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1.
Suburban sprawl causes a decentralization of activities that creates a new way of living that should be treated differently than urban and rural life.
3.
Often times on the outskirts of cities the only structures that get built are residential, leaving a void in terms of accessible amenities to the community. There is also a tendency to lean towards less sustainable ways of living because of the seemingly unlimited amount of space resulting in things being far away. Due the current economy, there is generally not very much new suburban sprawl being built, therefore solutions should be looked at for improving the existing conditions.
9.
Miami is an example of a city that is often considered very urban, but in reality the majority of the population lives in the suburbs. Development policies and codes are different in these unincorporated areas of the county and allow for homogeneous construction that focuses only on economic profit. This unincorporated area is organized by clumps of amenities such as commercial, school, and community centers that create a somewhat unified identity. At the urban scale, the lack of identity is a difficult problem to solve without completely reorganizing the structure of the suburbs. At a smaller scale, however, there are repeated building types throughout these various vague centers that serve as the identifying structure; for example a high school, a library, a mall. These buildings can be designed in such a way as to serve multiple purposes, and to become identifying centers for these communities. A new center for the community (different from a community center) is an ideal opportunity to introduce new sustainable practices that are easily replicable by the community. Currently, I am looking at a library to serve this purpose due to the large variety of purposes and age groups that it serves, and the fact that it is always a benefit to the community. It is important that whatever sustainable strategies are introduced are a mix of high technology and good living practices to ensure that they are actually absorbed by the community members that visit.

Site Analysis

In progress site analysis of Miami

"The muses are not amused"

I thought that a lot of the points that Silvetti made in this article were actually valid – and he made an effort to present both sides of the argument wherever possible. So, in fact, this article did not particularly enrage me or upset me. One thing I thought was interesting though was the comment that the time period he was focusing on was “bracketed by the exultant irruption … in our imagination of the Guggenheim Bilbao and by the wound to our affects left by the physical consequences of the September 11 attack, the disappearance of two buildings we did not know we would miss so much.” In the remainder of the article he criticizes various types of form making – of which I think he could have given more specific examples – however he doesn’t address the cultural impact that buildings might have despite of how they were formally designed. I think that understanding the impact that a building has in its environment is essential in understanding its success.
For example, while the Bilbao may be an example of blob architecture it has become so instrumental in the revitalization of the city. It has increased tourism there to the point that most people associate the two together. It is an example of how sometimes form alone can be what brings success to architecture. The instance of the World Trade Center is interesting for the opposite reason. While it was standing, it was not praised for its form and its impact on the city in the way that the Guggenheim in Bilbao might be; rather, it faded into the background. If it was praised, it was as a feat of engineering more than for its architectural qualities. The public spaces it made were pretty isolated and sterile, and the aesthetic as you looked up at it was monotonous – at least this was the impression that the general public got. The buildings have had more of an impact now that they are gone because people have realized how big their influence was, even with such straightforward designs (about as far from the Bilbao as you could get). Both of these examples provide interesting views on how form should be looked at in terms of its cultural impact in addition to its architectural merit.

After I wrote this, I thought about it some more, and I don't think it came out the way I intended it to. I was not trying to say that Silvetti's descriptions were neglecting to take into account the cultural impact that form might have, but rather that the article made me think of that as another important influence and consideration when determining form.

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Public policy can, and should, play an important role in the movement towards a more sustainable built environment.

The efforts of the architect at the level of the design of a singular building are not enough to spread sustainable practices at a large scale. Local zoning ordinances, building codes, and other laws should be modified to ensure that not only individual buildings, but overall development, are occurring in a more sustainable way. Specifically, accessibility, material usage, and the relationship with nature are all issues of sustainability that can be addressed through guidelines and laws set up by a governing body.

The suggestion here is not that policy changes will change the world in a day, but rather that it can begin to have a widespread effect on the general public. An interesting and important dilemma with the relationship between policy and design is that there is a thin line between being too rigid and too loose. Issues with current policy may be that the rules are strict in the wrong places and leave little to no room for exception. A specific example of public policy being changed in an effort to make a more sustainable environment is the Miami21 project – led by the Office of the Mayor and Planning since 2005 - that was just recently passed in Miami. This project has been very controversial (it was only approved this month) and it is being presented as being as influential as Burnham’s Chicago, Haussmann’s Paris, and the planning of New York, which is an enormous task to live up to. Some of the goals of Miami21 are to promote “smart growth” by adjusting zoning regulation to allow for live, work and shopping spaces to be more integrated, by adjusting current transportation strategies to encouraging easier use of public transit, and to make residential neighborhoods more focused on the public and the street. This project seeks to remedy the issues found in the City of Miami – to encourage people to move to an urban center – however, it completely ignores the issues of the suburbia that surrounds it. Hopefully this will not be an example of good intentions with bad interpretations or of policy ignoring one problem completely in an attempt to solve another. Public policy as it relates to the built environment is an excellent opportunity to address issues at both the small, single building scale and the large, urban scale, but it must take as many variables as possible into consideration in order to ensure that it is effective and not too limiting or too open.