Shape Of Boston City Urbanism Homework Help
Writing
Shape of the City
Natural Features: rivers, bays, lakes, hills, mountains
Paths: highways, boulevards, main streets, rivers, canals, subways.
Development: built environment (versus unbuilt nature: you are looking for the form or shape of the city), important public buildings, important building groups, distinct districts, both natural (what you see on google earth) and municipal boundaries. (often not the same as the city has grown with illegal settlements, for example, that increase the actual city shape.)
Special Places: parks, plazas, open spaces, landmark places and or buildings.
Make at least 4 black and white photocopies of your base map. On each copy with a colored pencil/pen, mark-up separately each one of the categories listed above, using your judgement as to what is relevant. A river can be a natural feature and/or part of the transportation system. A Boulevard can be part of a path system, but also a landmark and a special place in the city. The subway system may be useful to reinforce some form ideas.
As emphasized in class, you want to try initially to focus just on form, leave the knowledge that the river provided an optimal condition for a harbor out of your thinking, to be reintroduced at a later stage. I have discouraged people from doing their ‘hometown’ for this reason; you think you already know everything and therefore won’t make any discoveries from the analysis.
On completion, pin them up on the wall and try to identify patterns in ways that were described in class. Look for patterns, consistencies, breaks, size comparisons, shapes, hierarchies and so on. Write down each of your discoveries and see if your thoughts are reinforced by the forms on others of your analysis maps. This is not easy, some things will fall into place and be clear; write those down; my city is an island, it is organized along the waterfront, it has a river running through the center, it has grown from the historic center, the hilly landscape influenced the form of the city and so on, but others will take a bit of effort; do not expect everything to fall into place on the first try. Try to think of this as if you were trying to describe the skeleton of the city that holds everything else together.
Submit:
Your hand-in for this assignment is not maps, but a text no longer than 1 page, which describes your city form, shape and features, using the discoveries you have made from this analysis and divided into each of the categories listed above: Natural Features, Paths, Development and Special Places. (If you incorporate some of your analysis maps in your final presentation, you will get extra credit.)
