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Showing results for tags 'city planning'.
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Books on urban development... anybody read any?
Kiwiwriter47 posted a topic in Architecture & Urban Planning
How you create cities and run them is a fascinating subject to me as a city PR officer and a SimCity builder, and a historian, so I like to read books on those subjects. I found a few that are helpful: The Power Broker, by Robert Caro. This is the Pulitzer-winning biography of the man who wrecked New York's mass transit systems and replaced them with superhighways, building up a power empire, covering up his racism. The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs. She shot Moses and his plans to build a superhighway through Manhattan's Houston Street like the Red Baron nailing Snoopy. WPA Guide to New York City/WPA Panorama of New York City. 1939. Federal travel guides to New York and rich with history. How the Other Half Lives, by Jacob Riis. I hit the roof when I read this as a teenager. I hit the roof again when I read this as an adult, realizing that nothing had changed. In fact, the "new-law tenements" stink as much as the "old-law tenements." And sweatshops still make people sweat. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. If it isn't in there, you don't need to know about it for the city's history. They did a new volume: "Greater Gotham," for 1898 to 1910. Just as big as the first one, but only 12 years. Holy moley! The Great Bridge, by David McCullough. How they built my favorite bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge. Engineering, people, politics, crime, and color. The World Beneath the City, by Robert Daley. How New York got water, gas, electricity, sewer pipes, and some of the great characters involved with them, like Smelly Kelly. Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, by George Washington Plunkitt. "A series of practical talks on practical politics by New York State Senator George Washington Plunkitt, delivered from his rostrum, New York County Court House's Bootblack Stand." Except for the portion on gas and excise, it's as true now as it was in 1893. Architect's Institute of America Guide to New York. Walking tours and analysis of architecture. Caustic. NYPD, A city and its Police, by James Lardner and Thomas Reppetto. The history of the police -- a tale of politics, peril, payola, padding, and enormous courage and valor, from the 1840s to 9/11 and beyond So Others Might Live, a history of the New York Fire Department. (I don't have it in front of me, so I can't give the author). Does the same for NYFD, with less issues of corruption and more issues of culture, particularly politics, race, and societal changes, leading up to female firefighters and the horrors of 9/11. Report From Engine Company 82, by Dennis Smith. A first-person, up-close of the life of firefighters in the South Bronx during the dreadful "war years" of the early 1970s, where "The Bronx Was Burning," and Dennis and his colleagues had to put it out. It says a LOT about the interaction and intersection of firefighters and their neighborhood: class, race, poverty. More than fire is combustible. Report From Ground Zero, by Dennis Smith. His story -- and those of other firefighters -- of the city's response to the 9/11 attacks and the weeks thereafter. Gripping stuff about government and people in action in a municipal and national crisis and inaction in that same crisis. Behind the Green Lights, by Detective Cornelius Van Willemse. He was an NYPD detective in the early 1900s. Very different force back then, but not so different a New York. Blue Blood, by Edward Conlon. The memoir of a Harvard graduate who became a New York cop and worked in housing projects in The Bronx. His family comes from law enforcement, so he brings an interesting perspective to the situation. Blue on Blue, by retired NYPD Deputy Chief Charles Campisi. He was head of the Internal Affairs Bureau, and he really shook things up. He presided over the Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima fiascoes. He tells a lot about how IAB really works and what it does, and you learn a lot about the culture of the police, New York, and the politics therein. One point he makes repeatedly: they do integrity stress tests on street cops -- leaving out money and fake drugs at "crime scenes," offering them "bribes," or turning in "purses full of money," and 98 percent of the time, the officer being tested passes it, not even knowing he has been tested. I'd like to get a first-rate history of London, my mother's family's home town, one of my other favorite cities in the world (along with San Francisco and Christchurch, New Zealand), but I haven't been able to find a good one yet. If anybody knows of good books on "how to run a city" or "histories of cities," I'd like to hear them. If anybody wants to see a good pun, I can accommodate them, too!- 8 Replies
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Does anyone watch the youtube channel City Beautiful. Its a channel that covers issues related to city planning. Check it out. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGc8ZVCsrR3dAuhvUbkbToQ Its one of my favourite channels.
