Lecture 1.7- The City 1
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Words derived from city: about refinement, social order: urbane, civilized, citizen, politics, police, cosmopolitan
City does product good things, so there must be something good about cities
What a city is, should be, and why they exist at al
Why cities?
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Agrarian and urban life: linked; agriculture and villages
Sharing work, resources permits specialization, trade
Survival advantages, skills and resources that can be developed and passed along
Cities grow in sites that can sustain large populations
Citadel of Erbil, Iraq (occupied since 4000 BCE), first started near rivers, etc…. geo allows larger scale agriculture
Necessities: food and water supply, defensible location
Built protection through a wall = dense urban fabric… people want benefits of living where it’s safer
o Urban fabric: things that give city its form and character as a place
Urban living provides stronger basis for eco and social development
The Greek Polis
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Acropolis: sanctified citadel above living city below
Panathenaic way: connected the upper and lower city (the pathway Athena would parade down)
Agora: open urban space
Stoa: open, covered hall
o Stoa of Atttalos, Athens
“civilized” buildings in this part – theater, stadium, gymnasium
o Theater at Epidauros, Greece, 3rd c. BCE, located on hillsides (easier for seats and better for aucoutics)
Slaves created much of wealth and leisure in these cities
The Gridiron City
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Hippodamos: came up with plan for rebuilding Miletus
Organized this new city with grid street plan
Public buildings are at the center
Blocks were adjusted for geography of the peninsula
Sea on three sides of the city, naturally defensible spot
Greeks didn’t “invent” the grid city…
First known fully planned city though
The Chinese Grid City
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Ideal City Plan, Kao Jong Ji, 5th century CE
Older cities with grids (Mohenjo-Daro, Indus Valley, 2500 BCE)
5th century Chinese book on city planning was made: called for a square city plan surrounded by a wall
Oriented North-South, in harmony with Earth’s geo
Layout is perfectly symmetrical on all sides
12 gates to main road
Palace was at the center
This was like a social order, how a society was supposed to be arranged
Xi’an, China: symmetrical grid pattern with palace at North End (still the clear focus of the entire city)
o City laid out in a very precise plan
o Different thickness of streets, symbolizes what is more important
o Easy cities to navigate
Design, Defense, Debate
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Aristotle: said grid plan was convenient for residents AND invaders
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Catapult (Dionysius of Syracuse, 399 BCE) – military revolution
Defense now for cities: circular walls, round towers to withstand artillery
The Typical Roman City
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Ignored Aristotle and made it a grid
Orthogonal grid: Roman military fort (Castrum)
o Became basis for the layout of the city
Plan of Timgad, Algeria (North at the top)
City is laid out in a square
Orientation points due North and South
Fortified perimeter wall, four entry gates
Cardo (N-S) and Decumanus (E-W) – the Main streets
o Intersection marks the geo center of the city
o Public spaces and buildings that are important can “break” the grid
Why didn’t the Romans care about Greek science of city defense??
o Grid layout = sign of Rome’s enormous power
o the city was a sign of their power, they had this hugeeee army to move around and protect them
o they didn’t need these protected cities… living in these cities made you Roman
Rome: the “Un-Roman” City
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“Head of the World”
Rome: NOT a castrum city; evolved over centuries
o Was an island in the middle, then covered lots of hills and valleys in between
Didn’t start as gridded, military fort
One of the least Roman cities of all
Defensive walls followed irregular growth
Pomerium: sacred district; no weapons, burials by anyone
Old Forum: irregular; imperial Fora: regular
o This, like Rome, evolved over time
o New Forum were regular, different, provided pockets of orderly, open space in a cauotic, dense city
Imperial Benefits
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Roman cities: most comfortable cities in antiquity
o So when Romans would come to take over your city, you would just say okay!!
o The healthiest cities on earth till the modern era
o High tech 2infrastructure, aqueducts, baths, sewers, etc.
 Cleaner, healthier
o Roman forums: designed, unified urban space that all Roman cities had
 Forum of Pompeii
o Capitolium: religious allegiance to Rome
 Every city had to build one of these to honor the three gods
 Capitolium Dougga, Tunisia, 166 CE
o Lots of splendor in these Roman cities: symbols of Roman power and glory
The Mark of Rome
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Roman castrum plan: still visible in many cities, such as Florence
Castrum grid: square plan, city walls
Medieval Urban Fabric
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Foritified living became crucial for safety
Medieval cities: used Roman grids, new, irregular patterns
Ex: Montepulgiano, Italy; Cortona, Italy
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Streets and buildings evolved following the topography of the earth
o So cities became to be irregular
“Organic” cities: protective advantages to inhabitants; defense was primary goal
The Medieval Piazza
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Medieval Piazzas: appear “accidental”, geometrically irregular
Opening in dense urban fabric; deliberate, symbolic, expensive areas
Palazzo Vecchio, Florence; Piaza Della Signoria, Florence
Investment in monumental civic arch and urban space, really showed how well the city was doing
Late medieval piazzas in Florence: “designed”, not accidental
Piazza Della Signoria sets up an ideal view of the Town Hall (obviously meant to happen)
Perspective and the City
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Romans preferred symmetrical vs. the Greeks which were more hilly
o Just depended on what they thought made the ideal city/space
15th century Italy: new idea of “impressive-looking” urban space thanks to new paintings
Renaissance art: depicts spatial depth through perspective
Piero Della Francesco, Flagellation of Christ, 1460
Visual preference: orthogonal spaces, straight sight lines
o Now wanted spaces/cities that were orderly and harmonious
Utophia: invented word from Greek for “good city” and “non-city”
The Ideal City
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Filarete: Renaissance and “ideal city” designs
