Cities and Metropolitan Areas

GEOG 441 Introduction

Introduction

Syllabus

Members of Class

Course Themes & Projects

Lecture: Urban Morphology

Urban Morphology

Urban Form

Townscape

Morphogenesis

Townscape

Basic building blocks

* lot/ land organization

* placement of streets

Savannah Streetscape (1734)

Morphogenesis

Morphology of Three Colonial Cities

Three regions with different economies, social worlds, and political “cultures”

New England

Mid-Atlantic

South

Atlantic Trading World – Mercantile Economy

Character of Colonies

New England – 1620s; Puritan merchants

Mid-Atlantic – mid-1600s; English Common Law

South – late 1600s; Plantation based agriculture; manorial system

New England Townscape

Organic – oriented to port functions & other topographic features (Ex.: Boston; Portland, Portsmouth)

Bastidal – European new towns; egalitarian land assignment – orthogonal plan (Ex.: New Haven, Cambridge)

Bastide – European New Towns

Salisbury’s

“chequers”

New England - Boston

Organic Design: response to the topography & priorities of use

Port town: oriented to water & wharfs

Functional lay-out and land use patterns (Ex. “the commons”)

Quincy Market - Wharfs

Quincy Market – Faneuil Hall

Boston Commons

Mid-Atlantic - Philadelphia

American Grid

Land speculator’s model

Egalitarian – bastide

influence plus “London Rebuilt”

Grid Pattern Town - Planned

Surveyed in 1682

Penn’s Plan

“ a greene country town” “a great towne” – selling lots to British

speculators; land sale rather than land use determined the form

Laid out – one mile X two Town squares for public use