OBJ 1.1 Flashcards
Evaluate site-specific environmental and socio-cultural opportunities
HUD
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. A U.S. government agency which supports community development and homeownership. HUD does this by improving affordable homeownership opportunities, increasing safe and affordable rental options, reducing chronic homelessness, fighting housing discrimination by ensuring equal opportunity in the rental and purchase markets, and supporting vulnerable populations.
City Beautiful Movement
A movement in architecture and city planning in the U.S. with the intent of beautifying American cities.
Municipal Services
Basic services that residents pay for through taxes. Includes water, sewer, fire protection, streets, and sometimes utilities.
Vacate (a street)
To vacate a street or other public grounds is a legislative act in which a city gives up ownership to a private owner.
Revenue Bond
A bond that is paid back by the revenue of the project. Examples include stadiums, water and sewer services, and airports.
Earth Sheltered
A structure that is bermed on the north side and exposed on the south side to take advantage of thermal characteristics of the soil.
Boulevard
A broad avenue with a median that is usually planted with trees.
Venturi Effect
When wind passes through a narrow channel and accelerates due to the physical restriction.
TOD
Transit-oriented development is a type of land use planning in which residences, shops, and other buildings are located near mass transit stations.
Garden City Concept
Result of the reform movement. A concept published by Ebenezer Howard in 1898 that combined the best of city and country living in a town-country model.
Cite Industrielle Concept
Concept published by Tony Garnier in 1917, this plan was the first to emphasize the idea of zoning. It was a model industrial city that suggested the separation of work from housing, including separate zones for residential, public, industrial, and agricultural use, linked by separate circulation paths for vehicles and pedestrians.
New Town Concept
This concept is the extension of the idea that new communities should be built away from the crowding and ugliness of existing cities. Designed to be autonomous centers surrounded by a greenbelt, these communities never became independent because they lacked employment centers and depended on nearby cities for jobs.
New Urbanism
This concept attempted to counter the undesirable aspects of city development: sprawl, car dependence, housing segregation, single use development. It promotes the connection of neighborhoods intended for mixed use, as well as the connection of neighborhoods and towns to regional patterns of bicycle, public transportation, and pedestrian systems. The concept encourages buildings to be integrated with their surroundings and supports the preservation and reuse of historic structures.
Kevin Lynch
Author and urbanist, he wrote The Image of the City, which influenced urban planning and environmental psychology.
Jane Jacobs
Author and urbanist, she wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which critiqued urban renewal policies in the 1950s and how they created isolated, unnatural urban spaces.
Pad Site
A parcel of land that sits outside a shopping center commonly occupied by restaurants and banks.
Ecology
A word coined in 1956 by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring. Ecology refers to the study of interactions of organisms and their environment.
Arcosanti
An experimental community in central Arizona conceived by Italian-American architect Paolo Soleri. It operates primarily as an education center dedicated to the concept of arcology, or architecture plus ecology.
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah has a unique town planning concept of small neighborhood units surrounding public squares. Implemented by amateur designer James Olgethorpe, it makes Savannah one of the most charming and walkable cities in the U.S.
Township
A unit of land composed of a nominal six square miles, a township is a unit of surveying used throughout the western U.S.
The Land Ordinance of 1785
Set up a standardized survey system for selling and settling land west of the Appalachian Mountains. Land was divided into townships that were 6 miles square. Each township was subdivided into sections that were each 1 mile square, or 640 acres. Sections are further divided into quarter-sections, or 160 acres, which was the amount allocated to each settler in the Homestead Act of 1862. The sections were able to be further divided. This is grid is also known as the Jeffersonian Grid.
Superblock
A very large block of commercial or residential buildings with limited or no vehicular access. Examples include Radburn, New Jersey, where, in 1929, planners attempted to separate automobile traffic from pedestrian traffic.
Reston, Virginia
The first continuous planned community in the U.S., located 18 miles northwest of Washington D.C. Started in 1964 as an alternative to other patterns of suburban development, the community was envisioned as a vital area where people live, work, and play. It included public plazas, offices, shops, multi-family residential, clustered housing, and recreation, as opposed to just single-family residential like other suburban communities of the time. The idea was considered radical at the time.
Levittown, New York
One of the first post-war suburban developments, Levittown was conceived by imagining a community built with the principles of mass production and efficiency popularized by industrial processes like automobile assembly lines. Built on Long Island starting in 1947, Levittown was the prototype for many post-war communities that followed.
Broadacre City
A utopian land planning design by Frank Lloyd Wright in the early 1930s. Broadacre City is one of many “Garden City” concepts that grew out of a reaction to urban areas becoming overtaken by industrial processes and pollution. It relied on new transportation and communications technologies.
Radiant City
Radiant City, or Le Ville Radieus, was a design for an ideal city by Le Corbusier. It consists of high-rise buildings and plentiful greenspace, where residents are promised sunshine, fresh air, and greenery. The city of Brasilia, Brazil borrows from the ideals of the Radiant City.
Frederick Law Olmstead
The designer of New York City’s Central Park, considered the father of American landscape architecture, as his influence can be seen throughout many communities across the country.
Colombian Exposition
A world’s fair held in Chicago in 1893, including architecture of the Beaux Arts style. Had a wide-reaching cultural influence throughout the U.S. at the time.
Bedroom Community
A residential community where residents mostly commute to a nearby city.
Usonian Houses
Affordable housing design by Frank Lloyd Wright. Built from the 1930s to the 1950s.
District
A group of buildings, properties, or sites that has a common underlying identity and architectural or historical significance.
Megalopolis
A chain of adjacent metropolitan areas that grow together. Example: the northeastern seaboard of the U.S. from Boston to D.C. that includes NYC and Philadelphia.
Seaside, Florida
One of the first communities designed using the principles of New Urbanism.
Redlining
The practice of selectively denying services to residents of certain neighborhoods, depending on racial or ethnic composition. The effects of redlining can be seen in many major urban cities where residents of ethnic neighborhoods were denied mortgage and financial products. Redlining exacerbated racial and ethnic inequities and urban decay. Steps were taken in the 1970s to stop these discriminatory practices.
