Masterplan Bird's-eye Views

Here are a couple of bird's-eye views of the master plan:

Crabtree Grove Masterplan

I'm going to start posting parts of my project for a design review earlier this week. These sheets are about the master plan.

Buildable Space

I found this interesting blog post about the percentage of space that cities devote to streets, parking, and buildings. An interesting next step would be to compare these different percentages of land uses to other characteristics such as land value, quality of life, crime, traffic collisions, pedestrian collisions...

http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-are-25-looking-at-street-area.html

Arcosanti

I thought I'd look up and post a few pictures of Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri's urban laboratory in the Arizona desert (all photos are from flickr):

Tel Aviv

I thought I'd blog a little more about the precedent project. Specifically, I'll talk about what I found about Tel Aviv's urban plan.

Several articles I initially read for the project mentioned Tel Aviv along with Chandigarh and Brasilia as the most famous examples of a modernist city. Once I really looked into Tel Aviv, however, it seemed the city was more of a garden city with modernist architecture.

The city planner, Patrick Geddes, said it himself that the plan is derived mostly from garden city ideals but with a more urban character. The city is divided into superblocks like the other modernist cities, but in Tel Aviv the dividing roads are tree-lined boulevards rather than high speed highways. The buildings fronting onto these boulevards are mixed-use with commercial space on the first floor and residential units on the upper floors. The superblock is then further divided by a network of secondary roads that form an irregular pattern. These roads calm traffic similar to cul-de-sacs but without the disruption of traffic associated with cul-de-sacs. It is along these roads that the houses are found. Then in the very center of the block is a common green, or "village green" as Geddes called it. The neighborhood's civic buildings, schools, and other public buildings are located around this green.

Farish Street

Wouldn't it be nice if this street in Jackson could ever take off? I think the intention is for it to be a mini-Beale Street. From what I hear, it's been under development since the 1980s, but it's gone through multiple developers and delays of all sorts. I wonder if it could be successful with ordinary businesses for nearby residents, instead of trying to cater to the tourist crowd? I guess the earning potential with tourists is much higher, even though the risk of failure is also probably much higher.

The complete photo gallery is at:

http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/photos/galleries/2012/sep/25/here-and-now-farish-street/



Tire gardens

This looks like an interesting way to recycle old tires. The original article is at http://gothamist.com/2011/08/15/check_out_this_1907_ferry_two_new_y.php#photo-1.