# Interesting urban design examples around the world



## Rachmaninov (Aug 5, 2004)

Any examples of good urban design in any city that you particularly like? Please kindly post it here and discuss.


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## brisavoine (Mar 19, 2006)

There are cities that have had planned and geometrical urban designs from the start, like Washington DC, New Delhi, or Beijing. Then there are cities that started haphazardly but to which a coherent and geometrical urban design was applied in the 19th century like Paris, New York City, or Barcelona. Finally, there are cities that have never had any sort of planned or geometrical urban design like London, Tokyo, or Shanghai.


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## eklips (Mar 29, 2005)

The problem with well-planned cities in my opinion, is that either they were planned long ago, and now most of the city is messed-up suburbs, with a well-planned city center.

Either they have been planned more recently (Brazilia comes to mind), but are really average as cities, because based on 60's urbanism.

And we cant really talk about those who are being planned/contructed today, because it is much too soon already.


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## ch1le (Jun 2, 2004)

Barcelona, Paris, NY and Washington DC spring to my mind as pretty nicely designed cities! =)

Bad ones... Moscow, Minsk, Brasilia, everything that has to do with commieblocks and or open planning 

Actually Moscow is borderline, not bad itself, iirc the centre isnt really planned (is it?), but the negative part is the huge commie suburbs.


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## Rachmaninov (Aug 5, 2004)

One that immediately come to my mind is the Illes of Eixample in Barcelona, famous for its grid-like pattern with truncated edges at each crossing. It was designed by a civil engineer called Cerda. Particular attention was paid to ventilation and sunlight.










Above is the original concept of Eixample back in 1859. (From wikipedia)


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## DiggerD21 (Apr 22, 2004)

It is hard to determine which city is "best-designed". Many older cities, i.e. in Europe combine several city-planning ideas, which all made sense in their particular era. Many european cities which were founded as a roman colony started with the quadratic layout of a roman colony, later in medieval times the city was rebuilt first on this layout, but the city walls also determined the borders of a city (and I think also by the opposition of the city's surrounding, often enough hostile landlords) while the growth of the city population didn't stop. No real city planning was possible. With the rise of absolutism everything had to be concentrated on the city residence of the leader. All major roads led to this residence and everything had to be somewhat symmetric. Due to advances in warfare technology the medieval walls had to be strenghtened and became a different layout. With this opportunity the city's (often unplanned) suburbs were included within the new city walls. With the industrialisation these walls became senseless and hindering for the city's growth (also the cities were now incorporated in stable nation states) and provided space for railways and stations etc. And it didn't stop: City planners had several ideas how to improve the life quality for different parts of the population (garden towns, green belt, suburbanisation etc.).


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## AndySocks (Dec 8, 2005)

Paris is the king of this one.

Washington is interesting, if a half-assed attempt at Paris.

New York's grid is nothing special... but things get worse later on in history. Look at Phoenix, now that's a truly souless grid.


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## Rachmaninov (Aug 5, 2004)

It is hard to determine which city is "best-designed".

^^ Yes I do realise that fact. What I want to learn here is some fine examples of good or interesting urban design in any part of any city. Sorry if the title is a bit misleading!!!!!!!

* ATTENTION TO MODS: CAN I RENAME MY THREAD AS "INTERESTING URBAN DESIGN EXAMPLES AROUND THE WORLD"? THANKS!!!!! *


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## dougtheengineer (Aug 17, 2006)

Here's a planned city concept that you may not know about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_city

It is demonstrated in Magnitogorsk, a city in Russia that was built from scratch. 

From the sounds of it, the idea didn't really work. Then again, does it ever really work?


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## zee (Nov 30, 2005)

AndySocks said:


>


that is about the most depressing thing iv ever seen

how boring


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## hudkina (Oct 28, 2003)

Detroit probably has one of the larger grid systems in the U.S. The "true" grid extends for nearly 30 miles north to south as well as east and west, with the "warped" grid extending even further. You don't start getting to the private cul-de-sacs and "no outlet" subdivisions until you're well outside of the core.


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## NewUrban (Mar 16, 2006)

> You don't start getting to the private cul-de-sacs and "no outlet" subdivisions until you're well outside of the core.


