Tag Archives: centrality

Education, News, Philosophy, Professional, Urban Planning

NOW AVAILABLE | The City’s Essential DNA and its Pattern

The City’s Essential DNA and its Pattern covers the most essential aspects of physical form at work in the design of all cities from older, highly-localized urban grids in the Middle East/Africa to deformed grids in Europe to regular grids in the United States/Americas. All cities utilize these (usually geometric) properties, though the scale at which they are realized will tend to vary during urban growth in defining a distinctive spatial culture. The purpose is to provide an understanding of the basic typologies/geometries of urban form that can be found underlying all settlements around the world, to one degree or another (1.0 hour course).

Key concepts: grid expansion, block manipulation, linear extension, grid deformation, discrete separation, and urban blocks.

Instructor: Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

Check here to purchase this course ($9.99), which includes an one-hour video presentation and PDFs of the course notes and slide handout.

Note: We are beta-testing with these initial course offerings so if you have any issues accessing the course material, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected]. Thank you!

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Education, News, Philosophy, Urban Planning

NOW AVAILABLE | The Generic City and its Origins

The Generic City and its Origins covers the inherent constraints placed on the physical form and design of built environments by human nature and our basic need for shelter, water, movement, food and other specialized urban functions such as barter and defense in the founding and locating of cities. This course covers knowledge that is rarely taught or even spoken about but which we are expected to bring along with us and already intuitively understand based on our everyday experience of built environments. These generic aspects of form and function play a profound, continuous role in limiting the possibilities for shaping our buildings and settlements (1.0 hour course).

Key concepts: human genotypes, generic function, economy of building, topographical constraints, principles of centrality,  linearity, and self-similarity.

Instructor: Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A

Check here to purchase this course ($9.99), which includes an one-hour video presentation and PDFs of the course notes and slide handout.

Note: We are beta-testing with these initial course offerings so if you have any issues accessing the course material, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected]. Thank you!

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