This is a reading response for the course Urban Design Theory given by David Monteyne at the University of Calgary.

Reading Hodge’s chapter [1] on the Modern history of Canadian city design, I wonder whether planning for a longer term is actually possible. Past planners couldn’t anticipate subsequent developments—like automobiles, urban expansions, and suburbanization—and I am not sure if we can approximate socio-economic and transportation developments over the next years. However, today’s planning decisions will have significant impact on how the cities of the future look, feel, and live like. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a reading response for the course Urban Desgin Theory given by David Monteyne at the University of Calgary.

The main theme throughout the readings for me was the significance and the divergent interpretation of open streets and squares as public spaces. It was particularly interesting to read how Baudelaire (as discussed by Berman [4]) sees Paris’ boulevards as a place where people of different classes would eventually come together again, whereas Engels understood Manchester’s thoroughfares as a “hypocritical plan” to hide the misery and poverty present in workers’ districts [1]. What troubled me reading this, is that his description of how Manchester is structured along class divisions, still applies to most cities of the world. People living in gated/suburban communities and those living in poorer neighbourhoods are not really bumping into each other on great common boulevards—instead, they probably stand bumper to bumper separated by steel, glass, fumes and noise. Read the rest of this entry »

Being rather busy these days with course readings and other stuff i tend to neglect this little blog of mine and indirectly you, dear readership. I’m sorry for that. But i have to tell you: the courses are really interesting. I am taking Social Contexts of Technology given by Patrick Feng and Urban Design Theory by David Monteyne. So to let you in on what the readings are about, i’m going to post some of my responses onto this blog. Thematically this fits in with what i was blogging about in the past and otherwise it is always nice to reuse material. So stay tuned.