site

_SITE ANALYSIS

An area on the fringes of the city between large warehouses and major shopping centers might originally not look ideal for residential purposes. However, it provides a unique opportunity to redefine the ideals of modern city residents and break through the standards that have taken over the urban design. In this almost industrial zone one can see a representation of he modern city reigned by randomness and constantly evolving into something new.

_DISTANCES

collage

_COLLAGE

 

sketches

_SKETCHES

 

Example1

"It is my very firm point of view that if we take a more systematic approach and take these "cities for people" more seriously we will find that the cities would be considerably more friendly, livable, and lively because people will be in these cities more. We will find that the cities will become more attractive because the scale will be smaller and the pace and noise is lowered. The cities would be dominated by other people, which is the most interesting thing in our lives."

_Jan Gehl

_Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village _aerial and street view

Greenwich village is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is a historic district that embodies the spirit and character of Old New York, as one can see there the major architectural styles of the early City displayed, side by side, ranging from the most naive to the most sophisticated versions.

Jane Jacobs

Greenwich Village  has preserved the quality of urban spaces thanks to Jane Jacobs. She was an urban theorist and and writer who used to live there and when, in the early '60s, there was a plan to put some major highways through Greenwich Village she argued that the car-centred approach to urban planning that Robert Moses was promoting would destroy the culture of New York city. She was a firm believer that citizens should have an active role in the development of their neighborhood, since according to her "cities as integrated systems that had their own logic and dynamism which would change over time according to how they were used".

_Times Square

Times square _The change

On 2009 urban planners noticed that Times Square was actually not a square, since 89% of it was actually roadway. So,on February 26, 2009, it was announced that traffic lanes along Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street would be de-mapped and transformed into pedestrian plazas for a trial period. When the pilot project first started it revealed a huge latent demand that people did not even realize existed until that time. So, the Times Square became the center of human activity once more, from snowball fights to flash mobs, the square was finally used again by people and set the example for other cities.

Example2

A smart city is a vision to create a city that uses the information and communication technologies, in order to integrate it's assets and services into a network that will interact with both the community and the city's officials. These technologies and applications are developed with the goal of improving the quality, performance and interactivity of urban services and to the contact between citizens and government, while allowing for real time responses to challenges.
 All of these stem from the realization that cities are made up of vast networks of people, businesses, technologies, infrastructure, consumption, energy and spaces. In a Smart City, these networks are linked together, supporting and feeding off each other. The point of a smart city is that people don't withhold knowledge but share it, in order to create a society with open data.

CLEAN TECHNOLOGIES ARE ALL ABOUT COLLABORATING. SO LET’S MIND EACH OTHERS BUSINESS!

 Copenhagen has won the international World Smart Cities Award in Barcelona(2014) for having the world's best plan the best plan Connecting Copenhagen. This plan focuses on collecting and using data to create a greener city, a higher quality of life for its citizens and a better business climate. An intelligent use of wireless data from cell phones, GPS’s in buses and sensors in sewers and garbage cans will assist the Copenhagen politicians in achieving the city’s objectives of reduced congestion, air pollution and CO₂ emissions.

TOOLS 

_Smart Grids (Water, Electricity)

_Intelligent Lightning

_Low-Energy Buildings

_District Heating and Cooling

_Urban Mobility

_Wifi Connection

_Sensors

_Smart Phone Applications

Example3

"Paris was a museum displaying exactly itself."

_Jeffrey Eugenides

Paris is the city with the streets that don't sleep. They are alive all day, living and breathing with the people who live there. The streets of Paris are the result of the rapid growth it had 1850 and Haussmann's plan of several symmetrical roads connected with smaller diagonical ones. 

What makes a city walkable?
Walkability focuses on neighborhood or village scale development, with many nearby places to go and things to do. Truly walkable communities are characterized by much more than good sidewalks and street crossings, they include many attributes: a mix of uses, frequent street connections and pedestrian links, timeless ways of designing and placing buildings. They create desirable places to spend time in, to meet others. All core principles for successful towns and cities evolved naturally from earliest times.

• A center: Walkable neighborhoods have a center, whether it's a main street or a public space.
• People: Enough people for businesses to flourish and for public transit to run frequently.
• Mixed income, mixed use: Affordable housing located near businesses.
• Parks and public space: Plenty of public places to gather and play.
• Pedestrian design: Buildings are close to the street, parking lots are relegated to the back.
• Schools and workplaces: Close enough that most residents can walk from their homes.
• Complete streets: Streets designed for bicyclists, pedestrians, and transit.

Paris was created from a series o villages coming together, an identity it preserved through the years as you can see the various neighborhoods existing today. A neighborhood, like a village, has the ability to serve to the needs of the citizens within its range without needing them to cross vast distances.
   
This fact, is  further accentuated if one looks into the spread of uses throughout the city. They are not focused into zones but they are within walking distances of every household.