WEEK 7: Urban Public Space Study

This week in class, we watched a 00:58:00.00 minute video about a study conducted focusing on the public space of New York's Seagram Plaza. The study mainly looked at interactions, design, and use of the Seagram Plaza.

This article, http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/3025/dcs-odd-shaped-public-spaces-neednt-be-awkward-or-neglected/, talks about the design and urban planning of Washington D.C. The article explains how L'enfant designed Washington D.C. and with diagonals and triangles. L'enfant basically designed the whole city, with urban/public spaces included. However this was in the colonial era; today the cities original design does not mesh with the traffic pattern and how the city has evolved. According to the article, the D.C.'s traffic pattern creates dead spaces, mainly because of the triangular intersections that L'enfant designed. Now, the city of D.C. claims that these triangular "dead spaces" are "public spaces" that can be used as "parks." According to the article this is clearly not the case because they weren't originally designed as public space and can't even be used for public space because of the surrounding city and traffic. The article calls for a restructuring of the urban/public space in the city.

This is L'enfants plan. You can clearly see how there are many triangular areas and how this pattern does not mesh with modern traffic patterns

Week 6: Urban Ecology

This week in class, we talked about the layout of a city as well as the many systems within a city and how they resemble very closely the systems that occur naturally in nature. We discussed the spatial structure of a city. This includes the spatial distribution of the population, the distribution of real estate prices, and the distribution of wages and incomes over space. We looked at how the population was distributed throughout a city and the reasons behind this distribution. The primary reason being that density gradients flatten with income.  This means that the majority of the people in any major city live just a few kilometers from the city center due to the fact that land rent values increase toward the center of a highly urbanized area. A paper that discusses many of these points can be found at http://alain-bertaud.com/AB_Files/Spatia_%20Distribution_of_Pop_%2050_%20Cities.pdf .

               

Another subject of our class discussions this week was urban ecology or a field that deals with the interaction between organisms in an urbanized community and the community itself. We talked about how cities are similar in many ways to nature in the sense that the flow of matter and energy through the ecosystem is comparable to the way that they move through a city or urban community. A blog dedicated to urban ecology and learning about and education residents about their community and their physical environment can be found at http://blog.urbanecology.org/ .

Week 5: Right to the City

This week we talked about The “Right to the City” which is a theoretical, political, conceptual framework that refers to such aspects as enforcement, empowerment, participation, self-realization, self-determination, and different forms of protection of existing human rights at the city level. It has been applied explicitly and implicitly in various regions, countries and cities. An effort is made to discern key principles that underlie the concept so that these might inform efforts by cities to promote inclusion and close the urban divide, even in regions where the historical, political and cultural conditions are not conducive to an explicit application of the “Right to the City” approach. This is a movement to take back the city and achieve more equality. http://www.righttothecity.org/

An article I found http://www.righttothecity.org/headed-south-for-freedom.html was about how the Southern Solidarity Summer is starting in July. This is a program cohosted by Virginia New Majority and the Right to the City Alliance, where people will go door to door in virginia educating voters about progress fairness and real economic securities. 

Week 4: The Rich Get Richer

This week in class, we talked about the urban divide in city infrastructure. One of the main points that I took from the lectures was that high powered individuals own a larger proportion of total income compared to slum dwellers who only own a small percentage individually.
This article, written by the Unhabitat organization, title "The Rich Get Richer", explains why the rich get richer. It first explains that the urban reform that takes place in cities benefits the "interests of the rich." This mainly occurs in Latin American, Asian, and African nations, with benefits of reform mostly effecting African nations, because they have more corrupt governments. According to the article, reform includes; beautification of riverfronts, infrastructure projects dealing with sanitation and water, and building facilities for major sports teams.
The article then explains that interests groups also interfere with urban policies that are supposed to favour all residents in a community. These groups interfere with anything from claiming public land and erecting religous temples, to rezoning land for monetary gains.
Finally, article explains that cities lack the basic instutional infrastructure to even help the poor. Most cities infrastructure include poor resources for schools, lack of skilled staff, and poor budgeting.

http://www.unhabitat.org/documents/SOWC10/R9.pdf

This second website, http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/onprin/v1n3/thompson.html, points out the difference between socialism and capitalism. This ties in with why the rich continue to get rich and poor continue to be poor. The main point or socialism is you have to sacrifice for the overall good of the community, but also producing slow growth in the economy. The main point of capitalism is that you can move "up" out of current social/economic status, and that the economy rapidly changes and grows, rewarding those with merit and achievement, regardless of their social/ecomonic upbringings.

I am a capitalist.

Week 3: Sensing Cities

This week in class, we continued talking about how cities are portrayed in films as well as the way that we sense cities. We analyzed the movie the movie The City in class on Thursday looking at the themes and how differently rural and urban areas were depicted. Most of our discussion however focused on Urban Tomography or the use of multiple media records to analyze a city or urban area. We spent time discussing the many methods or modes that can be used in Urban Tomography including audio recordings, videos, as well as fixed sensors or photographs.

One example of how Urban Tomography is currently being used is in the 100 Cities project, a description of the project can be found here: http://cesa.asu.edu/urban-systems/100-cities-project/. The 100 cities project is an NSA-funded program that uses satellite based remote sensing data to analyze socioeconomic and biogeographic trends and qualities of many urban areas. Its primary focus is on building collaboration among urban scientists and classifying as many urban sites as possible, in order to better informs them about sustainable development options. Scientists involved in the project are currently assessing 400 of the world’s most populous cities in order to create a set of tools that can be used to analyze the threat that global warming and other environmental risks pose to cities.

week 2: cities in the movies

This week in class we talked about how cities are portrayed and shown in movies and how cities are organized. It was interesting to see how many different ways cities play a role in the movies. It is cool to see how just a landmark can tell you exactly what city the movie is talking place in. It helps to build an understanding in the movie and make things easier to follow.

I noticed the presence of landmarks a lot in the movie nation treasure. The movie is about a man who is searching for a treasure using a map from the back of the declaration of independence. A few major land marks in this movie were the Liberty Bell and the Washington Monument. These details help the audience  keep up with the constant movement of the movie and let them know what city the main character is in. The built environment of this shows many well know landmarks that lets you know where the movie is taking place. The environment in movies and tv shows help to give the audience a better idea of what is going on.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368891/

WEEK 1: How cities were formed

During week one in the class, we discussed how and why cities were formed in terms of the rise of civilizations. The subject that caught my eye in class was the diagrams of the different types of primitive cities that were formed based on the natural geography of the land.

The website I found is about the Jamestown settlement of 1607 in Virginia. The website discusses why the explorers picked the location of Jamestown island instead of other areas in the Hampton Roads area like, what is today Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Hampton, and Newport News. (Seeing as how I am from Hampton Roads, it was interesting to learn that during colonial eras, Roads were waterways that ships travelled, so it is according that the area is called "Hampton Roads" due to the high amounts of waterways.) But, the website basically explains that the colonists settled farther up the James River because the Jamestown island could be easily defended and sheltered from many elements including Spanish/Dutch/French attack, Native American attack, and from natural elements when docking supply ships.


http://www.virginiaplaces.org/vacities/7jamestown.html