Urban studies and planning

Big buildings ignore the context around them; they are independent of the surrounding fabric they are meant to tie into, becoming objects that merely hover in space. The sudden appearance of these big buildings diminishes the aspects of quality and experience causing the concept of architecture to be rethought. Their distant relationship with the ground, due to technological advances such as the elevator, creates an inwardly focused space. The building only continues to grow taller, allowing…

The final case study is about urban development in Davis, California. Urban development does not take place in a vacuum, and it is important to be sure that established assumptions about the development process are manifestly accurate. Property developers usually have their way, large corporations do homogenise the American landscape with indistinguishable retail outlets, and entrepreneurs, landowners, mainstream media, and local government also support this type of growth. In other words, what…

research on this project and experiences on similar projects, a series of downtown issues were identified as well as opportunities and approaches for strengthening downtown’s network of streets and public spaces. 1 Key Issue: Urban Structure Challenges: A city’s urban structure is comprised of its places and their connections; the neighborhoods, focal points and districts which act as destinations within the city and the streets, corridors and open space networks that organize them.…

Parker Hargett Professor Hagen Sustainable cities 13 October 2015 New York city The city that I decided to write about for this assignment is New York City. The reason that I decided to choose this city was because of the interesting historic events that have happened in the city of New York and how it has come to one of the most thriving cities that is also the culture capital of the United States. New york officially did not get its name until the 18th century when the British seized…

If you look around, you notice grids are used everywhere in day-to-day life. For example, the keyboard on your laptop, the pixelated squares on your TV screen, and the apps on your IPhone all consist of grids. In the article Grids, Rosalind Krauss discusses the significance of grids in artwork, specifically in modern art. Krauss describes grids as the “modernity of modern art” and examines the impact behind the grid’s centrifugal and centripetal existence. There are two ways in which Krauss…

this started in this area. It is a great idea for everyone involved. It makes the city more appealing to people who are looking into moving back into the downtown area of our city. This worked in downtown Detroit. It has turned the landscape into urban agriculture across the city. Besides growing food for the community, it helps people to learn, teach and spend time together. By doing this people of the community can develop a closer relationship with each other. They would look out for one…

The urban culture of a city highly depends upon social interactions and useful spaces that encourage these interactions. Idealising a futuristic city is not out of the ordinary based off urban planning research done throughout the years. Planners are trying to invest time and resources into creating functional spaces for citizens, to minimize evident division and segregation within the city and create a fluid organic functional space that proves to be useful in many situations. Jane Jacobs, an…

who pass by it interact with it. This type of art can serve as a way to reinvigorate urban development, and Zebracki examines the perception of the public with reference to several specific public art installments. Public art integrates the location into the art and allows the piece to become a part of the city. Barcelona is a city where public art has become an integral part of the cities culture. Zebraki’s study was an innovative way to explore the impact of public art on members of the…

(TOD) is an urban development approach that focus on the effective use of the transit system, that is the public transport system. TOD maximizes the efficiency of the transit systems by developing in high-density, and in a way that integrates different land use into a single location. TOD makes use of high-capacity, highly efficient mass transit systems such as heavy railway, streetcars and buses to achieve an efficient and sustainable urban development. Hong Kong, with a high urban density, is…

spectrum Frank Lloyd Wright was eliminating the city center completely. Broadacre City was detailed in Wright’s 1932 book The Disappearing City. The book was called the disappearing city because Wright believed he was living in a time when the great urban centers ceased to exist anymore (Fishman 122). Broadacre City is an expansive city with no core, an endless suburbia. It is a new kind of city that is built…