CompuServe Messages

Sanford, <<Have you thought about a city map or plan?>> Yes, I have probably thought about it too much! <bg> I recently recieved a gorgeous piece of E-Mail from Joerg Becker. He is developing a detailed plan for "Atlantis" and sent me a large scan of one of his drawings. I first opened the drawing in a file viewer window under PC Tools. The viewer had no zoom function, so I had to browse through his city plan district by district by panning a little window. It was a great way to see the city, starting from the small scale stuff and then moving out to see the whole picture. Joerg has an incredible sense of urban design! It we would have an amazing plan if we could get his hand in the drawing! But first, we need to clarify our "program" for the city. The only logistical problem I see with laying out a "zoned" city would be planning it in such a way that the city would be presentable with ten buildings, or a hundred buildings. If we plan too grand an initial layout, it could take a long time to fill in the holes. Another potential problem with zones is that they could take out some of the serendipity of the collaborative process. It seems that the motivation for creating "zones" was that people were afraid that intricate, small-scale contributions would be dwarfed by mega-structures or that someone would put their sewage treatment plant next to someone elses beachfront hotel… Another motivation for having zones would be to provide potential developers with a range of alternative ways of participating. The current Charter calls for six zones: 1) High-Rise 2) Residential 3) Industrial 4) Beach 5) Space Port 6) Central Park * The Beach and the Park would seem to require a hard line on the map. However, commercial, industrial and residential zones could evolve in many different directions, depending on what people are interested in contributing. We should be careful not to set these boundaries too rigidly at the start. The Space Port could be our first Portal World? (Or is it more like an Air-port or a Sea-port…Or, is it the "Worlds" Port?) * Cities evolve out of places with geography, natural resources, transportation and culture. These factors shape and give form to the city. Cities without constraints tend towards sprawl. While we may have infinite "space" to play with in setting up our city, I think we would have a better city if we started with some clear geographic limits. * What are the MINIMUM ingredients required for such a city plan? -Geography: hills, rivers, ocean, plains…natural things that define the place. -A rudimentary transportation network. -A means of parceling out land. -A zoning plan that generates meaningful relationships and hierarchies of place and purpose. -? * Joerg's "Atlantis" plan was like a European town where the streets, following the topography, join together in a series of open piazzas. The piazzas are the focal points of the city and also contain the most important monuments, temples, amphitheatres, offices etc. Lots or parcels in such a city come in every concievable size and shape–the only rule is that bigger/higher/closer to the center = more important! Although I value the European sense of scale and heirarchy, it is very difficult to see how it could be implemented in StudioCity without starting from a very detailed plan. Looking Joerg's finely crafted plan of "Atlantis", I thought about how much fun it would be to just build it! It was exciting to imagine what the city would look like in 3D from just the plan! Threre were no labels on the plan saying what things should be, just the footprints of buildings otherwise left to the imagination! However, there is also much to be said for a simple grid. I grew up in Portland, Oregon, which I believe to this day has one of the finest grids in the United States. The blocks are 200' on a side, giving it a comfortable pedestrian scale, and the North/South streets are slightly wider than the East/West streets to allow sunlight in… A uniform grid would be a heck of a lot easier for modeling infrasructure and for project management. A simple grid would make it easy to dole out property. And, the grid, by itself, doesn't make any assumptions about which buildings are more important than others–very important in a democracy! I hope that the StudioCity Plan is either very carefully designed by someone who is good at urban design, or is setup for simplicity, spontaneaity and self-maintainance. –Donald