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Hey forum folks, my newest city, Stockton, needs some thorough planning in order to sucessfully expand. It's 72.000 sims, playing on the lovely EUREKA map, so there is room to expand to the north and east (started in the left bottom corner of the region). So far all runs well, slight deficit. there is still a LOT of room to the north to expand, but i want to keep my city realistic (well, halfway, realistically the city would have been founded along the coast as a port,...nevermind)...mid size, think Southhampton, Kiel, Atlantic City, the likes. I attached a map for you to see the general outline: YELLOW: rail (connects to all other tiles except north); PURPLE: major avenues and approved extension(no connection to other tiles so far, that is all done by 4 arterial roads (more or less forming a cross around the CBD in all directions except north); ORANGE: planned rail extension; RED: planned second industry zoning (but open for anything, really) and planned avenue extension; GREEN: already certain about these areas; GREY: where do i put my harbour? Farms form a ring around the west and east, and i wanted to keep at least SOME of them (develepment nibbling them away ever so slowly already). all input is appreciated; trying to develop my city as realistic as possible. hope this is fun for you..:) have a nice weekend, y'all.
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Could Hugh Ferriss's Metropolis of Tomorrow be made walkable?
Ocram's Razr posted a topic in Architecture & Urban Planning
Hugh Ferriss was famous for drawing City Noir architectural “renders.” He also had an idea for a major city the same density as Manhattan but designed to be more livable and have landmarks be better appreciated and viewed. The buildings with courtyards are 4-10 storeys tall; they have green roofs and are all near to parks; then there are humongous ‘centers’ (with the smallest ones taller than the Empire State Building) which are described as mountains over the forest of low-rise to mid-rise housing and parks The problen with his plan (besides the fact that the ‘centers’ are too big to be built with 20th century materials and machinery) is that everyone had to rely on autos to get anywhere. He designed the city with giant multi-leveled highways and expected everyone to live in mid-rise apartments with green roofs but work and shop in the supersized landmark ‘centers.’ Here is a picture of the business district, clearly showing huge thoroughfares and several skyscrapers. Perhaps the ‘centers’ could be turned into Arcologies with onsite housing and the condominiums/apartment complexes could have ground floor retail or be interspersed with shopping malls (preferably with offices taking up a portion of the space). With mass transit, there could still be commuters from the lower density (majority housing) areas to the gigantic centers. Perhaps utilizing fused grids on the predominately residential neighborhoods could also help (along with the changes that entails such as mixed use, medium-high density main streets). What do you think? How would you go about resolving the vision of having huge skyscrapers/centers looming over smaller buildings but spread apart from each other with the modern principles of walkability? -
-------------------------------------------------------- [AUTHOR'S COMMENT] -------------------------------------------------------- This is the fourth and last entry of Project Haussmann. I hope you enjoyed this development in 4 stages: briefing-proposal-construction-result For the next entry we leave for a while the Urban Planning stuff and we start a new section in this CJ. The next entry will be something that you have already seen in Simtropolis, but I will be changing a few pictures to match the new storyline. It was posted several years ago, so probably it will be new for many of you. See u!
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-------------------------------------------------------- [AUTHOR'S COMMENT] -------------------------------------------------------- It's been quite a while, but I'm back :-) I hope you will like this new entry. For those of you who are new to Antarctica, check the previous 3 entries, or at least the preface, to understand what this City Journal is all about. Cheers!
