Over the past few centuries, after mankind had almost fully embraced the thought of living life within the confines of a city, the people in charge of the maintenance and upkeep of the sprawling metropolises that now dominate the world scene have used methods that are equally alike and different in order to accomplish their goals. Often considered one of the first great city planners of pre-modern times, Haussmann was given the task to recreate the sprawling mass that Paris had become into a landmark of both beauty and power. His personal style, although having its own fair share of critics, is now considered to have been at least fairly successful in completely retrofitting and modernizing the monuments, the roadways and the main public systems that we have grown accustomed to seeing in today’s Paris. Many of the same schemes that Haussmann employed his citywide power are still in use today, but as time went on modern planners have also brought new ideas to the table. Robert Moses was able to completely revolutionize the thought of how much power a city planner could actually have, but at the same time he displaced thousands of people. His housing architecture and magnificent public buildings made Frank Lloyd Wright famous, but history remembers him most for his attempt to create the perfect planned community. Most recently the leaders of the Masdar project have been grabbing the limelight in the world of city planning, as they attempt to forever change how human beings interact in the urban area around them. As it is with everything involving millions of people, the architects mentioned above laid plans that had both pros and cons in the eyes of the population. Perhaps if all of the more effective methods that these great vision...
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...r predecessors with what is being done already today in order to start to build the city of tomorrow. Masdar provides an excellent launching point, but more must still be done. The infrastructure of cities needs to become more intelligent and more resilient to decay. Transportation needs to evolve, relying more on self-driving cars and public transportation in order to relieve the congestion of traffic from city streets. New sources of energy need to be explored, whether that means solar, wind, water or a combination of all of them. Food should be imported from a number of local, self-sufficient farms. The road to creating the ideal urban setting is one that will be both difficult and time consuming, but if the steps explained above can be implemented along with the strategies learned by Haussmann and the other city planners then mankind will be on the right track.
During the last half of the 1800’s and the early part of the 1900’s urban population in western Europe made enormous increases. During this period France’s overall population living in cities increased twenty percent, and in Germany the increase was almost thirty percent. This great flow of people into cities created many problems in resource demands and patterns of urban life. These demands created a revolution in sanitation and medicine. Part of this revolution was the redesigning of cities. G.E. Baron Von Haussmann was the genius behind the new plans for the city of Paris.
With the influx of people to urban centers came the increasingly obvious problem of city layouts. The crowded streets which were, in some cases, the same paths as had been "naturally selected" by wandering cows in the past were barely passing for the streets of a quarter million commuters. In 1853, Napoleon III named Georges Haussmann "prefect of the Seine," and put him in charge of redeveloping Paris' woefully inadequate infrastructure (Kagan, The Western Heritage Vol. II, pp. 564-565). This was the first and biggest example of city planning to fulfill industrial needs that existed in Western Europe. Paris' narrow alleys and apparently random placement of intersections were transformed into wide streets and curving turnabouts that freed up congestion and aided in public transportation for the scientists and workers of the time. Man was no longer dependent on the natural layout of cities; form was beginning to follow function. Suburbs, for example, were springing up around major cities. This housing arrangem...
For this book report, I was assigned to read the book titled “How Paris Became Paris, The Invention of the Modern City”. Published in 2014 by former professor and well-known writer Joan DeJean. DeJean has written eleven books in her life consisting of several different topics. She’s written about French literature, history, and culture from the eighteenth century. She is a dynamic writer and perhaps has written her most iconic and dynamic piece in her latest entry “How Paris Became Paris”. In her book, she goes in-depth and details regarding the rise of Paris’ built environment and its effect on the nation of France and the entire global community as a whole. In this book report, I will describe and highlight the tipping point on the evolution
Finally, this paper will explore the “end product” that exists today through the works of the various authors outlined in this course and explain how Los Angeles has survived many decades of evolution, breaking new grounds and serving as the catalyst for an urban metropolis.
