User:Genjix/Urban development
Yesterday, you got up, you worked, you slept, you died. Loyalties were to our immediate family, maybe our community. Work was only a means to provide for your family. Your ecology might only be your town (villages by today's standards). Tribal or national boundaries were strong as a foreigner was strange. Unusual. Not a common occurrence.
A man was defined by his workplace. But things are changing. The old mentality measures a human by his financial wealth. The new by his person. This gulf keeps becoming wider. That's a good thing.
One of the greatest innovations of the industrial age was division of labour. Seperating the polluting factories from residential areas. Dividing people into pidgeonholed jobs. Your class was set for life. You attend your job, help sustain the community and provide for your family. Also known by the 'atomic family' or the 'American dream'.
But things change. Society undergoes a continual revolution.
We had the industrial age, atomic age, space age. We are now in the process of a new age, more revolutionary then the previous ages. If part one of the trading of knowledge and culture happened in the 15th century when Johann Gutenberg came up with the printing press, then this is part two: the information age. Information is a commodity we all share. It's value goes up the more it's traded. Ideas cannot wear out, they can forever be traded.
Countries trade goods. People trade ideas. We have built ourselves a global network to uplift ourselves to the next step of growth. Total information freedom. Economies are undergoing a shift from product based to service based businesses. These knowledge workers take the raw data, apply their creativity and work it into some valuable information output.
Creativity is the ability to come up with new novel solutions to problems. As no one is born with ideas, it's logical to say creativity is the re-application of ideas from other fields to a different field in novel ways. To be creative, you have to have general knowledge. You need to be a generalist.
Knowledge workers also need the raw data to work with. Science is a form of knowledge work where having the source data has always been a requirement. Journalism is another form where due to rapid recent developments, this is rapidly becoming normal.
As we shift to becoming generalists, the industrial idea of segregating and carefully sorting society is an illusion. An inflexible destructive one. The suburban ideal of districts for every industry, different residential areas, central planning of roads has led to urban sprawl.
New Urbanism is the dinosaur of urban planning- formerly thought of as slow, prehistoric and dumb; rediscoverd as intelligent, fast and superior. Natural organisation leads to self organising natural cities built for people not cars.
New Urbanism development is chiefly concerned with diversity and minimising car
use. It does this through the use of mixed plot developments (rich and poor
together) and building for the pedestrian.
File:Revised petrol use urban density.JPG
Consider that the US developments are mainly suburban, whereas European are New Urbanist in nature. Suburbanism is an artificial shopping-mall style construction of a city that leads to huge amounts of waste and ghettos. Are cities being built for cars or for people?
pavement size limits number of people. why have cars, not bicycles
big town square, lots chairs+free internet
public announcement board
sense of place + look good
ability to decorate and stylise your house
more space for terminating buildings rather than disorientating curvy roads
give vista for memorable landmarks
safer, need less police patrolling the smaller area
ppl without car independ
oil going up .etc sustrainability
new urban europe?