Thread by @DanielCJonas

An excellent overview of urbanism & its formal elements by the MIT Emeritus Professor, Michael Dennis.

At the heart of a city, are foundational elements which when neglected, erodes the narrative experience of once magnificent spaces.

cc, @wrathofgnon

classicist.org/articles/the-l…

2/ Need to relearn:

1. Cites are about urban space and not objects
2. How to make urban architecture and urban landscape
3. Cities should be lived in and not commuted to from suburbs

3/ Traditional city (Rome)

> Compact, dense, walkable, and lowest per capita carbon footprint
> Composed of buildings, blocks, streets, squares, garden, parks, neighborhoods, and legible public space

4/ Modern city (Abu Dhabi)

> Sprawl, not walkable, high per capita carbon footprint
> Composed of free standing buildings, illegible open space, and vehicular circulation

5/ - How did this happen?

>1780s - From city of public of space to the rise of individual space
>Mid-19th century - Circulation and movement, streets widened, people ventured out of their neighborhoods

6/ Frederick Law Olmsted, American landscape architect

> Commuting in and out of cities, people should live in greenery

> "They're narcissistic, navel gazing, architectural toy making"

7/ Three conditions for a city to be urban

1. People must live in they city
2. Buildings must (almost) touch and align on streets
3. Neighborhoods must be multi-functional

8/ Urban element: buildings

1. Free standing (e.g. NY Public Library)
2. Attached (e.g. Bath, England)
3. Composite (e.g. Palazzo Vecchio, Florence)

9/ Urban element: blocks

1. Long rectangular
2. Square or near square
3. Irregular (e.g. Rome - texture, nuance, and range (hard to design, since built over 100s of years))

10/ Urban element: streets

1. Street (e.g. Venice)
2. Avenue - point to point (e.g. Champs-Elysées)
3. Boulevard - traffic street articulated by lateral zones
4. Drive - one-sided street

> Historically the primary means of incorporating architecture, civic space, & urbanism

11/ Urban element: squares

1. Unified square - closure (e.g. Piazza Annunziata)
2. Composite square - dominate building, cathedral in the middle (e.g. Piazza della Signoria)

> US doesn't have a tradition of great squares, disappeared w/ modernism - became city circles

12/ Urban elements: fabric

> Artful combination of blocks & streets that hold together a space, emphasizing #gentledensity

Examples:
> Quartieri Spagnoli, Naples - vibrant & active neighborhood
> Back Bay, Boston
> The Cerdà Blocks, Barcelona

13/ Urban element: neighborhoods

> Civic structure, clear center, consistent fabric, clear edge

Two great examples are Greek & Italian cities, such as Priene & Florence shown here:

14/ Urban element: gardens

> Bounded, specimen landscape elements, mediating element between the city and open country side
> Serve to mediate the space between the city & landscape

Examples:
> Public Garden, Boston
> Boboli Gardens, Rome

15/ Urban element: parks

> Informal, large, irregular shape, picturesque
> Less precise, less symbolically loaded, less designed
> Rolling landscapes with trees, and not in alaise

Examples of urban parks:
> Buttes-Chaumont, Paris
> Central Park, NY
> Prospect Park, NY

16/ Final examples

> Bordeaux, Water Mirror
> Bordeaux, Tram - no fences - integrated into city
> Savannah, Georgia - 1 of the most historic cities in the US
> Hong Kong - signs & shops give the city its character - they define the people layer of the space, just like strees

17/ P.S ☝️

Would highly recommend that if you want to learn more about what elements make a city truly special, check out some of these fantastic tweets about "density" from @wrathofgnon ⤵️

twitter.com/search?q=densi…