I like the sound of that. Is Detroit mostly flat? 

Nothing that special about Brisbane _yet_. It has a great yet small CBD grid, but the other areas of the city centre like the Valley and the South Bank do not have a grid. Though as it is the second fastest growing City in the western world, we are trying sustainable options like urban villages, transit oriented development (air space above train stations), extremely dense residential living in the City (including building the North Bank over a freeway) with new mass transit systems.



















North Bank


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## AndySocks (Dec 8, 2005)

NewUrban said:


> I like the sound of that. Is Detroit mostly flat?


Yeah, but that has nothing to do with anything, plenty of flat cities in the US with thoroughfare grids have cul-de-sacs within a few short miles of the core, it has more to do with age. Pre-WWII suburbanization is griddy, dense and considered relatively urban by today's American standards, many of our great neighborhoods were built during this time. From the mid 40s through the 70s, the grids were loosened a bit, small parking lots popped up, houses looked more and more similar to each other and were a bit farther apart, but the cul-de-sac was not quite invented yet, and these kinds of suburbs usually formed today's "inner-ring" around older cities, or may even be within the edges of city limits in newer cities. From the 70s onward, with few exceptions, suburban development has been on loop-de-loop cul-de-sacs in limited-access "neighborhoods" completely separated from any commercial development, which are characterized by parking lots the size of three football fields.


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## hudkina (Oct 28, 2003)

Detroit is mostly flat, though the northern and western suburbs do get pretty hilly. (The reason behind such names as Rochester Hills, Auburn Hills, Bloomfield Hills, Farmington Hills, etc.) Interestingly, all of the cities with "Hills" in their name generally don't follow the grid pattern...


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## Kaique (Aug 15, 2006)

*Palmas capital of Tocantins (27th Brazilian state)*

The last big brazilian city designed.
Was started 1989, today there are 200.000 habitans.
Their contructors realized a city for 2millon it's growing up fast 2 hundred thousand people only in 16 years.
A avenue was used like airport amazing, no?  
Brasilia evrybody knows, I like, it's a confortble city, there aren't traffic problems, we don't need use the car to do almost things, lost of green areas, good people, no violence.








Much green, space for all sides, cheap land, who woldn't like live here?


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## ch1le (Jun 2, 2004)

/\ let me guess its open planning?
Oh well...


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## I-275westcoastfl (Feb 15, 2005)

Kaique said:


> The last big brazilian city designed.
> Was started 1989, today there are 200.000 habitans.
> Their contructors realized a city for 2millon it's growing up fast 2 hundred thousand people only in 16 years.
> A avenue was used like airport amazing, no?
> ...


Looks nice but what i dont get is why more people live inland than along the coast usually the coast is built out first.


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## Gosha (Aug 15, 2006)

Palmas looking great for a planned city that's located on a plain.
An interesting example for a planned city on an area of hills is Modi'in, a new city between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Israel.

Modi'in Established in 1993 with plans to populate 250,000 until 2020.
Meanwhile there are over 60,000 residents in the city with growth of 11% per year.
Anyway, this city is located on a hill area on the slopes of the Samaria district.
It's design is very interesting and modern, with many parks, green areas, commercial area with a big mall and a clean industries zone.


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## AHHHHH (May 22, 2006)

My term paper last semester sort of dealt with it:

Capitol cities are the jewels of the countries which they represent. Each one across the globe has been built to be a symbol of its country, either by being planned as a modern metropolis, evolving through time, or as a city built simply to house the government and run its country. The specific ideas and beliefs of a country’s government are what influence the design of its capital city. This can be seen in the extreme order and ceremony of Beijing, the imposed baroque order over the medieval chaos of Paris, and the Greek and Roman revival architecture in Washington D.C.
Each of these cities have their own unique architecture, style, form, and general feel. On the surface, these three cities are very different from one another, but it is what they represent for their respective countries and governments that connects them. They are each a physical representation of their country’s political, spiritual, and social ideals. This permeates through the placement of buildings in Washington, the baroque web of Paris, and the general street system of Beijing. 
These differences in both form and function were brought about by the unique histories and cultures of the countries which they embody. In Beijing, its long history of being planned and destroyed gives the current city its wide main streets and geometric winding Hutongs, or alleyways. Beijing was first envisioned as the capitol city in AD 1260 by Kublai Khan Scholars, but was then called Da Du. When Marco 
Polo visited the city, he said that, “the whole city [was] laid out in squares like a chessboard, and arranged in so perfect and masterly a fashion that no description [could] possibly do justice to its beauty.”# Indeed, the original city was beautiful in its perfection, but, unfortunately was destroyed in AD 1368 by fighting that preceded the rise of the Ming Dynasty. 
Over time, Beijing had been repeatedly rebuilt and destroyed as a result of dense wooden structure that populated the city, and had been the center of government for the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, and lastly the Manchurian Qing Dynasty.# Once the Ming Dynasty had come to power, and Da Du had been destroyed, they renamed the capitol Beiping Fu, and rebuilt it according to guidelines the Confucian text, the Zhou Li from 770-476 BC, described. These regulations include that “The size of the capitol should reflect its significance in the hierarchy of society, the city should face towards the brightness of the south, it should be laid out in squares and rectangles aligned with the four directions of earth, to its internal organization should reflect the orderliness of the universe,”# etc. 
All demands were met, and the city became a large, square, walled city, with the smaller forbidden city walled off in the center. All streets and avenues are either north-south or east-west, with the forbidden city and Tiananmen Square forming the main north-south axial spine of the city. When the main city was finished in 1533, a wide walled rectangle was added to the south, elongating the Imperial Procession south to Yungtingmen Gate and enclosed the outer city. 
The entire inner city was surrounded by 20 kilometers of walls which were 35 feet high, 37 feet wide at the top, and 55 feet wide at the bottom, and was surrounded by a wide moat#. The city had nine large gates, the largest of which was Zhengyangmen Gate, in the center of the southern wall of the inner city, directly in front of Tiananmen Square and the forbidden city. Almost everything in Beijing was surrounded by walls, from the magnificent forbidden city to even the humblest lean-to. In addition to walls, every avenue, street, and hutong had gateways called pailou over them#. These gates and walls were made of either painted wood, stone or brightly glazed bricks. They were thought to protect the street which they stood over, and were painted very brightly. The one “forbidden color” was yellow, and was used throughout the Pailou and roofs of the forbidden city. According to the amount of ornamentation on them, one could tell the relative importance of the rank of those housed beyond the enclosures and roofs. 
Beijing had many huge governmental buildings and plazas dispersed throughout, including the forbidden city, Tiananmen Square, the temple of heaven, and the altar of agriculture. These structures were planned to be huge because the architects and planners saw that the bigger the building, the longer it took for people to traverse between them, the more time they had to be humbled by the grandeur of them. An important part of the Chinese society and government is total demonstration of respect and sincere humility. With such majestic buildings constantly in their midst, the citizens of China and Beijing could not help but be humble and have respect for their government and one another. 
With all the impressive governmental buildings, and orderly walls and gateways, it is easy to see Beijing as one gigantic artistic whole#. All the strict planning and building codes that represent modern Beijing are just the physical manifestation of the rites and order that are held most highly in China. This sentiment is one of the most important in Chinese government and society, and has been part of the culture since almost 1500 years before the thought of Beijing even emerged, in 200 BC the Li Chi, or record of rituals said, “Rites obviate disorder as dikes prevent inundation.”# The result of the planning in Beijing (prior to communism and the destruction of most walls and gates) was a huge modern metropolis, but was still a very human-scaled community. Because of this, foreign visitors were dazzled by the city, “No one of our European capitals has been conceived with such unity and audacity.” said a French naval officer, “It is easy to understand why the Chinese ambassadors who came to visit our kings … were not particularly dazzled by the sight of the Louvre or Versailles. 
Beijing was made to be magnificent, unlike Paris which became impressive over the 2000 years since its founding. Beijing had planned since the Ming Dynasty to house more than 1 million people, while the population of Paris had only reached around 1 million people by 1834. By 1904, though, the population there had swelled to more than 4 million. This massive urban population growth was mostly an effect of the industrial revolution, but the overhaul of the city from 1815-1853 made by Georges-Eugene Haussmann also had a good deal of influence in the population growth. 
This transformation of Paris was not solely the work of Haussmann. The French monarchs understood that Paris had major problems from as early as 1546. In this year, the louvre, which had just been a tower castle, was rebuilt into the palace which it is today#. While this didn’t change the city much, it did signify that the French wanted and needed a change in their city. The first significant plan for a more functional city was in 1606 when Henry IV commissioned integrated residential piazzas like the Place Dauphine which had “continuous classical facades framing a triangular common ground.”# 
