Re:A Decade of Urban Transformation, Seen from Above
by carapace on Tuesday December 31, 2019 @02:02PM
(#21923526)
For literally millions of years humans would have known well only a handful of other people, and likely met less than ~100-200 other humans at all throughout an entire lifetime. Crowds are a new thing under the sun.
> People feel comfortable when they have access to the countryside, experience of open fields, and agriculture; access to wild plants and birds and animals. For this access, cities must have boundaries with the countryside near every point. At the same time, a city becomes good for life only when it contains a great density of interactions among people and work, and different ways of life. For the sake of this interaction, the city must be continuous - not broken up. In this pattern we shall try to bring these two facts to balance.
> ...
> Therefore: Keep interlocking fingers of farmland and urban land, even at the center of the metropolis. The urban fingers should never be more than 1 mile wide, while the farmland fingers should never be less than 1 mile wide.
Anyway, I like Christopher Alexander's "Interlocking Fingers" pattern: It seems someone has posted it here: http://iwritewordsgood.com/apl/patterns/apl003.htm
> People feel comfortable when they have access to the countryside, experience of open fields, and agriculture; access to wild plants and birds and animals. For this access, cities must have boundaries with the countryside near every point. At the same time, a city becomes good for life only when it contains a great density of interactions among people and work, and different ways of life. For the sake of this interaction, the city must be continuous - not broken up. In this pattern we shall try to bring these two facts to balance.
> ...
> Therefore: Keep interlocking fingers of farmland and urban land, even at the center of the metropolis. The urban fingers should never be more than 1 mile wide, while the farmland fingers should never be less than 1 mile wide.