o Castello Sforzesco, Milan, 1455-57
o Diagram of Ideal City, Libro Architettonico, 1460-64
City walls: 8-point star in circle, radial streets
City center: piazza, cathedral, palace, markets
o Concentration of power within the city
o Radiating streets from center make it possible for them to see everything from here
o Urban form serves politics, power, defense
Brand-new cities = rare; small urban projects
(Almost) Perfect Square
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Piazza SS. Annunziata, Florence: new orphanage in 1420s
Matching porticoes built on the church (1454) and opposite (1516)
o Resulting piazza: appears rectangular, harmonious, very orderly
o Looks like a perfect rectangle, consistent space
o Built version of “perfect” spaces in Renaissance paintings
o Took almost 100 years to create this amazing and coordinating space
Pienza (Corsignano)
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Bernardo Rossellino, Cathedral Square, Pienza, beg. 1459
Home town of Pope Pius II (1458-1464)
New complex with cathedral, family palazzo, Bishop’s palace
Piazza- trapezoidal (symmetrical but flexible)
Arcade: ideal viewing point for space to appreciate everything
Town- renamed in honor of the Pope
First built Renaissance urban vision
Renaissance Rome
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Irregular mess of a city always, only a few islands of orders forced on it
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1400: Rome’s population reduced to only 13,000 they were doing awful
Mostly empty inside walls; buried, ruined monuments
Still symbolically powerful: seat of the Papacy
Conflict over city control: church vs. the locals
o People really didn’t want the Pope in Rome, but the Pope wanted to be there
Renaissance urbanism: used by popes to control city
o City started to get better during this time
Straight Streets in Rome
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Lots of projects carried out by the Pope’s
Papacy: needed to conduct religious processions and parades, so they needed one big, central, safe street
Borgo Nuovo: first straight street in “modern” Rome (1500)
o From Vatican to the river
Via Giulia (CA. 1510) – “upscale” residential neighborhood
Goal: control the city visually, militarily, symbolically
Rome in 1580s: reviving, but still a mess, hard to navigate
Sixtus V’s Rome
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Religious pilgrims made Rome a tourist city for centuries
Sixtus V’s plan for Rome, Piazza Colonna, Lateran Obelisk
Sixtus V (1585-90): tame Rome’s organization chaos
o Link the major sites tourists wanted to see through a network of streets for easier navigation
Key “nodes” marked with tall obelisks, columns (landmarks)
Souvenir City
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St. Peter’s Square: architecturally unified, “framed” piazza
Souvenir prints: established Rome as the standard for urban grandeur
“Great cities” must be spatially and socially organized
Physically expressions of control and authority
Birth of the Ghetto
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Order and space did have a darker side; social, geo control of the city… so they wanted to contain groups who were
different and maybe had a negative effect on the city
16th central rationalized urbanism includes social, ethnic control
Renaissance Venice: the first ghetto: restricted Jewish area
o Jews invited to Venice for trade, taxes
o They had no interest in social interactions
o 1516: Jews moved to industrial island (“getto”- iron foundry), they were forced there
Ghetto Islands, Jacopo De’ Barbari’s Map of Venice, ca. 1500
Ethnicity and Control
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Ghettos: legally, physically restricted residential areas
Limited rights of movement (locked gates), punished if found outside at night
No ownership
More ghettos created in Rome (1555) and Florence (1571)
Conditions: overcrowded and unsanitary
Strict boundary, growing population = crowded conditions
Overtime, ghetto would mean any neighborhood that would contain an ethnicity and it had a bad image (bad living styles)
Paris
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Prehistorical settlement by the Parisii and Romans
Castrum city was destroyed; medieval city was rebuilt in the same location
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Defensive walls; dense, organic development inside the city
No open, urban space inside
Was a city of poverty and chaos
A Parisian Piazza
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First open, regular space in Paris: Place Royale
Site: medieval royal palace, demolished by Queen
Catherine De’ Medici from Florence was the queen:
o She brought so much to Paris
o Including a taste for piazzas… her influence was huge
Place Royale (now Place Des Vosges), Paris, 1605-1612
Perfect square with coordinated aristocratic houses
Designed explicitly for the wealthy, wanting to bring the rich into the city
Houses were protected from the traffic; park-like urban garden
London
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London: dense medieval fabric inside ancient walls
Commercial development towards the East of the City
Aristocratic estates, palaces on the West End
Walled city had become very dense
Wanted to be for rich people
Growing problems with traffic, crowding, disease
Covent Garden, London, 1640
The Fire of 1666
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1665: 100,000 Londoners died in outbreak of plague
1666: fire destroyed 83% of the city, 70,000+ homeless
Autumn fire=rebuilding delayed by winter
The New London?
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Rebuilding delay- time to create urban design proposals, with a blank slate, and how to make a city orderly, well planned,
awesome
Richard Newcourt, Plan for London, 1667
o Newcourt: grid with church in each block, 5 big squares
o Make religion a very important thing in modern, urban life
Evelyn plan: invisioend network of orthogonal and diagonal streets
o Proposed plazas wherever streets would intersect
o Clearly, logical plan for traffic flow
These plans were politically impossible; property rights and democracy
o Way to expensive ecnomoically and politically
Compromise Plan
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Wren plan: denser combination of grid, avenues and plazas
Proposed denser network of major and minor streets, but would respect old cities regular layout better
Even modified “ideal city” plan= too radical to implement
The New London
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Follow original pattern with wider streets and improvements
New building does: set building heights, brick or stone material ONLY
o Brick for small private
o Stone for large public one
City that would most follow Wren’s approach: IN AMERICA YES