This was a very significant change for Paris because it was the beginning of the end of the medieval chaos in the center, and the beginning of baroque order in the outer city. By the mid 1600’s, the city had an extremely strong divide between the medieval center with wooden houses built along irregular streets, and the renaissance era city of elegant stone structures built along planned streets. The center at that point was like all other medieval townscapes, “It was an angular organic compilation of vernacular structures accrued over several centuries.”#
This was the case in Paris until 1806 when Napoleon built the Arc de Triomphe, extended the Champs-Elysees into the countryside, and made all the facades on either side of the boulevard the same. This new road formed the axial spine of the city, like the forbidden city did in Beijing. More importantly, though, the new, grand, street connected the medieval chaos of the inner city with the baroque order of the outer city. The new spine beginning at the Louvre showed the French citizens the grandeur of their government, the Arc de Triomphe at the other end showing their military power, and, with the spotless baroque facades on either side, their economic power. 
The Champs-Elysees was just one avenue in a city of disorder. To help make the whole city impressive, in 1783, a building code both determined the building’s style and its height. The height limits were coordinated with the width of the streets to try and maximize the amount of sunlight let in. This was not only good for the city, but it was also a feeble attempt by the then failing monarchy to show their power and care for their citizens well-being. 
After the chaos and panic of French Revolution had settled down, Napoleon decided that Paris desperately needed an overhaul. Georges-Eugene Haussmanns design was selected. “No one in the entire history of urbanism, neither Pericles nor the Roman emperors nor the renaissance popes, ever transformed a city so profoundly during such a short space of time.”# His plan for the city was to create a baroque axial network of large, straight avenues. These avenues connected the many monuments of the city directly, which created beautiful vistas at the end of each. His plan involved the demolition of many, buildings, which destroyed most of the narrow alleyways which aided the French citizens during the revolution. 
In the beginning, many Parisians criticized the long, straight, boring rows of marble and limestone facades which stretched, in some artists interpretations, to infinity. The massive undertaking was the manifestation of the new government, though, and it was a major step up from the indifference of the former monarchy. One of the methods that was used both before and after the revolution to both break up the density and the monotony was the addition of green space throughout the city. Most of the public parks and plazas were not accessible before the revolution, though, because, unlike in Beijing where the parks were all historic gardens associated with temples and imperial compounds, the current parks were just for the private use of the monarchy#. 
One of the first parks to be designed and opened was the Tuilleries outside the Louvre, designed by Le Notre. The design of this park eventually became the inspiration for Pierre L’enfant’s design for Washington DC#. The park, like Paris itself, had many large statues which were connected by diagonal pathways. Connecting the park from edge to edge was a small grid of pathways which went through the sculptures as well. 
When Pierre L’enfant designed Washington DC in 1791, he began with all the important buildings and squares evenly placed throughout the Maryland and Virginia marshland. He then connected them with, “lines and avenues of direct communication.”# This, like in Paris, provided majestic vistas at the end of each avenue. Unlike the street system of Paris, however, the baroque axial network of diagonal avenues is superimposed on top of an ordinary grid. The diagonal avenues were not only supposed to lower the amount of time it took to get from place to place, they also counteract the visual monotony of the grid, which L’enfant believed was, “tiresome and insipid.”#
Because Washington was to become the capital of new, great, and enormous country of America, L’enfant designed the sculptures and monuments at vistas at the end of the avenues to be larger and grander than any other of its sort ever built before. The Washington Monument at the exact center of the city is an obelisk far larger than any Egyptian one. The Lincoln memorial is much larger than most ancient Greek construction, and the dome of the capitol is larger than any others built in ancient Rome.
Washington DC, like Paris, was criticized for its lack of a history or population. Dickens wrote in 1842, Washington has “…spacious avenues that begin with nothing and lead nowhere; streets a mile long that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants; public buildings that need only a public to be complete, and ornaments of great thoroughfares that need only great thoroughfares to ornament.”# This was an understandable feeling because to justify the size and scale of Washington’s streets, there needed to be at least 500,000 inhabitants. L’enfant’s original plan only allowed for six people per lot, and 20,272 lots, which works out to be a total maximum population of around a 100,000 people#. This plan clearly didn’t work as a 19th century model. Today the metropolitan regions population is currently more than 2 million. In 1792, L’enfant was fired because he attempted to stop a large sale of lots by buying them all up first#. 
The buildings which L’enfant did control were the Greek and Roman revival governmental buildings. This style was chosen by L’enfant because of the heavy influence of American government structure and inspiration from Greek and Roman democracies. The two most important buildings of the new capital were the presidential palace and the capital building which were placed at opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. This symbolized the constitutional separation of the executive and legislative powers. 
Pennsylvania Avenue also became the axial spine of the city, even though the mall was meant to be#. unfortunately, the space was too wide to act as a green connector, instead it divides the city by north and south, and, as another effect of the size of it, one loses the effect of the scale of the buildings beside it. Instead of being an open, human-scaled city, the mall becomes a large park with vacant lots bordering it. 
This might not have been so, had L’enfants plans been executed to his exact specifications, and currently all we have is the skeleton of L’enfant’s magnificent proposal. L’enfant said, “the mode of taking possession of, and improving, the whole district must leave to posterity a grand idea of patriotic interest which promoted it.”# This is true for DC, Paris, and Beijing. Without the strong patriotic interest in the cities and their development, Paris would still have its confused medieval center, Beijing would never have gotten rebuilt, and Washington would never have been more than a paper sketch. It is the political, social, historical, ideological, and economic beliefs of a country that build and design its capital city.


