Tuesday 26 February 2013

IS THIS CRUNCHED FOR SPACE?

Closely-knitted buildings, Eastern Main Road Tunapuna





From the street along the Eastern Main Road in Tunapuna, close to  where I can find the cheapest of fresh produce to purchase. I paused to view the opposite side of the road and .. there it was. Dwellers, urban dwellers everywhere, buildings everywhere!  Buildings without  walking paths to separate them. So  pressed for space, both vehicles and buildings and humans are sucked into the finite 20 meter space between  the  poles. Yet so  comfortable!

 It does to a great extent conform to rules of the traditional city . Traditional urban theories look into how an urban area such as this develop and grow through out the course of  these kinds of interactions;co-locating and what they it can offer to  economies and the society. These stores, are designed public spaces; a place where public consumption  of goods was intended. Just  on the outside of them, that is the street corner, or the edges, they  have been places of  undetermined intention. Personally, public has made it; these blocks  of street a heterogeneous mix , renovated for their own place-making.

The layout of the buildings clearly does not show full state or urban-planning control intervention. It is typical of a neighborhood with such mixing of the different fabric. That is, the density, the interfacing of the buildings and the way the buildings interface with the streets all warmed against the intimate use by the city  dwellers. The make use of these spaces just outside the stores as additional as temporary  stores. They  build tents and hang sale items outside in their quest to  interact and attract more of the public. It therefore reiterates the fact that making these pseudoblocks is just conducive to its dwellers. To add, this reemphasizes the  fact that cites have never evolved block by block. (Mehaffy et al, 2010).
Simply put, these  street fronts ( the sidewalks in front of the store) can keep growing and if so as a result of the influence of the dweller-organised street  front, the density of buildings along this section of the street and  can significantly increase with time. 

Why should  many  not choose to build upward? 
Now is it even  possible to reconstruct that complex happening  altogether?

Reference:
  

Mehaffy, Michael; Porta, Sergio; Rofe, Yodan & Salingaros, Nikos (2010). "Urban nuclei and the geometry of streets: The 'emergent neighborhoods' model". Urban Design International 15 (1): 22–46 [p. 45]. doi:10.1057/udi.2009.26.

http://guardian.co.tt/news/2012-12-24/street-vendors-blamed-slow-sales-south










1 comment:

  1. Yes your are so right, because there is limited spaces on the main road only possible thing to do is build vertical. Unless they remove the old building and build a more modern town.

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