Re-thinking about the project topic and trying to define its
importance, I have come across the idea of urbanization. Mixed used development
has helped urbanization of cities to tie together and become better defined communities.
It is a tactic for citizens to integrate into the environment of the city in a successful
way.
Urbanization has been taking effect in most of the cities
around the globe. In some cases it has had a positive impact for the city
itself, citizens and the urban environment as a whole; but there are also cases
in which urbanization happens in a way that instead of benefiting the urban
environment of the cities it creates a negative result. A negative effect
caused by urbanization is sprawl of the cities; suburbs in the outskirts of the
cities generated to support the people coming for opportunities in the cities. As
they come to the cities, they cannot afford the high housing prices within the
city limits; usually ending up living in the suburbs outside the city.
The suburbs in which this people move in to live, bring with
them a high demand of resources required for day to day living. Each time the properties
on these suburbs get larger, using unneeded land. Transportation issues is
another issue that comes with this, large quantities of fuel are needed to
transport people to their jobs in the city. The consumption of fossil fuels and
large quantities of motored vehicles contribute to the pollution of our
environment and the congestion of circulation.
This project matters because we need to create and design
better cities, we need to learn how to create better communities and better
urban environments for our cities. If we take the suburb as an example, it
might not be a good definition of a well design community, because everyone is
separated; everyone is given their own separate piece of land where they
perform all their daily activities. On the other side a better community would
be in the city, when you can leave separated but in the same building with
other people. In the city we get involved with our surroundings, we do not have
a backyard where we can perform outdoor activities; there we have to go to a
park or a public space to do so and that enables us to interact and engage with
different people, helping the city to diversify and create a sense of community
and identity.
With an integrated design of a city we achieve more than
just a better community, we also promote sustainability throughout it. It is
important to start thinking about the sustainability of our cities. By
designing communities with developments that incorporate different typologies
of buildings and uses together, in some way we start to depend less in modes of
transportation that harm our environment. We stop using vehicles to go to
supermarkets from a suburb to the city, because the supermarket could be
located in the same building we live or work in, or it could be located across
the street from us.
From these ideas in mind, questions comes to my mind; how to
we counteract urban sprawl? With the implementation of mixed-use developments
in our cities? Is mixed-use the answer to create better cities?
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