Redesigning Milan

In the last unit of the Urban Planning course we looked at the basics of urban planning in more depth. We focused more on the infrastructure and design part of the urban planning of actual places. We looked at a bunch of different cities and saw how they changed over time to become the way that they are now. For the action project in this unit, we were asked to pick an area of a city of our choice that we wanted to redesign. Something that was difficult for me in this project was picking the area I wanted to redesign. There are so many places around the world that I could have chosen. I am glad that I decided to do Milan, Italy because it is one of my favorite places. I am proud of the way my project came out.

Redesigning Milan

I will be redesigning Milan, Italy, specifically il duomo di Milano. It is the center area of Milan and holds its biggest church in the center of the piazza. It gets millions of visitors a month and the church is a big symbol in/for Milan. The strengths of this area are that it’s a big open space, there are many shops surrounding it, and it is well-known so there are lots of people. The weaknesses are that there is no greenery. It is all concrete. This space needs more trees and maybe a fountain in the center in front of the Duomo. I want to add a fountain to make it more interesting, add more trees to make it more green and make it more pleasing, and widen the sidewalk since there are so many tourists the sidewalks get pretty crowded. Widening them would help a lot, adding a green space rather than just concrete would give people a place to sit other than just on the concrete, and creating a bike path so bikers are safe from all of the traffic.

Before. MF, 2016

My fountain was inspired by the Trevi fountain that is located in the heart of Rome. I like that there is a piece in the middle to make the fountain look more extravagant. I also think that, like some parts of Chicago, I want to have sectioned off bike paths in the streets. I also want to kind of mirror the greenery that is in Central park in New York. The Conservatory Garden blooms every year and I want there to be some kind of flowers in his space to make the space more pleasing to the eye.  I was also inspired by Majora Carter who said that adding in green spaces would help brighten up the area. 

After. MF, 2016

My redesigned space relates to transportation because I created a bike path so that bikers were safer and could worry less about getting injured by a car. I also wanted to fix up the concrete so that there weren’t so many holes in it. I also created a large green space so that the space was not all concrete and it had some kind of greenery. This redesign would benefit the infrastructure of the area a lot because the concrete was becoming very dirty and no one was doing anything about it so having grass put in would make it more appealing. Adding a bike lane would benefit the transit in Milan because it would give bikers a safe place to ride and give the cars back their space so they can drive without worrying about hitting bikers.

The shape of the area I am redesigning is a rectangle that is 450m by 500m. It has an area of 225,000 meters². The volume of the sphere in the middle of the fountain is 28235.1 meters³. I found this by figuring out that the diameter of my sphere is 47.6. I then divided that by 2 to find the radius which is 23.8. Then I used the volume formula for a sphere (4/3πr³) and got 56470.2 meters³. Since it is half a sphere, I divided the answer by 2 and got 28235.1 meters³. I also found that the volume of one of the cone-shaped trees is 28233.1 meters³. I found this by finding that the radius of the cone is 23.8 meters and the height is 47.6 meters. Then I did the volume formula for a cone (1/3πr²h) and got 28233.1 meters³.

It was difficult to pick the area that I wanted to change. I also wasn’t sure how I wanted to change the space to make it more friendly to transportation. I would probably pick another space to change if I was to do this again because it would be interesting to see how another space could be recreated. 

Citations:

Talk, TED. "Majora Carter." TED: Ideas worth Spreading. TED, June 2006. Web. 27 May 2016.

Moore, John. "Conservatory Garden Blooms." Central Park. Central Park, 23 Apr. 2016. Web. 27 May 2016.

Fountain, Trevi. "Your Professional Guide to the Trevi Fountain Artworks." Your Professional Guide to the Trevi Fountain Artworks. Trevi Fountain, 2015. Web. 27 May 2016.

Electricity: The Circuit Challenge

In the second unit of the Urban Planning class, we talked about electricity. We looked into the war of the currents and who Tesla and Edison were and what they accomplished in their lives. We looked at different equations such as Ohm’s law, Coulomb's law, etc. For the action project in this unit we were asked to build a circuit with 5 resistors, a main switch, and a parallel branch switch. Something that was difficult in doing this project was figuring out a way to have a switch that only turned off one thing. I am proud of the way my cricut came out and I think that it works very well. 

Bridge of Truss

In the first unit of the Urban Planning class, we learned about the math components that go into building different things that we can see around our city. We focused on triangles for a while which led us to talking about truss bridges which use a lot of triangles. We learned about the law of sines, the law of cosines, similar and congruent triangles, etc. For the action project in the first unit we were asked to build our own truss bridge out of 50 popsicle sticks and glue. Our bridges had to be sturdy enough to withstand 10 lbs. of weight. It was very difficult to connect the top and bottom popsicle sticks because of the little amount of surface we had to set them on. I am very proud of the way my bridge came out. I really like my design and I think that I made it aesthetically pleasing.