Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Framework
- Part II Ecological features
- Part III Urban features
- 10 Human structures
- 11 Residential, commercial, industrial areas
- 12 Green spaces, corridors, systems
- Epilogue
- Appendix A Positive and negative attributes of an urban region
- Appendix B Equations
- References
- Index
10 - Human structures
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Framework
- Part II Ecological features
- Part III Urban features
- 10 Human structures
- 11 Residential, commercial, industrial areas
- 12 Green spaces, corridors, systems
- Epilogue
- Appendix A Positive and negative attributes of an urban region
- Appendix B Equations
- References
- Index
Summary
The outcome of the cities will depend on the race between the automobile and the elevator, and anyone who bets on the elevator is crazy.
Frank Lloyd Wright, quoted on Public Broadcasting System, May 27, 1974Rome did not look like the capital of a great empire … no broad avenues and few open spaces … Few streets were wide enough to allow vehicles to pass one another and most of them were unpaved. … to eliminate daytime traffic jams … the night clattered with the cacophony of wooden carts … The rich lived in houses with no outside windows … rooms were grouped around one or more open-air courtyards … Shops lined many of the main streets … Rome was a city of horrible smells. Rubbish and sewage, even occasional human corpses, were tipped into the street. Passersby were so often hit by the contents of chamber pots emptied from the second floor or the roof that laws were passed … City life was made bearable only by the ready availability of water. Four aqueducts … strode across the land, bringing fresh, clean water …
Anthony Everitt, The Life of Rome’s First Emperor Augustus, 2006Once again we explore the core of urban ecology. This time built structures, interacting with organisms and the physical environment, play the leading roles (Bartuska and Young, 1994). Concentrated urban roads and buildings represent a pinnacle of human engineering and architecture, indeed construction.
Hard straight lines, rectangles, grids, and other patterns close to Euclid’s geometry predominate. Such patterns, providing many benefits to people packed together, contrast with more natural lands worldwide mainly displaying the soft curves of nature. Yet even the casual observer will notice and feel nature throughout the densest parts of city centers, commercial areas, and high-rise residential areas. Here the hard lines provide contrast to the irregular curves, or vice versa. Indeed, the two forms are well intertwined in urban areas.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Urban EcologyScience of Cities, pp. 275 - 313Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014