Urban America The Rise of Urban America In
Urban America
The Rise of Urban America • In 1870 only two American cities had population larger than 500. 000 • By 1900 – six cities larger than 500. 000. Three larger than 1. 000 (which ones? ) • About 40% of American lived in cities • Industrialization after the Civil War • What kind of industrialization? • What kind of inventions promoted the development of cities? • New immigration • Urban politics • The Boss system • Reform movements
How about today? As of 2010: • 80. 7 percent of the U. S. population lived in urban areas • BUT there are two types of urban areas: • “urbanized areas” of 50, 000 or more people • “urban clusters” of between 2, 500 and 50, 000 people. • 486 urbanized areas, accounting for 71. 2 percent of the U. S. population. The 3, 087 urban clusters account for 9. 5 percent of the U. S. population. • What does that mean? • the top 48 urbanized areas account for more than half of the entire urban population. • 62. 7% of the U. S. population live in the cities, while the cities make about 3. 5%of U. S. land area • Meaning density is very high in the cities and relatively low outside the cities • population density in cities is more than 46 times higher than the territory outside of cities • the average population density for cities is 1, 593. 5 people per square mile, while the density outside of this area is 34. 6 people per square mile. • Population density generally increases with city population size. The population density of cities with 1 million or more people is 7, 192. 3 people per square mile.
Largest American Cities • …let’s take the Sporcle quiz…
Metro Areas • New York – New Jersey • Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim • Chicago
American Urban design • • • Unbound (exceptions) Unwalled Unguarded Gridded De-centered and plural (with exceptions) Walking city • Exploded by the railways • Destroyed by the car • The downtown becomes a business center • The Fall • Revival? • • • Distinct stories of growth and Decay San Diego Detroit Baltimore St Louis
Urban Design / Urban Planning • The term urban design is used only from mid 20 th century • Of course urban design existed before • How is it different from urban planning? • What would you take into consideration when designing a city?
The Grid
Ancient cities Mohenjo-Daro, Indus Civilisation, today Pakistan
Greece and Rome Milet
Roman camp transforms into the plan of a Roman city
Centuriaton
Renaissance ideal cities • Ideal cities • When can they be created? • Plato’s Republic • Thomas More’s Utopia • The Renaissance: • Geometric harmony • Beauty, not function, is supposed to reinforce the wellness of a society. • Filaretet’s Sforzinda – Star-shaped city / star fort
Enlightenment - in America • The Great Fire of London (1666) – many ambitious designs – none realised, though sanitation improved • Principles of • Science • Humanism • Secular government • Grand Model for the Province of Carolina 1. Regular settlement rather than scattered pattern of development 2. Town, suburban, and country lot allocation 3. Town planned and laid out in advance 4. Wide streets laid out in geometric form usually within a square mile grid 5. Public squares 6. Standardized, rectangular lots 7. Reserved lots for civic purposes 8. Separation of town and country with a common or greenbelt
Model for the American City • Philadelphia • Savannah • Charles Town (Charleston, SC) only partially implemented, its grid, civic spaces, and wide streets became common features of American city planning, due in large part to the examples of Philadelphia and Savannah
Garden City Movement • Ebenezer Howard, To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform
Public Land Survey System • Known as the Rectangular Survey System • Created by the Land Ordinance (1785) • Metes and Bounds system – traditionally used in Great Britain, and hence also in the 13 original colonies uses the features of natural geography to desrcibe parcels of land • Ineffective for new western territories of the USA (why? ) • Hence a new system needed
Principal Meridians and Baselines
PLLS and Urban Design • e. g. Roads in the PLLS system
American City plans • Washington, D. C. • Chicago • Los Angeles • Baltimore • Seattle • Indianapolis
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 …a vast sprawl of houses which had grown up all together like a well-tended crop, from the dull brown earth; and she thought of the time she’d opened a transistor radio to replace a battery and seen her first printed circuit. The ordered swirl of houses and streets, from this high angle, sprang at her now with the same unexpected, astonishing clarity as the circuit card had. Though she knew even less about radios than about Southern Californians, there were to both outward patterns a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meaning, of an intent to communicate. There’d seemed no limit to what the printed circuit could have told her (if she had tried to find out); so in her first minute of San Narciso, a revelation also trembled just past the threshold of her understanding…. she and the Chevy seemed parked at the centre of an odd, religious instant. As if, on some other frequency, or out of the eye of some whirlwind rotating too slow for heated skin even to feel the centrifugal coolness of, words were being spoken…
Rationalism and Neo-rationalism rejects the concept of an ideal architecture seen a rational construction defined by the materials and purpose of the structure.
Modernism and after… • Le Corbusier Ville Contemporaine • City in the park • Order • Efficiency • "Plan Voisin„ • Linear City • Radiant City – Brasilia
Pruitt-Igoe
Urban Sprawl • Separation of homes from employment • Car culture • Road infrastructure • Suburbanization • What problems did it create?
Zoning • Single-use zoning – Euclidean zoning • Euclid, Ohio • Segregate uses that are thought to be incompatible. • In practice, zoning is used as a permitting system to prevent new development from harming existing residents or businesses. • Houston the only large city without zoning ordinances • zoning and re-zoning ordinances change the land prices and hence are important for developers, obviously, hence they are tempted to manipulate or circumvent zoning codes • May result in urban sprawl (why? ) • Reinforces segregation and racial tensions (how? ) • Minimum lot-size laws • Redlining • Form Based Codes
American Urban Design in the 20 th century • Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) • argued that modernist urban planning rejects the city, because it rejects human beings living in a community • Why such rejection? Communities are complex and are seemingly chaotic – modernists reject chaos and look for order • Jacobs suggests instead ’ 4 layers of diversity’: • Mixed primary uses, activating streets at different times of the day • Short blocks, allowing high pedestrian permeability • Buildings of various ages and states of repair • Density • Vibrancy versus order and efficiency
Defensible space theory • Oscar Newman • What is defensible space? • ’’a residential environment whose physical characteristics—building layout and site plan—function to allow inhabitants themselves to become key agents in ensuring their security” • Low rise housing instead of high rises • Territoriality – people care about their housing (when? how? ) • Natural surveillance – area's physical characteristics and the residents' ability to see what is happening should be connected • Image – the capacity of the physical design to impart a sense of security • Milieu – other features that may affect security, such as proximity to a police substation or busy commercial area • Safe Adjoining Areas - for better security, residents obtain higher ability of surveillance of adjoining area through designing the adjoining area • Yonkers • Desegregation crisis / Show Me a Hero
Broken Windows Theory • James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling ’’Broken Windows, ” The Atlantic Monthly, March 1982 • Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. • Or consider a pavement. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of refuse from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars. • • • 1969 Philip Zambardo, car experiment Fear and its links to Order Community policing / low level policing Zero tolerance Critisism?
Crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) • How do you think it works?
New Urbanism, Sustainable development and PIU • • Collaborative planning Smart growth Collaborative Strategic Goal Oriented Programming Principles of Intelligent Urbanism (PIU) • • • a balance with nature a balance with tradition appropriate technology conviviality efficiency human scale opportunity matrix regional integration balanced movement institutional integrity
Trends • Depopulation of some cities / rise of other cities • Young people (millenials) move into the city • Why? What type of cities? • Compact urban living – why does it appear more attractive than suburban living? • • Harnessing advanced industries Anchor institutions Embedding technology in urban design Design for mixed income Walkability Density Transit-Related Value Public spaces • Gentrification and other ways of figthting urban decay?
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