Urban Planning Models

In “New Axioms for Reading the Landscape: Paying Attention to Political Economy and Social Justice,” Don Mitchell incorporates old ideas from Peirce F. Lewis’s original “Axioms for Reading the Landscape.” At the same time, Mitchell includes new ideas into his axioms. In Axiom 1, he explains that “the landscape is not produced through ‘our unwitting autobiography’ (as Lewis describes it), but as an act of (social, not individual) will” (2007, 34). He also stresses the idea that landscape should be produced as a commodity. In contrast, Neil Smith explains the main causes behind gentrification. Smith explains how gentrification happens through a process which he calls “rent gap” (1979, 545). In gentrification, the landscape is a commodity because it loses and gains monetary value through disinvestment and investment.

Rapid urbanisation has caused a variety of problems, including transport congestion, lack of sufficient homes and living conditions, sanitary and health care issues, and crime. For all these problems, city planners have attempted potential solutions, each with varying degrees of success. Cities including London, Manila and Mumbai have several of the aforementioned problems, and have each tried their own potential solutions. This essay will discuss how successful these schemes have been in resolving these issues.

Small roads with interconnecting patterns of streets and sidewalks within the complex, instead of huge highways surrounding and isolating them, began to be greatly favoured. However, New Urbanism, too, like all other architectural styles had its drawbacks. Alex Marshall, a journalist, argued that New Urbanism was essentially a grand fraud, a gimmick, a marketing scheme that repackaged the conventional suburban sprawl behind the façade of nostalgic imagery and empty aspirational slogans. In some cases that adopted this style, the span of the complex was so large, that providing only pedestrian pathways was not feasible and reliance on automobile was constructed. In other cases, automobiles were allowed inside the complex, maybe a bit too liberally, forcing the design to lose its essence. Also, some so-called New Urbanist designs implement the strategy of segregating spaces according to function and the connecting them through a couple of bridges plonked here and there. So, these towns only wear the veil of a New Urbanist town whereas it is actually following the hundred-and-fifty-year old prototype of an urban

Well known in cities at the time were the City Beautiful movement and the city practical, however, social issues were merely pushed to the side. Wirka (1996) explains that “both are undoubtedly important movements in the history of planning” (p. 57), however, she goes on

One other glaring example of the injustice committed by gentrification is the attack on localized social life, which in itself is a manifestation of the many wrongs perpetuated by this so called “painless” process, because before gentrification many of these areas were able to create and foster this sense of communal solidarity, which afforded and allowed them to build generational relationships, which placed an emphasis on creating a real sense of community pride. Therefore, many of the local residents took to the heart in looking out for what was best for their neighbors, thus there was not this sense of entitlement exhibited in residents, but a real sense of pride in knowing that they themselves were able to create something uniquely their own

In the constantly changing economy of cities, the growth of city housing is oftentimes neglected. In “Cities Mobilize to Help Those Threatened by Gentrification” Timothy Williams recounts how gentrification has evolved over the years. Mentioning how cities have changed in order to appease the younger professionals, Williams shows how the city itself is in jeopardy due to the tax increases. Slowly loosing their faithful residents as well as historic culture cities face a big deal. Williams gives quotes from faithful residents, “…long time homeowners are victims of the success story”, (Williams 346). In “Cities Mobilize to Help Those Threatened by Gentrification”, Williams uses his credible quotes and modern statistics to generate the reader’s emotions, with desire to change how city officials go about gentrification in culturally infused cities.

This article was a little depressing to read because it showed that the African American community is being torn left to right for the BART transportation system, or that they are being moved from one development place to another. The role of the government did not help their case either because the government spends so much rebuilding the homes or as a result the middle class and not the lower class could only afford the homes they build like they intended. To support her claims the authors use numbers and statistics that are available through some of the government programs. There were discriminations towards the African American because of their income status/skin color and a result their opinion did not matter. Then I started questioning the government and the planner roles in the city. The only people who are going to know what is best for their community is the people that live there. The government and the city planners think that they know what is going but in reality they don’t because they are not experienced in the community. So then is it not better to let the people voice their opinion on what they need and the government and city planners work around

Charleston has long had racial tensions, however seeks to provide equal racial rights, even to the Ku Klux Klan. In fact, not only did it authorize a permit for a parade permit in the city, the African American and Jewish police chief protected their march as he would any parade permit (Jackson & Sinclair, 2011). The police chief personified cultural change as he allowed the changes to happen through him, not to him. Finally, to continue the great work architects and contractors must work in sync with each other. Natural polar opposites, each has a responsibility to understand the why for the assignment, as each project must be a good fit in order to sustain the work for future generations (Jackson & Sinclair,

In closing, urban recovery is more than just putting bricks and cement together, mortar and

Viewing the complex matter of gentrification succinctly, it helps to uncover how multifaceted it is; in that gentrification involves the oppression, marginalization, displacement of vulnerable populations, particularly, the poor, and the black who are often already negatively impacted by the effects of classism, and racism. Gentrification threatens to erode the communities and livelihood maintained by these set of people because their displacement becomes a precondition for the total transformation of the area.

Cities are generators of economic life and source of changes in the world. Thereby, Jane Jacobs in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities puts into relief the role of cities on the social and economic levels, while denouncing the disastrous consequences of urban renewal programs. To that extent, in chapters 2 and 3, she discusses "The Uses of Sidewalks”, arguing that over all people need safety and trust in their city. Therefore, first she claims the necessity of keeping streets and sidewalks safe because they are the “vital organs” of cities (29). Secondly, she argues that the functioning of cities should be organized in order to foster human interaction in which “casual public

In today’s society, it may seem that gentrification can eliminate poverty and increase neighborhood opportunities. Low-income residents and property owners will be the first to be altered by gentrification. In an email to the editor at the Atlantic, Freeman, the director of the Urban Planning program at Columbia states “ Gentrification brings new amenities and services that benefit not only the newcomers but long term residents too. Full service

New Urbanism, a burgeoning genre of architecture and city planning, is a movement that has come about only in the past decade. This movement is a response to the proliferation of conventional suburban development (CSD), the most popular form of suburban expansion that has taken place since World War II. Wrote Robert Steuteville, "Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for nearly all human transportation"1. New Urbanism, therefore, represents the converse of this planning ideology. It stresses traditional planning, including multi-purpose zoning,

Part two of Death and Life explains several conditions for city diversity based on the observations of different American cities and discusses in depth the four factors that Jacobs believe are critical for the development of a city. The basis for generating diversity lies in these conditions, and cannot be secludedly achieved by planning and designing. This part lays out the foundation and is the basis for the rest of the book. It shows urban planning and many possible remedies for creating equal diversity, and studies why these are not applied and the effects of it not being so.

Designing a city from scratch is a remarkable thought experiment but ultimately fails at implementation because we always approach it from the perspective of “how can we create a new city that solves problems of existing cities.” It’s less a process driven by design and more by critique. Urban living has paved its way into modern society, yet the vision for a city has changed over time. Large settlements need planning to grow; yet differences in minds is what leads to the modifications of a city, in return makes a city so unique. Alterations in opinions are what thrives urban life, still these differences are what skews the view of how others see a city compared to myself. They say the eye of the beholder deems beauty; this could explain