity 1.1: Do you think it would be possible to make a perfect map of a city? What would such a map have to look like? How useful would it be? Making a perfect map of a city wouldn't be possible because it is impossible to make a perfect detailed replica of what a city looks like while also scaling it down. For the map of a city to be absolutely perfect it would also have to be the exact size of the city and then it would be rendered obsolete…

Excessive Planning in the Urban Future: Obstacles to Urban Utopia The utopian-style planning of the urban future has embraced principle, and abandoned practicality. In order to form utopian cities, the planners of urban areas like Brasília and Delhi proposed detailed urban plans that have mostly ignored market factors in favor of heightened urban regulations. In the case of Brasília, these regulations, designed to further the city’s utopian conception, have actually had the opposite effect.…

of the previous map design. Massimo Vignelli’s believes that as human beings, we analyze everything in a semiotic grid, creating associations to signs and colors, so it was just natural to reduce the map to the bare-essentials. Semiotic means the study of symbology which is the notion that every sign has importance and has a meaning. For example, the redesign of the subway map used different eye-catching colors to differentiate the routes. This choice of color change doesn’t just make the map…

have our own views of them. But as civilians, we only see the what is attractive to us such as, building, parks, and the attractions of the city, but we never think deeply enough to see the reality. Richard Florida, the author of the book The New Urban Crisis, is a researcher and expert in cities. He identifies inequality, segregation, and high costs of living as challenges confronting today’s cities. Florida applies the sociological imagination to break down these factors. His purpose is to…

My response to Recovering Utopia by Nathanial Coleman from the Journal of Architectural Education. This article is an intellectual article that works towards defining utopia in regard to architecture and city planning. It includes explanations that make up the dangers and realistic ideals that come along with trying to create utopia in architecture or a utopian city. Coleman describes what makes up utopia in architecture which include as he describes four elements: “social and political content;…

Oldenburg, American urban sociologist, places can be divided on three categories. The first one is the home, the second one is the workplace, and the third is a place which exists on neutral ground and aims towards social equality (Oldenburg, p. 163). In the middle of the city of Jönköping between Södra Strandgatan and Smedjegatan, lies the inner garden of Borgmästargränd 5, a third place. The aim of this essay is to describe and analyze the inner garden based on the American urban sociologist…