_Cities and Urban Life_; Ant 201 /////////// Test 4 ; Due 3 weeks, July 28 (P.382 of the text) 1) Describe the meticulous planning that created some of the major early world civilizations. 2) Discuss 4 large scale visions of the street as done by architects. 3) Review how scientific discoveries and technological advances _have impacted our lives in the last 50 years_ (different than in the text which asks about the future, not past). /////////////// Lecture 8; Chapter 14 : Urban Planning: Past, Present, Future P.383 of the text , section 14.1.1 asks Why Plan ? First let is answer the question What is a Plan ? “A plan is typically any diagram or list of steps with details of timing and resources, used to achieve an objective to do something. It is commonly understood as a temporal set of intended actions through which one expects to achieve a goal.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan An anthropological note on planning: Humans’ ability and extent of planning our lives in words and drawings is a fundamental distinction between our species and all other animal species. Only humans have the ability to design symbolically our cultural products, to conceive in the present in a design a future complex activity or project . Planning based on symbolic communication (words and drawings) improves qualitatively and expands quantitatively human ability to act rationally, that is to achieve goals and objectives. Planning is one of those obvious/trivial but _profound_ aspects of human life in general, and, of course, including urban life. The text gives several answers to its question “why plan building cities ?” . I propose that that the main reason is that planning is the essence of rational activity. The text’s reference to “meeting specific urban needs,’ such as “planning underground sewage lines for health reasons, wall for protection, parks for leisure hours, and thoroughfares to facilitate movement” ( or gridiron street patterns with numbered addresses to facilitate locating places) are all rational ways of achieving important goals or objectives. As far as the text’s reference to ancient cities “glorify(ing) those in power” and “glorify(ing) of important cultural values” , these are the goals or objectives that are achieved by designing or planning the spatial development in the form of cultural symbols representing cultural values. Sir Christopher Wren’s plan for rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666 is a symbolic caricature / proto-type for all city building under capitalism: “major roads lead to the city’s stock exchange…the dominant feature of the plan, was the financial and trade element of the city’s life”. This is economic or materialist determinism of urban infrastructure in a microcosm . In capitalist cities, the cultural values and achievements of business/entrepreneurship are “glorified”. In Detroit, expressways , many streets, buildings, parks are named for Ford, Chrysler, Woodward and other historical business leaders. //////////// Not surprisingly the discovery of computer technology is a major scientific discovery and technological advance that has impacted our lives ( both urban life and rural life) in the last 50 years. We are most aware of consumer goods and services of course, such as online bill payments, vehicle and housing parts and accessories, cell phones, personal computers, remote meeting technology. Indirectly, we are impacted by Computer Aided Design and Computer Aided Manufacture CAD/CAM of goods and services in reduction of toil and number of jobs (!) at work ; for example assembly line workers replaced by robots, bank cashiers replaced by money machines, tellers replaced by automatic checkout robots, CAD/CAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAD/CAM CAD/CAM[1] refers to the integration[2] of Computer-aided design (CAD) and Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). Both of these require powerful computers. CAD software helps designers and draftsmen; CAM "reduces manpower costs" in the manufacturing process.[3] Computer-aided design (CAD) One goal of CAD is to allow quicker iterations in the design process;[9][10] another is to enable smoothly transitioning to the CAM stage.[11] Although manually created drawings historically facilitated "a designer's goal of displaying an idea,"[12] it did not result in a machine-readable result that could be modified and subsequently be used to directly build a prototype.[13] It can also be used to "ensure that all the separate parts of a product will fit together as intended."[6] CAD, when linked with simulation, can also enable bypassing building a less than satisfactory test version, resulting in having "dispensed with the costly, time-consuming task of building a prototype."[2] Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) CAM in action, using computerized Numerical Control In Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), using computerized specifications, a computer directs machines such as lathes and milling machines to perform work that otherwise would be controlled by a lathe or milling machine operator. This process, which is called Numerical Control (NC OR CNC), is what came to be known as 20th century Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), and it originated in the 1960s.[6] Early 21st century CAM introduced use of 3D printers.[14] CAM, although it requires initial expenditures for equipment, covers this outlay with reduced labor cost and speedy transition from CAD to finished product, especially when the result is both timely and "ensuring one-time machining success rate."[15]