Archinect - Reversing Urban Dystrophy

Urban Analysis Exercise: Cincinnati

2012-02-17T12:38:00-05:00

Project 1 Summary

For Project 1 I chose the city of Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati is located in Hamilton County which is in the southwestern corner of Ohio. Cincinnati is bounded by the Ohio River to the south, the Great Miami River to the west and some low lying hills to the north and east. Cincinnati, like many eastern cities in the United States was settled originally by Native Americans. As early settlers moved west Cincinnati was acquired from the indigenous people at a very low cost and prepared for rapid expansive western development. The local geography of the region reflects the city’s strategic settlement. As many industrial cities in the early American days it is positioned on some ideal flat land along a very long river that connects to many other colonial areas.

It was this geographic context that my analysis first emerged from. After the various deductive hand drawings I discovered that the growth of the urban core of Cincinnati is concentrated in the flatland alo...

Spiro Kostof: A City Shaped

2012-01-31T13:34:00-05:00

Reading Summary

Spiro Kostof’s book, The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History, begins with an introduction by the author that sets the context of his book within the relatively young profession and pedagogy of Urban Design. Kostof seeks to explain the evolution of urban design through sociological patterns of human settlements dating back to Maya and Mesopotamia. His introduction describes the possible origins of urban design through the various human agglomerations, even if it is urbanism in an infantile form. Spiro Kostof discusses these origins of urbanism from multiple influences; from the morphology of military necessity, political forces, sociological humanistic responses, religious reasons and infrastructure needs, of which, clean running water being the most critical to human settlement. All of these are not too far off from what our modern city’s have to contend with on a daily basis for the pursuit of future land use and redevelopment.

Kostof desc...

Aseem Inam: Meaningful Urban Design

2012-01-31T13:33:00-05:00

Reading Summary

Aseem Inam’s essay titled: Meaningful Urban Design: Teleological / Catalytic / Relevant brings to discussion a thorough cross section of urbanists and architects, such as Rem Koolhaas and Christopher Alexander. The essay suggests, meaningful urban design is a multi-faceted question, one that can be answered with a number of solutions, with as many opinions of what makes meaningful urban design. Of the three subjects, teleological was not part of my vocabulary, and Inam defines this term as “purpose driven design”, I understand this to be more about the function than the form of a given urban design.

The following two terms defined, Catalytic and Relevant, call into question the varying socioeconomic factors that contribute to individual contextual urban design. Inam outlines his argument with equal amounts of precedent study, case study, theoretical pedagogical commentary and field observations. By using specific definitions from Koolhaas and Michael Sorkin reg...

GIS analysis of Connecting Cleveland 2020 Citywide Plan

2011-12-21T16:20:01-05:00

Acknowledgements

Because of the specific focus of this assignment that coincided with the classes collaboration and field trip to Cleveland I want to publicly acknowledge the following organizations and individuals, in no particular order. Kent State University’s Urban Design Collaborative, especially, Steve Rugare, Terry Schwartz, Dr. Maurizio Sabini and his students; The city of Cleveland Planning Department and the Office of Sustainability, especially Freddy Collier Jr., Anand Natarajan, James Danek and Kristofer Luckskay, for their generosity and sharing of GIS data files.

Summary of the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Action and Resource Guide

The Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Action and Resource Guide’s (SC2019) history dates back to a grassroots initiative from a group of individuals known as EcoCity Cleveland#. EcoCity Cleveland began their research on the bio-region surrounding Cleveland in 1992. By 2007 EcoCity Cleveland merged with its collaborator, the Cleveland Natural...

Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Action and Resource Guide

2011-12-21T16:07:31-05:00

Sustainable Cleveland 2019: Action and Resource Guide

Introduction

The city of Cleveland, Ohio has a well known industrial past. While Cleveland’s history of being an important port town along Lake Erie within the Great Lakes Basin, the city also suffered historic damage to its reputation because of the Cuyahoga River fire in 1969. This event, while devastating and tragic, marked an important point in history. The Environmental Protection Agency developed the Clean Water Act because of the river fire, which in part, inspired the modern movement of sustainability (SC2019).

This Action and Resource Guide is driven by yearly progress indicators that culminates in the year 2019 with a more sustainable and equitable city. The choice of the year 2019 is also significant because it will mark the 50th anniversary of the Cuyahoga River fire and the Clean Water Act, taking Cleveland from its’ polluted “rust belt” past to a cutting edge multi-faceted sustainable city of the future...

Alan Berger - Systemic Design (c) Can Change the World

2011-11-22T16:25:55-05:00

About the Author

Alan Berger is a Tenured Associate Professor in Urban Design and Landscape Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also is the Director of P-REX (Project for Reclamation Excellence). P-REX, founded in 2002, is a multi-disciplinary research component of MIT that focuses on reuse design for waste landscapes around the globe. P-REX is run on grant funding that has come from a variety of sources (US EPA, Tiffany and Co., Toyota and other non-governmental organizations). Under Berger’s direction P-REX develops and implements designs for restoration of previously developed landscapes that have been destroyed by the impacts of modern development.

Alan Berger – Systemic Design Can Change the World.

The introduction to this book – which was also a concept for a lecture of the same name- b...

Introduction - First Post

2011-10-10T20:09:40-04:00

I would like to start this blog out in simple fashion, without too much fuss, so that the ideas and concepts discussed can be stated clearly and thus allowing for constructive dialogue. I will always try to keep in mind a quote by Mark Twain, "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter", meaning I will endeavor to think before I speak, as I value your time (the blogosphere) as much as I value my time. As a licensed architect working full time, and a graduate student, time is very precious! As I continue to post to this blog, I will gradually fill you in on my background as well as my current and future plans as I explore my masters thesis.

Starting with my current academic standing: I am currently enrolled at Lawrence Technological University in my second year of a masters of urban design with a concentration in sustainable urbanism. I am pursuing this degree at a part time pace because I am licensed architect working full time as the director of architecture in ...