The city plan

Apart from a two year period I've always lived in the city. Ranging from the small town where I was born to the large city divided into boroughs where I currently live. And even during that brief period when I was living outside of the city (not even in a village but basically outside of the urban perimeter), I was living within the urban environment of a large city. From my hillside apartment I could clearly see the city spreading out from the central valley up the slopes. Perched hundreds of meters above sea level on the side of a wooded hill I could see for miles. I had a good view of the neighboring city but also of a large conurbation in the distance. From my apartment tower on the edge of the woodland it was clearly visible how the small town at my feet had grown up the hill and how it was now attached to its large neighbor through a series of large scale developments and housing estates with the incidental lone farmstead in the midst of it all. 

Perhaps this urban sprawl looks unordered to most people on the ground. But especially looking from above one gets a clear sense of all the composite parts of this urbanized landscape that comprises both historic towns and cities as well as garden city-inspired workers housing, modernist public housing, industrial areas, office towers that clearly show their vintage, detached and semi-detached houses on winding roads and closes, large apartment blocks on former factory sites, business parks off the motorway, public buildings and facilities, schools, parks, allotments, corner shops, supermarkets, shopping centers, retail parks, recreational areas, sporting grounds, waste and water treatment facilities and an enormous array of roads, streets, railways, cycle paths, pavements, walking paths, bus lanes and so-on.   

The city plan can provide a similar overview. Reality is now simplified into lines, dots and blocks, but when viewed in the right way the plan can reveal a lot. I would even go as far as to say that the plan of an urbanized environment can give a clear idea of what to expect on the ground. Still very recognizable are former mines (even if they have been converted to housing or business use), mineworkers colonies (1860-1900), villa-parks from around 1900, garden villages (1900-1945), modernist reconstruction areas (1945 - 1960), rationalist housing estates (1960-1975), post-modernist small-scale housing estates (1969-1989), post modern large-scale housing estates (1986-present) and urban conversions (1980-present). 

The city plan of any urbanized environment can tell you a lot about the urban landscape. This is exactly what Snail in the City will be exploring. Not just by having a closer look at city plans, but also by using pictures from the urban environment as is. The lie of the land is of significant influence on the patterns we see on the city plan (the morphology). In short: the flatter the surface the easier the ideas on urban design can be implemented. The best places to look for good examples of differentiated urban morphology can be found in northern Germany and the Netherlands. 

Scharnhorst in Dortmund comprises of the remnants of former mine workers colonies (dark red) located close to the mine Scharnhorst (purple), working-class housing with large gardens (red), post-war municipal housing in a garden village style (MSA-siedlung in tangerine), a large rationalist housing estate (Großsiedlung in soft orange) and a small redevelopment (yellow). Noteworthy is the way small brooks articulate the urbanized environment.