The view from my balcony
FC-01x Future Cities (1st Run) - Exercise 1 : "Making the Invisible - Visible"
Uploaded on 2015-05-17 by Johajjar
First of all we can notice the difference in the building heights; the ones close to my building have fewer floors then the ones close to the sea (noting that the picture was taken from the 4th floor). Example: Behind the ring we can see two buildings a white and a beige one with 2 floors difference between it. And if you look close enough you can see between the buildings some 2 floors constructions. The architecture varies as well and has no specific coordination in the neighborhood (finishing, windows, materials, roofing...) and we can see that the close ones in the picture have a lack of maintenance. As we can see we have a green ring that we can’t really tell if people use that green spot or not, with almost no cars on the roads, and the trees are every now and then between the buildings. The electrical cables are kind of scary as they swing between the buildings in a chaotic way. The neighborhood seems poor, unlike the buildings close to the sea (on the right of the picture) we can notice 8 buildings alike, with the same finishing and new constructions which gives us the feeling that we have a small compound over there. We can also point the electrical cables that swing between the buildings in a risky and chaotic way, which is a bit scary. 2- Invisible Information: - Traffic: In Lebanon, we have neither metros nor trains to serve public transportation and if you are wondering about the bus, we have very few buses, but no bus stops so you have to wave basically to the chauffeur so he can stop and take your ride, and to be honest they are very dirty and people won’t consider taking it unless for long distances and they are very poor with no budget to buy any car or motorcycles. No special lanes for bicycles and bus, which doesn’t encourage the use of any of those two. - The green spaces aren’t as they are supposed to be, they are not public spaces as we imagine having, but let’s call it “leftovers” and unbuilt spaces for reasons. - Talking about sustainability, we notice as that only one of the roofs has a solar panel system, even though electricity is very expensive in our country, all the people use the electrical heating system - We cannot see the climate that is controlled in each building floor using Split AC units for more than 12h/days - The pedestrians don’t have always a sidewalk to have a safe walk. 3- Planning of a more livable urban space: Between all the information gathered from the observation of the photo taken from my balcony I would like to talk about the roads. I think that the urban planning should consider a better infrastructure especially for the public transportation. The numbers are clear in our countries every family has at least 3-4 cars nowadays, and I think that if we provide a decent public transportation and a good infrastructure to encourage the renovation of the bus with the stops the constructions of the metros, the trains and the bicycle lanes this would help on many levels, less traffics, less pollutions, less accidents knowing that our annual percentage of car accident in Lebanon is high and the government is taking into consideration this situation and is trying to put though regulations to limit this number of incidences. And, of course, to give the pedestrian a sidewalk everywhere. This knowledge can be spread between people and the new planning in order to have a better livable city. ![The View from the balcony][1] [1]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14319030119552011.jpg