1. How Slums Can Save the Planet

    Stewart Brand writes about the importance of cities and densities in the developing world. He goes on to stress the importance of density in rich nations, as well. There are lots of great quotes and points made, but this is my favorite bit:

    Alleyways in squatter cities, for example, are a dense interplay of retail and services—one-chair barbershops and three-seat bars interspersed with the clothes racks and fruit tables. One proposal is to use these as a model for shopping areas. “Allow the informal sector to take over downtown areas after 6pm,” suggests Jaime Lerner, the former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil. “That will inject life into the city.”

  2. In my Spatial Composition class, we read an excerpt from “Streets and City Patterns” by Allan Jacobs. The article compares the fabric of a city at the scale of one square mile. Some cities, like Venice, have narrow streets and many intersections. Newer cities, like Irvine, are spread out and deliberately avoid intersections. In general, it’s just fascinating to compare urban areas visually.

    For the slideshow above, I took screengrabs from Google Maps of cities I thought would be interesting to compare. To be fair, each picture has the Google-determined city center in it. Each picture is roughly 2500 square feet.