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.
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High school, library, mall....Does Religion play in to the idea of identifying centers? What about the Fire Department? Can these centers act to propel something counter to the urban sprawl? A school governs who is enrolled based on an inscribed radius. A mall has different reasons forpulling the community and possibly a much large radius- one that may even skip the local commuity (i.e. The Waterfront and Homestead.)
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting topic.