Greetings and welcome to Looking@Cities. It’s my intent with this blog to share with you my knowledge on cities, towns,…
Baedeker City Plans
Throughout the 17th to 18th centuries, the Grand Tour was mainly reserved for academics or the elite. Around 1840 rail…
The Legacy of Colin Rowe and the Figure/Ground Drawing
The following is a paper presented at a conference titled, “Urban Design and the Legacy of Colin Rowe,” and appears…
Giuseppe Zocchi: Choice XXV views of the main districts, squares, churches and palaces of the city of Florence
In the latter part of the 1700’s engravings of important cities became fashionable. Probably the most well-known engraver of this…
The Urban Genome: Circulation
Circulation Highways, streets, roads, boulevards, avenues, alleys, the names and function may vary but their primary concern is to allow…
The Urban Genome: Fields
• Fields In 1979 Steven K. Peterson published the seminal article titled “URBAN DESIGN TACTICS.” In this article Peterson describes…
The Urban Genome: City Gates or Points of Entrance
• City Gates or Points of Entrance City gates, in one form or another, can be found across the world…
The Urban Genome: Edges
“… The edge of a city is a philosophical region, where city and natural landscape overlap, existing without choice or…
The Genealogy of Cities (PDF’s from the CD)
In 2009 my book, The Genealogy of Cities, was published. The book displayed around 600 city plans in figure ground…
The Urban Genome: Approach
In the previous posting, The Urban Genome: The Rural Zone, I began a new series discussing what I call The Urban…
The Urban Genome: Rural Zone
“Urban design is a synthetic, inventive mapping of physical conditions which establishes whole areas of the city. In other words,…
Constructing City Models for Urban Designers: from Handmade to Machine Made Models
One of the primary tools for an urban designer is a physical model of the urban fabric you are investigating…
Koetter/Kim – Blackwall Peninsula Projects
In 1997 Koetter/Kim & Associates published a monograph of their work. The drawings, sketches, and models shown in their book are…
The Plan Game: The Origins of “Collage City”
In the early 1970’s Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter developed their ideas of a Collage City as an essay, which was expanded and…
Perspective: a Tool for Designing in Three-Dimensional Space.
Historically, the process of designing in perspective is commonly related to painting, but it’s important to note that the use…
The Castle/Keeps and Walls of Thurles
In the 8th century, the O’Fogarty’s gave their name to the town of Durlas, which is today located in County…
A Brief History of City Plans
My interest in cartography began when I was young, but the study of city plans (or maps) really developed while…
Arcades: Brief History & Case Studies in Cleveland, OH
The Origins of the Arcade & the Various Types The origin of the arcade is most likely patterned after the…
Looking @ Shaker Heights
Cities are fascinating places to study. What we see at face value is actually built typically over time. A number…
