Calculo De Cargas Sensibles

Modernism was a response to industrialization and is associated with new towns development, and large-scale renewal projects. Industrialization led to the rapid growth of cities; the resultant problems called for reforms and interventions. Ebenezer Howard’s notion of the garden city was philanthropist and reformist, his main objective being to solve the prevailing problems of urban congestion and poor living conditions in industrial cities at the end of the nineteenth century, especially among low-income groups (Keeble, 1964; Catanese,

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1988). The Garden Cities movement, spearheaded by Howard aim to spread cities across the countryside and provide decent housing as shown in Figure 4.1. Having contrasted the advantages and disadvantages of the town and country, he resolved to create self-sufficient new towns to cluster around a parent or host town, making provision for nature, gardens, and larger floor space and interestingly, mixed-use development. These towns were planned to size and combined the advantages of town and country while avoiding the disadvantages of both (Keeble, 1983).

Fig. 4.1: Garden City model Source: Trancik, 1986

Effective development control was put in place to check real estate speculation (AltenmÜLler

& Mindrup, 2009). The idea was to house a maximum of 30,000 in a city, with each family having its own house built on a plot of 20ft by 130ft. A thousand acres together with a peripheral belt of 5000 acres were set aside to be owned by the town so that the citizens could enjoy the use value due to development. This approach would continue until the great or parent city was totally ringed by satellite garden cities.

The Garden City movement was instrumental in the conceptualization of the new town as an urban planning movement (Catanese, 1988; Salingaros, 2005). The British government adopted this approach to build new towns and control growth. In the 1920s and 1930s, many

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garden cities were built in England, France and North America; the most notable being Letchworth in England.

The concept was criticised by different authors for causing urban sprawl and poor land utilization. Lloyd-Jones, (1998) described it as decentralised, semi-autonomous community-based neighbourhoods that destroyed the traditional dense fabric of cities. Bigon, (2013) perceives that the concept was grossly misinterpreted giving rise to the unforeseen impact of urban sprawl and used as a tool for sectoral development by the colonial authorities. He notes that Howard never specified the single-family type in the design; rather it contained self-sufficient communities with substantially larger green spaces than was previously the case.

Implementation of the garden city was essentially anti-social, contributing to residential segregation, in contrast to the objectives of the original concept outlined by Howard.

Le Corbusier promoted two methods to promote smart growth and land utilization divergent from the garden concept. The ‘City of Tomorrow’ was designed for three million inhabitants;

and half of that population for La Ville Radieuse with the capacity to expand and create unique suburban, dense vertical development (Keeble, 1964). He favoured sectional densification with the core having the vertical development and land utilization and revitalization of inner city with no consideration for ribbon or sprawling development. Le Corbusier planned compact vertical development and open spaces. However, he did not acknowledge the need to promote small scales in a living city, (Salingaros, 2005).

The plan, provided for supporting infrastructure, especially in terms of a web that connects developments; the city plan provided for various hierarchies of roads and subways for urban service delivery, the free flow of traffic and modal interchange. The central part of the town consisted of high-rise buildings devoted to business and entertainment uses. Adjoining the central area was the high density residential district and isolated detached dormitory suburbs were situated on the outskirts; Le Corbusier termed these garden cities. This description suggests a typical city form informed by the concentric and growth pole theories and Von Thunen’s theories in harmony with Howard’s garden cities. Fig. 4.2 show the land use plan of a typical modern city.

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Source: (Keeble, 1964)

The globalization and new ways of doing business resulted to doing business without boundaries; locally, trans-national and international. This has necessitated the building of more airports and the extension of existing ones to accommodate higher capacities of trade and volume. The airports terminals therefore are places of immense commercial potential, (Margot, 2009). Margot describes them as centres for affluence with cumulative patronage outweighing that of shopping malls each year, hence place of high value. The role of Airports as transport nodes is further extended; they are no more transit stations with passengers’

scaled oriented services.

The Aerotropolis is a recent urban form that translates the needs of transportation in spatial forms. Cities are built to serve the demands of airports around which they are built; providing

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a business environment connecting people, housing while serving as a transport node. The influence of these cities transcends their geographical location and hence competes globally for relevance, opportunities and growth.

This concept illustrated in Figures 4.3 and 4.4 identifies the airport as a central place attracting aviation-oriented businesses and mixed use commercial development clustering around them and outward along connecting transport corridors. Prominent in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, the concept is motivated by the huge traffic and the opportunities of business.

The Aerotropolis is an “urban complex whose layout, infrastructure and economy are centred on an airport, (Kasarda, 2011). Analogous in shape to the traditional metropolis made up of a central city and its rings of commuter-heavy suburbs, the Aerotropolis consists of an airport city core and outlying corridors and clusters of aviation-linked businesses and associated residential developments”, (Kasarda, 2011) pg12. The model offers an antidote to spontaneous, haphazard airport area development and its negative consequences towards achieving economically efficient, attractive, and sustainable airport regions.

The Aerotropolis model is more of a qualitative model replaced space and distance with time and cost of connectivity. It aims to achieve connecting people and businesses within the shortest time possible while increasing operational efficiency, offering not only economies of scale but of speed in the present times where time transcends cost to being currency.

He outlines the attributes of the city to include

● Location of airport-based businesses to the airport to improve their logistics

● Specialised codes for airport designs

● Mixed-use residential communities with consideration for convenience, nearness and a sense of community along with basic institutional and consumer services

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Fig. 4.3: Compressed Aerotropolis Schematic with Airport City Core Source: Kasarda, J. (2011).

Fig. 4.4: New urban form placing airports in the centre with cities growing around them (Kasarda) Source: Kasarda, J. (2011).

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The model is criticized on several issues; lacking character, urban ambience and sense of place, and inducing sprawl. Other aspects include the impacts of the high pollution generated by the machineries that run the city. Also, the concern for diminishing importance with advancing technology; new innovations of fast travels may replace air travels and other technologies that enhance e-business will require less physical presence for meetings and business and even leisure, hence may lead to these cities being obsolete soon. Kasarda, (2016) expressed the complexity of the task and the difficulty of achieving synergy amongst all stakeholders stating that that optimal outcomes are unlikely to occur under fragmented planning approaches and conflicting stakeholder interests. He however is optimistic that achieving good places are entirely outcomes of good planning, hence of the opinion that effective integrated planning and design of mixed use development can be in position to address these concerns.