Denis Cosgrove : Carto City

This article struck my attention for a number of different reasons. First, urban planning has always interested me. I always wondered who decided to put streets, buildings, and sidewalks where they existed. Growing up in Chicago, I have been extremely familiar with the grid plan. Chicago consists of one big grid, easy to navigate and understand. Cosgrove explains that "the grid generates the simplest and most ubiquitous form of urban planning". This I think is very true, and although it is simple, I think it is very effective. When I would try to navigate in suburbs, I would often get confused with the constant circles and turns in much of the housing districts. In my ancient Greek art class this semester, we studied urban planning, and the way that the ancient Greeks constructed their cities. Before 350 BCE, there was much disorganization in the way a city was constructed, but started in Priene in 350 BCE, the grid plan emerged and is still used today.

I also found interested the notion that a city map can have two functions, that of helping people navigate through a city, but it also hinders the way in which the city is viewed. With the intent to help people in a city, maps can sometimes do the complete opposite. It cannot be denied that maps are necessary in a large city, but they also guide an individual's gaze in one very specific way. I thought this quote from the reading was thought-provoking, "cartography acts not merely to record the various ways that the city is materially present, but as a creative intervention in urban space, shaping both the physical city and the urban life experienced and performed there." This is true in that it does shape the city and what it has to offer, but again in one specific way.

DERIVE : Alienating