Interpretation of City Forms

Mini-City called Madess. As far as a vision of the city, it was one that "Had a liveable and sustainable centre, with a defused centre that had focus points that occurred outside of the city centre. It separated Industrial from the commercial/residential uses, for terms of cleaner living". I guess Madess would be fairly unsustainable city, because of it's layout. Describing it's outer extremities, a Southern commercial zone supported by residential area with no public transport; this area seems to be a satellite suburb. Vegetated areas to the East create a natural landscape. Moving towards the CBD, there are two tightly packed high density Industrial areas separated by a river but are linked by bridge. Another bridge crossing the river further East linking the medium density Northern city area to the dense South creates two nodes. With green zones between Industrial areas and residential, it creates balance between lifestyle and liveability but also adds to travelling times and a need for a transport corridor. In some respects it appears to mirror Brisbane's current urban layout, but Madess seems to have a higher density and concentration.

Future development would occur to the East, as development opportunities and population increases. A new industrial area would be need to be developed to sustain liability and affordability. problems arise with higher traffic densities. Public spaces as well as access to natural green areas would make living there more attractive. Things that seemed to be lacking are things like an education based centre/city, like Armidale NSW , or Munster in Germany , each have a weak industrial zone but have a strong educational one.

In terms of wholeness, this exercise I feel didn't go as deeply as would be explained in "A New theory of urban design" / Christopher Alexander ... [et al.]. In this book it is noted that they went into development of a urban theory that changes the outlook of how developing cities and urban areas are created as a "wholeness". In our mini city exercise, we explore the physical relationships through distance and volume as our building blocks where simplistic and crude, as well as the paper cut representations of our civic infrastructure. So scale was also an important issue to address. Seeing relationships between uses and their respective owners is something that had needed to be developed. Without consultation between interested parties we fail to address the users for the current time, but also for the future potential needs.