On the Theory of Urbanism
Urbanism is the evolution in our recent history from solitary buildings scattered across the landscape to a condensed collection of infrastructure and edifice that we call “cities”. It is a centralization of all the necessities of life, a utopian area to live, work, and play in. The phenomenon is not limited to North America, although the greatest advances in technologies that allow for Urbanism have been developed in America.
The process of urbanization often creates dense areas of aesthetically unpleasing volumes of concrete. In an attempt to remedy this, parks and green garden areas were added in strategic places either on, in, or nearby buildings. A sense of openness wanted to be created, and so sidewalks were minimized, if not eliminated. Order and pattern was preferred over chaos and discourse.
To generalize, all housing developments created under the urbanism ideals have failed. That is not to say that urban districts are failures, rather just planned urban housing. Urban districts that have naturally developed from the ground up to be a thriving metropolis, such as New York City, prove to be successful, but when the government attempts to add urban developments (such as Harlem), it is a general failure.
New Urbanism is the attempt to fix the problems with Urbanism. In some ways, it is working, as housing developments such as Harlem have benefited from the changes in methodology. However, New Urbanism did not directly spring from Urbanism; it does not find points of error in Urbanism and fix them, as there are no real errors in Urbanism. Rather, it takes the whole application of the urban environment and changes aspects of that so it better fits with the human nature. However, it seems as if the traditional view of urbanism, at least as it applies to urban housing, is a dead concept. Replaced by more applicable ideas, most of which are expressed in New Urbanism, Urbanism is nothing more than an interesting study.
The process of urbanization often creates dense areas of aesthetically unpleasing volumes of concrete. In an attempt to remedy this, parks and green garden areas were added in strategic places either on, in, or nearby buildings. A sense of openness wanted to be created, and so sidewalks were minimized, if not eliminated. Order and pattern was preferred over chaos and discourse.
To generalize, all housing developments created under the urbanism ideals have failed. That is not to say that urban districts are failures, rather just planned urban housing. Urban districts that have naturally developed from the ground up to be a thriving metropolis, such as New York City, prove to be successful, but when the government attempts to add urban developments (such as Harlem), it is a general failure.
New Urbanism is the attempt to fix the problems with Urbanism. In some ways, it is working, as housing developments such as Harlem have benefited from the changes in methodology. However, New Urbanism did not directly spring from Urbanism; it does not find points of error in Urbanism and fix them, as there are no real errors in Urbanism. Rather, it takes the whole application of the urban environment and changes aspects of that so it better fits with the human nature. However, it seems as if the traditional view of urbanism, at least as it applies to urban housing, is a dead concept. Replaced by more applicable ideas, most of which are expressed in New Urbanism, Urbanism is nothing more than an interesting study.
posted by microzeta at
6:54 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home