Module 1: Background of the "Field"-
Urban Design is what many large cities are "centered" around. By beautifying public space and allowing the people who these areas were designed for, to interact with the sites and give them a sense of comfort in the big cities is the reason that we, as designers, put a lot of importance on urban design. More often, cities are trying to become more of a haven for the residents and it has made urban design more significant. The cleaning up of urban areas has made the cities a more desirable place to live and it is apparent with rising numbers of population. Overall, urban design has made living in cities a lot more pleasing and comfortable with the added greenery. The added features such as vegetation, paving variations, and water features how made the cities more aesthetically pleasing and it is also helping the cities get away from the concrete jungle vibe. 

A city that has had a lot of success with urban design is San Diego, California. There are many areas of the city that have become completely reconstructed and turned into oases amidst the urbanism. Large sections of the coastal borders of the city have become “green zones”, with a lot of them being turned into parks such as Midway in downtown which has large water features, a playground, the USS Midway Museum, the Unconditional Surrender Statue, and many other elements. Instead of loading the coast with high rises and high-density housing, they pushed the urban boundary back, allowing human interaction with a large portion of downtown San Diego. This area was an example of successful urban design and urban planning, but urban design in large cities isn't always a success.


Locals and visitors alike enjoy the harbor views and interactive fountains at San Diego County's new Waterfront Park. Courtesy Stephen Whalen

SD County Water Feature Downtown


Unconditional Surrender Statue

There are some problems with urban design. For instance, The Children's Park in San Diego, California started out as a friendly area where museum goers could have a nice lunch and play in the water feature, but the design had flaws. The system of mounds that were there had to be taken down because there weren't views straight across the park and it created nooks and areas where people could hide, creating safety issues for people utilizing the space. The park now is home to many homeless people, the water fountain acting as a bathing area and the benches acting as sleeping quarters. Overall, the park located right across from the children's museum is no longer child-friendly and now basically a run-down waste of space.
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The Children's Park in its original design, before the removal of the grass mounds

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The Children's Park now with large populations of homeless people


Overall, urban design is a large part of comfort for people living in the urban setting, and although it can have ups and downs, the good out-weighs the bad. Urban design is designed for the people, they are the most important in this design setting, so catering to their needs is the purpose of Urban Design. The beautification of a city is important for the dwellers and for the visitors and hopefully, many designers see the importance of urban design so that they may alter the aesthetics for the cities as well.

Citations:

 Figure1-

 Whalen, S. (2014, August 28). San Diego County Waterfront Park [Locals and visitors aloke enjoy he harbor views and interactive fountains at San Diego County's new Waterfront Park. ]. Retrieved September 14, 2017, from http://blog.sandiego.org/2014/08/san-diego-water-parks/

 Figure2-

 McNair, J. (2013, June 24). Unconditional Surrender from Statue USS Midway [Digital image]. Retrieved September 14, 2017, from http://californiathroughmylens.com/2011/10/port-of-san-diego-statues-unconditional-surrender-bob-hope/

 Figure3-

 PWP. (2017). Children's Pond and Park [Children's Park San Diego, California]. Retrieved September 14, 2017, from http://www.pwpla.com/projects/martin-luther-king-jr-promenade-and-childrens-park-and-pond#

 Figure4-

 T. (2017, May 12). Children's Park Now [Residents of the Children's Park]. Retrieved September 14, 2017, from http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/sd-me-dog-park-20170509-story.html

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 14, 2017 at 11:30 PM

    I completely agree with you saying that cities are trying to provide something they inherently don't have, that being comfort and welcoming spaces. That is where urban design comes to the rescue. it helps us deign ways to provide what we want in places that naturally don't have those qualities we look for. In a way urban design is an answer to a problem we made ourselves.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownSeptember 16, 2017 at 10:32 AM

    Even though I agree beautification of cities is important, more thought should be placed to make sure it benefits people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. We should pay careful attention to make sure we don’t destroy the existing sense of place when performing urban design. Using San Diego as an example again, I feel that certain sections of the town, specifically Little Italy, have lost a lot of their sense of place in just the last 10 years with the new development.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownDecember 5, 2017 at 10:49 PM

    Your last paragraph states, "The beautification of a city is important for the dwellers and for the visitors..." There is no doubt a city should be beautiful, yet I agree with Andrea that the urban aesthetic should be determined by the existing context as much as possible. I don't believe it's the designer's job to alter the aesthetics in order to achieve their vision of beauty. Instead, the urban aesthetic should emerge organically through reiterating its existing conditions in the design process.

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  4. AnonymousDecember 6, 2017 at 9:30 PM

    I agree with you that beautifying the city is very important to residents and tourists. In China, some ancient cities still exist in some big cities. These ancient cities are often the most beautiful part of these big cities. Like Lijiang, Pingyao, and Phoenix and so on. The area around these ancient cities is constantly being converted into an architectural style similar to the ancient city to attract tourists and beautify the environment. I personally think this is a good design concept. To expand the worthy part of the expansion, and to beautify the ugly place.

    ReplyDelete
  5. HannaDecember 7, 2017 at 11:54 AM

    I think the green zones you described are interesting another large city with a completely different population density but high tourism rate that does this green zone concept quite well is Charleston, SC. What struck me about your piece was that it sounded like San Diego's intention is to create oasis's for its current downtown population and possible future population as well as tourists, these all sound like fortunate persons (probably middle & upperclass). But when talking about lower class and especially homeless folks they seem to be highly unwanted so my question would be if San Diego is doing anything for these people?As they clearly do exist in this "oasis" San Diego has created.

    ReplyDelete

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