Certainly, this perception of modern Paris was part of the overarching social uprisings that occurred to oppose Haussmann during the demolition phases, which reflect the gentrified ideology of Napoleon III’s regime: “Old Paris” at its seediest was also the refuge of outcasts and the wretched poor—Parisians far removed from the fashions and mobility of the “world capital” pacesetters” (Rearick, 2011, p.22). Surely, this ideology would invariably set the trend for other European cities, which could create two objectives in a single urban renovation policy: (1) remove and relocate the working poor from the city, and (2) replace lower income housing with middle and upper class housing. In this manner, Haussmann’s slum demolitions would become part of a more hegemonic European style of urban planning, which would also be in used in cities, such as Vancouver, as a precedent for gentrification and class division in city
There is an interesting theory nowadays called urban acupuncture, which refers to the idea that carefully considered as small-scale architectural interventions have the potential to bring about positive change to a larger urban field. (Deyond, 2012) “Acupuncture” is a Chinese medical treatment procedures involving penetration of the skin with needles to stimulate certain points on the body. In Chinese medicine, doctors proposal that our bodies are able to heal by ourselves, and use some method such like acupuncture and cupping to simulate points to treat patients. Similarly, many modern cities are sick, facing the problem of excess urbanization: cities are full of buildings and become concrete jungles, and large numbers of transportations cause pollutions in the cities. If we take a city as an organism with different kinds of energy inside its “body”, which is similar to human being, urban acupuncture cure the city through changing small parts of the city.
Skyscrapers are a prime example of ways in which design can be both a response to and instigator of social change. Skyscrapers began in urban areas in the 1880s as a result to the increase of...
The study and theories of architecture over the years has been interpreted, transformed, and implemented in many ways some of which are coherent and related to one another and others which completely refute all other approaches. In this paper I will discuss the Theory of the Urban Artifact as posed by Italian Architect Aldo Rossi In his work "Architecture of the city"(1966). The title of the Rossi's book "Architecture of the city" reflects his understanding of the city as a man-made object, a single work of architecture in its totality, one that is not individual rather it is composed of many different parts that make up this totality. For Rossi one of the main elements for understanding a city is its urban artifacts.
During the last century Copenhagen has seen major changes in the physical construct of the city but who was involved and what changes have occurred? When did these changes occur? Where were the main areas of development? Why was this change needed? And also, was it a successful development? Main case studies for this discussion include Copenhagen’s post-war master plan for it’s city looking at how it seamless integrated its transport systems, pedestrian walkways and businesses along with housing and zooming in further to the Ørestad district and its development which includes various architecture projects by practices such as BIG. By beginning to find answers to these questions through different sources and analysing them not only through words but also by illustrations and diagrams, an understanding of Copenhagen’s development can be begun to be made. Before these questions can be answered a step back should be made reflecting Copenhagen’s history.
Garden city is a method of urban planning in which self-contained communities are surrounded by greenbelts (invisible line designating a boarder around a certain area, preventing development of the area and allowing wildlife to return and established) containing areas of residences, industry and agriculture.
Haussmann separated the city by making it into a geometric grid, with the majority of his "Grands Boulevards" running east to west and north to south. This plan brought a new symmetry to Paris, which it desperately needed. The narrow, winding streets that Paris was kn...
At the height of the Second Empire, Paris was one of the leading centres of capitalist culture in Europe during the mid-nineteenth century, made possible by the city’s reconstruction. The modernisation of Paris initiated an unprecedented method of urban planning under Baron Haussmann. It is this concept of modernisation that people immediately think of in terms of Paris and modernity. This focus on Haussmannisation, however, obscures the fact that Paris was already changing before Haussmann, as was evident in the arcades that sprung up during the 1820s and 30s. Plans of renovating the city were already being thought of in order to manage problems of overcrowding, diseases, social upheavals and infrastructure collapse. However, these plans were never realised; it was the small business owners—or the petit bourgeoisie—who saw to the creation of the arcades that drove the changes made within the urban landscape of pre-Haussmann Paris.
Le Corbusier. The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1987
The second very important issue to note is that slum growth is mainly a social aspect than it is physical. When architects appeal to the social lives of individuals, the architects can easily get a better solution to the slum problems. To achieve a social agenda when dealing with slums, architects can refer to the modern movement which, with its profound technology allowed architects to define the social status of people with the new age. Moffett et al (2004) writes that in the Modernist era, buildings and urban plans were viewed as instruments of social change. They were able to dictate, and hopefully improve social behavior among users. The modernist architects looked at the world as chaotic and dangerous and needed to be orderly. With this same utopian idea, the architects can try to reorganize the disorderly Kasanvu zone slum. However,
... architectures would led to a more organic organization beneficial to the people that choose to make their lives in this city. Although this model of a sustainable city is not a perfectly closed loop, it lays the foundation for one that is. Over time, with constantly evolving and improving technology and new methods of design from the scale of products to buildings, the gaps in the loop could be closed, and a “true” sustainable city could be fully realized.