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## BOM (Jun 4, 2006)

The conceptual designs of New Songdo City (a planned ubiquitous city in S. Korea) are awesome XP


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

Islamic cities follow a set of guidelines as in the Koran, which allows a huge density (in order to get as many people near to mosques and water fountains/ oases as manageable) but liveable too. Many medieval cities from this period still bear that imprint with winding alleys and numerous alcoves to get away from prying eyes, and in some cities such as Kashgar or Turpan in China, with grape vines planted down these alleys to shade from the sun. Many of the streets are in effect covered awnings - medieval malls if you like devoted to certain trades eg. Spice Street etc.

Even modern day cities can still follow these 'streetplans'. *An interesting note in the modern version are the low crime rates*. Cairo, population 17 million, has one of the lowest. The poorest area, Islamic Cairo also happens to be the greatest medieval city in existence aswell as one of the most crowded in the world. It also has some of the lowest urban crime rates in the world.
Plans to build a huge green park in the city has come up with problems recently - not that the green or space will be damaging, but the fact crime will probably rise in and around it. At the moment almost every crime, no matter what time (Cairo is definitely one of the most '24hr cities' in the world with families strolling around at 4am), has witnesses due to the cramped 3D nature of the city, which goes far as a preventative.

This is *Ghardaia*, an oasis town in Algeria. You can see all the buildings facing the mosque. However inside the buildings rooms and layouts will be designed to face Meccah.











Instead of the myriad roads leading to the mosque Algiers symbolically leads to the French built Square, now the Place de Martyrs: 










Casbah algiers, a parkour practitioner's dream










For more on Algerian cities check out the amazing thread on cityphotos


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## Küsel (Sep 16, 2004)

WOW  That Ghardaia pic is great! I remember the small Kabylie towns on top of the hills and was very impressed by them.


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

Thanks to MisterDZ and his excellent Algerian cities thread:
Some street level pics of Algiers, a perfect mix of French boulevard, medieval souk and 21st century living:


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