Comments on: Urban Fabric & Form Comparison

By: Prof. Bruce Ferguson

Prof. Bruce Ferguson — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:51:10 +0000

I have checked the scale of the Star’s (Sola-Morales’s?) drawings. They are all at the same scale, with about 0.87 mile (1.4 km) on the long side. This includes the Mississauga drawing, although that drawing’s style is subtly different from the others. The drawings in Allan Jacobs’s book were all 1 mile (1.6 km) square.

By: abhijit

abhijit — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:17:06 +0000

this info really helped in understanding of urban pattern

By: Desenho Urbano

Desenho Urbano — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 06:44:11 +0000

[...] Vi num post sobre desenho das ruas vs facilidades para os pedestres. [...]

By: manel

manel — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:49:33 +0000

I believe they were made by Manuel de Solà-Morales, and were featured in this book:

http://www.amazon.com/FORMAS-CRECIMIENTO-URBANO-Manuel-Sol%C3%A0-Morales/dp/8483011972/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219949330&sr=1-6

By: Perfect City - Discussion about the future of our cities » Blog Archive » Urban structures – A comparison between different cities

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:32:54 +0000

[...] found a cool article on city structures by Bricoleurbanism, a Canadian blog which focuses on the city, the landscape and the fields that [...]

By: rc

rc — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 16:41:25 +0000

The Star article gave no attribution, so I assumed they were produced in house, but I think you’re right Jake that most have in fact been lifted from Great Streets – with the exception of the Mississauga and Toronto maps which look like they have been done on computer instead and wouldn’t have been in Great Streets…

By: jake

jake — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:54:44 +0000

This was a compelling article–mostly because it was interesting to see the striking graphic comparisons in figure-ground format between the different city centres, side-by-side on the page. Your format, placing them one atop the other, is less effective, although it’s great to have the drawings at the scale you show them. Could you do both though? I mean, add a page with the six layouts at a scale making it possible to see them all at once?

Another interesting comparison would be to include the inner pedestrian realms of the megablocks–so we’d see the PATH system of Toronto as a system of streets undercutting the large block patterns. I’m always a little depressed when I walk the PATH–thinking about the fact of all those “missing” pedestrians in the public realm above–and always a little surprised when I resurface, to find that even with the thousands and thousands of people streaming along in their underground conduit, there are still quite a few folks on the real streets, too.

By the way, although the Star never gave credit, I think I recognize the plans it produced as being from the Allan Jacobs book, “Great Streets”–you probably know it. I found a representative sample through google images just now (note misspelling of Allan Jacobs’s name): http://tinyurl.com/yu5cle

By: Ryan Marr

Ryan Marr — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 06:22:11 +0000

Who made these images, where did they come from?