Global Cities

In class yesterday while talking about Global Cities, I searched the term "global city" on my beloved pop culture Atlantic Cities website and came across two interesting articles. One was this one partly on the London riots and partly on the effects that class segregation can have on the urban fabric. This was one topic that was covered in class yesterday where Saskia Sassen in The Global City discussed the spatial outcomes of a global city wherein the juxtaposition of social classes is intensified. I think it is relevant to the riots and the article, especially where the author talks about the urban projects being pushed forward in his home of Toronto. 

The other thing that struck me was this chart that ranks the world's global cities. I was mildly surprised to see Sydney ranked as number 12, somewhat higher than I initially thought it would be. I suppose I had not really thought about it before, and in my mind I would have thought that Sydney was fairly small, with a population of only about 4 million, to be called a global city. In retrospect however as one of the larger cities in the asia pacific and given the quality of living among other factors, it makes sense. What does surprise me is that we ranked higher (marginally) than both Shanghai and Beijing, which I would have thought would be closer to the top of the chart. 

The Issue of Scale

The issue of identity and the icon were touched on today in class when the lecturer brought up the plan to build a 90 storey residential tower in Parramatta. Scale of the built form, it seems, was being used to construct a sense of identity for Parramatta, and the justaposition of such a large scale tower in comparison to the lower buildings of Parramatta was seen as a positive move. 

This reminded me of my observation of Redfern, where the juxtaposition of two scales creates a sense of identity, but not necessarily a positive one. This takes the form of the RSL residential tower, the police tower (12 and 13 storeys respectively) and the social housing towers which stand out among the low rise residential buildings around them. Each building is visible from multiple angles around the suburb, and the relationship of the buildings to the observer is while they may provide a landmark to orientate oneself and contribute to the sense of identity within Redfern, it may not be a positive one.  

BBC Articles

I was reading the BBC news website recently and there were several articles regarding cities that related to several comments made in class on Monday to the guest lecturer. This one regarding slums, and this one regarding sustainability, as well as this one.

Jan Gehl and every building on Anzac Parade

I was reading Life Between Buildings by Jan Gehl today in preparation for the City Observation assignment and came across these two paragraphs:

I have been complaining recently to other architecture friends of my opinion that the new colourful painted concrete/random facade treatments of basically every recent building on Anzac Parade is an eyesore, or will at least be an eyesore in 10 years when the paint is peeling and every sill has water stains. Its my opinion that the random facade treatments where an orange panel might be juxstaposed to a brick wall to a navy painted wall to a white extrusion are extremely unappealing and a cheap way of trying to inject life and energy into a main transport artery. 

This feeling also applies to the ugly monolithic RSL building next to the Redfern trainstation, which gives almost no concession to the public at ground level. Composed of intruding/extruding panels, some of which are grey, orange and white, the building takes up a massive chunk of sky and is completely out of scale with the surrounding suburb, with the exception of the Police building next to it. It is as though the architect completely ignored what it means for a pedestrian to have real and actual experiential stimulation (cafes, open shopfronts, plantings etc) and simply stuck on a few coloured panels. I feel that the line "coloured concrete and staggered building forms" can be applied specifically to this RSL building. Coloured panels used in an unmeaning way does not create character.