Blog Post 3

 

In the concept map shown above, rather than focusing on one central point to connect the outlying topics, I chose to use a more spread out, interconnected web-like structure. This helped me to pair many topics to one another, tracing back to the main ideas listed as “Urban Design”, “Natural Environment”, and “Transportation”. I made an effort to connect as many of these broad terms together as possible, creating a concept map the shows the many connections between concepts thought of while planning a city. I believe that creating a concept map to relate dimensions involved in the conception of a city is a very helpful way to remind students, or even professional planners, that decisions made when building a city and its structure all effect one another. In the middle of this concept map, one can observe that “Density”, regarding population or development, has effects seen in each dimension. “Density” ties back to pollution, commuters, and growth; how density is prepared for and dealt with reflects on Transportation, Urban Design, and the Environment, along with many other topics listed in the concept map above.

The Cities: Skylines simulator is very effective in its ability to reflect these interconnected points. As we have seen in previous blog posts, memos, and gameplay, when one decision is made involving the changing of a dimension in a city, there is a trickle down effect to smaller scale problems. For example, when we had our last assignment focusing on transportation, we were trying to create a more fluid flow of traffic in and out of the city. A possible fix to this problem would be the reconstruction of roads, addition of traffic signals, or the restructuring of traffic patterns altogether. As a result, the planner would need to consider the destruction of urban design elements, like tearing down buildings or parks to make way for new roads. They would think about the introduction of public transportation and how that may positively effect the environment to decrease emissions. Using a concept map to visualize these thought processes assists a planner in compartmentalizing the effects of large scale projects as they trickle down to impact day-to-day life of citizens.

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