Today's lecture hosted an interesing discussion on the design of cities, categorising cities into three major groups: Utopia, View and Power.
Utopia: focuses its interests around the idea of 'perfection' in all elements, with a 'perfect' patternised and geometric layout which is deemed to be the 'best' place to live, aka social Utopia.
View: values the creation of view points throughout the city - centralising its idea on creating a "Visual Experience".
Power: relies on administrative, cultural and symobolic components.
The lecture also discussed recognising the origins of a city, with four nations: Roman, Spainaird and American and British as examples.
Roman: Castran layout - based off two main axis
Spainard: Similiar to roman grid layout, however rotated 45 degrees to the north
American: Grid layout with squares measuring 6 miles by 6 miles
British: fits to natural topology of land, clear distinction between town an country, has a centralised area
REFLECTION
It is interesting to see how many countries throughout the world use these familiar techniques in their own cities, where they may tweak it as they desire, the origin of the layout remains. Todays lecture has grounded my understanding of the city of our group project: Amarillo, TX.
Amarillo very strongly represents the original American grid layout, with almost no variation branching from the central city area to the outer suburban areas.
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| Amarillo Town Map |
Upon establishing our assignment city, we have each decided to continue to do individual research on the town, focusing on more specific areas of interest which we will then itnerpret into a diagrammatic format. I have a good idea on what we should include in our poster, after identifying the town of Amarillo seems somewhat resistant to "change". A historical analysis/map with a timeline will be very helpful in explaining this personality.
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