Friday 8 February 2013

Urbanized... or Urbane-ized?

And this is the third movie.

From fonts to objects top cities, this looks at who designs the urban planning we see. Or, in some cases, the lack of planning. While this movie did try to show how cities are structured in their development, and they heavily rely on citizen buy in, there are a few points missed.

One is that despite any amount of initial planning, a lot of growth is organic, and the contours and features of the land can trump any plans made in the abstract. (Although if all you are starting with is a huge plain, that may be less of an issue.) The other point is that while planning is nice, it can be superseded by industrial concerns, to whit companies with their own plans to create their own spaces and get laws 'amended' or worked around if need be, which can throw a lot of design out the window.

The overall view of this movie is that urban development is happened. Time was spent on how to incorporate nature back into parts, but no comment was made on whether or not there should be more development in the first place. Mainly because there's just going to be increasing population so they need to live somewhere. Although maybe not in very good conditions.

An interesting movie, but a very pro- one.

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