Hefei Map

This water wasn’t a grave problem because my flask was nearly Hefei Map full and later I saw fresh water coming in beside some sand dunes. The pools were Hefei Map vividly blue, and gave rise to tufts of greenery which were being consumed by herds of yaks and sheep. At least they didn’t eat the flowers; the ground was sprinkled with dwarf iris and tiny blue flowers. The sand dunes had clumps of thorny brush in purple bloom. And above it all an eagle floated on the wind. Its wingspan must have been between six and eight feet.

Where Are We Now with City Design?

The notion that rationalist planning was going to create great cities and neighbourhoods was debunked scathingly in the 1960s, notably by Jacobs (1961). Subsequently, the idea that architects – or indeed anybody – can actually create great cities from scratch has, increasingly, been challenged. Venturi (2002) argued that a vibrant city should be an eclectic, complicated and historical architectural mix. In other words, a city designed from scratch loses complexity and risks homogeneity.

The danger is that organized planning actually can make cities worse despite good intent. For example, a rational approach can highlight out the planning flaws’ in existing cities that contribute to the very urban richness and vibrancy of those places. Unsurprisingly counterplanning has its advocates and, for example, Koolhaas (1978) celebrated the energizing nature of unwelcome congestion in Manhattan. In a yet more extreme example, the 1969 article Non-plan: an experiment in freedom, by journalist Paul Barker, architect Cedric Price and urbanist Peter Hall (Banham et al. 1969) postulates that no planning at all may not make our built environment any worse. Barker revisited this theme 30 years later and drew largely the same conclusions (Barker 1999).

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