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This morning the city again was crowded with delievery vans, double parked blocking all the traffic from people going for shopping for the weekend. I understand - what all the people carry away from the stores in the city someone has to bring in there so all this delievery vans are needed. But why they invented underground for the people but never for the goods? I imagine - a tube passing underneath the stores, they would stop, an elevetor would bring up the goods and they were inside the store by vertical way not interfering with the horizontal paths of the clients/consumers wouldn't this be much more elegant? The water supplies, the parking, the heating - everything they can, they put underground. Why not merchandise traffic?
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Google New 'Landscraper' Planned for London
MissVanleider posted a topic in Architecture & Urban Planning
A planned building I am sure that many will think is hideous, but from the one image I've seen, I don't actually hate entirely... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/01/google-submits-plans-million-sq-ft-london-hq-construction-kings-cross- 5 Replies
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-------------------------------------------------------- [AUTHOR'S COMMENT] -------------------------------------------------------- Imagine that you're part of the City Council and this is the first project update that you receive. What would be your feedback? Anything you don't like, you think would not work, or just does not make sense? Feel free to shoot!
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Author's note: a more formal, straightforward description of my region can be viewed here. This page will be dedicated to the nitty-gritty of things, especially focused on each of the city's development, as well as before and after scenarios, and more in-depth discussions on the region's infrastructure and urban design. And also, this is the detailed version of what I have on my profile, including how I use CAMeLOTs in the process of building, and this will host some of the back stories for my cities. Metropolis. Oh yes, it may be bewildering for some people because it can mean many things, from millions of people living in cramped areas, to large urbanized plots of land, to determining its economic, political, and social importance to the rest of the country, if not the world. And Contra Costa is a region that can be proud to say that it is a fast-growing metropolis unto itself. It may not want to aspire to bring into the likes of Mexico City of Tokyo at the moment, but, don't let the city's populations fool you as I've managed to develop ways on how to bring in quite a lot of people in small amounts of space. First of all, let me introduce to you the city of San Marcos. A brief description below can give you an overall idea of what the city is (and this will be my pattern for the rest of the series): Population: 312,000 Commercial Jobs: 425,000 Industrial Jobs: 20,000 Tile Size: Medium Mayor: Joseph Greene (incumbent since 2010) Civic Amenities: Education: Elementary - 7, Middle Schools - 2, High Schools - 4, Colleges (including sub-campuses) - 5, Universities (including sub-campuses) - 1, Libraries - 8, Private Schools - 3, Museums - 3, Sports Facilities - 6 Police Stations: 6 Fire Stations: 4 Parks and Open Spaces: around 80, with varying sizes Infrastructure: Bus Lines: 20 (14 operate locally, 6 continue on to Mendoza) Subways: 7 lines, with 38 stations (4 of which continue on to Mendoza) Railways: 3 lines, with 5 rail stations Highways: no elevated or ground level highways; all surface streets Airports: San Marcos Regional Airport, the only one operational in the region Media Firms: Radio Stations: 4 FM, 2 AM Television Stations: 3 (2 of them shared under one roof) Some of the unique features in the city include: - The commercial and industrial job availability allows spillover from neighboring Mendoza (currently 737,000 people); - The region's first turbo roundabout; - The region's first university; - The region's first (and currently largest) cemetery; and - The region's first army base location (now demolished, moved to neighboring city to accommodate population, jobs growth). Perhaps a most interesting thing about San Marcos is, it is not the political center of the region; nor is Mendoza (it is the de facto commercial center at the moment). However, the city is home to a professional baseball team, the San Marcos Braves, and its stadium is located on the eastern edge of the city. Here are a few images from San Marcos to start, with more to come on the next update... Saint Mark's University, the university in San Marcos that allowed it to become a thriving college town. Before renovations: After renovations: The Obelisk, dedicated in memory of Contra Costa's fallen heroes. Central Business District, daytime Central Business District, nighttime San Marcos Cemetery Looking forward to having productive conversations and timely feedback with my fellow members.
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Does anybody actually use "community gardens"?
cromabianca posted a topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
I mean: what ar they really for? Does anybody use them at all? I know I seldom (if never!) do....
