Metro-Matrix Theory » Book: The Art of Shaping the Metropolis
 |
New Metropolitan Discipline seminal paper |
 |
|
| Metropolization is a brand-new phenomena experienced by our 21 C. urban complex structures. We do not know yet how to handle it. Here is how we should and how academics might address it.
Cesar’s Rome was a million inhabitants. Ming’s Beijing was 700.000. Victoria’s London grew from 700.000 to one million in 60 years. And that was only 100 years ago. Now we have to deal with metropolises of 30 million and many of them are growing at yearly rates of 5%, which means doubling in size every 14 years. Governments do not know how to handle it. They actually do not address the issue and the result is a world of slums at a speed of 300.000 infra-housed new city dwellers every day across the world. And this is going to go on for the next 30 years until 70% urbanization rates are reached. The empirical approach of economists and sociologies do not provide the necessary framework to shape that development. Their disjointed incrementalist piecemeal approach, coupled to engineering infrastructure building is only producing fake like solutions, well cherished by Multilaterals and IGO’s in their eager effort to hide ignorance. A new understanding of the complex interaction of disciplines, economic, social, environmental, political, etc… is required. The physical component can integrate all of them. Architects and Planners have not been able yet to master the methods to do so. Metro-Matrix provides them with those disciplinary skills. Metro-Matrix method, resulting from the 2016 Madrid Metropolitan Plan, becomes the foundation charter of a Metropolitan necessary discipline to be initiated in Academic Curricula. This paper by Professor Contin, from Milano Politecnico, provides the basics of such knowledge Discipline: the basics for a Metropolitan (Metropolitan-Architecture) foundational Charter. |
|
 |
|
Metro Matrix intellectual fundamentals |
 |
|
| Metro Matrix is a methodology to understand and plan Metropolises. The book ‘The Art of Shaping the Metropolis” presents the methodology application. The approach are rooted in a conceptual framework that integrates intellectual thinking since Leonardo da Vinci’s mental geography, along the Empiricism and Neo-Platonism dichotomy in Western evolution of thought, up to actual Structuralism.
The conceptual understanding of space at large scale is new to Metropolitan Planning. Disjointed incrementalist procedures of the different sciences involved in its interpretation, description and prescription (Geography, Economics, Sociology, Political Science, Environment, Engineering, etc.) lacked a spatial framework to relate to. Metro Matrix provides this conceptual framework. It is the first time the architectural thinking is applied to Metropolitan Scale. It is the first time architects can both understand and have a say to a spatial scale. A scale they did not yet grasp, nor were able to provide specific project proposals: a scale up to now solely on the hands of the mentioned empirical disciplines. Metro Matrix provides gateway key to that scale for Architects and Planners. Metropolitan conceptual understanding results in a mental map that provides the framework for specific project locations (engineering, architecture, environment, productive, social) and its relation to upper and lower scales. Decision-making is supported not just by quantitative measurements, as well by a qualitative conceptual framework that provides rationale and consistency in the long term. The application of the Method by Milan Polytechnic University in the Research Lab of the School of Architecture has proven its efficient application to numerous cases. QuestO, the book published by Professor Contin provides many examples where Metro Matrix has framed the process of project consistency from the Metropolitan scale (1:50.000) to the Urban (1:5.000) Urban Design (1:500) and Architecture (1:50). This file contains the introductory chapters to that book. |
|
|
|
|
Book: The Art of Shaping the Metropolis |
 |
|
| McGraw Hill: http://www.mcgrawhill.ca/professional/products/9780071817967/
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0071817964 This unique and timely resource establishes a system to confront, control, and tame the explosive growth of the metropolises and large urban areas of the world, and to do so in a way that enhances economic activity, environmental stability, and quality of life. Written by a Senior Urban Planner at the World Bank, The Art of Shaping the Metropolis is a how-to-do-it book on metropolitan planning. Pedro Ortiz is renowned for pioneering a groundbreaking methodology of metropolitan development when he directed the comprehensive, highly successful 1995 regional plan that set Madrid and its environs on a course of positive growth into the future. Mr. Ortiz has since applied the same principles to projects in Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Using the principles established in the Madrid Plan as a core example and then expanding from them, Ortiz demonstrates how metropolises can be organized for a future that preserves the historic nucleus of the city and the environment, while providing for the necessary expansion of transportation, housing, and industrial facilities. Provides a tool kit approach to be used by planning professionals, public officials, and decision makers on metropolitan management throughout the world for immediate project proposals for future general sustainable development Integrates transportation, environment, housing, production, and social issues Offers a unique, proven approach to deal with the problem of explosive metropolitan growth in an integrated and holistic way. The methodology presented in the book has been successfully implemented. Foreword: Grahame Shane, Prof. Columbia University Antonella Contin, Prof Milano Politecnico Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1: The Dialogues of the Metropolis Chapter 2: The Challenge Chapter 3: The Inheritance Chapter 4: Balanced Urban Development, the Fabric Chapter 5: Balanced Urban Development, the Form Chapter 6: The Chess on a Tripod (CiTi) Method to Build the Model Chapter 7: Madrid as Testing Ground Chapter 8: Practical Considerations on Implementing a Metropolitan Plan Chapter 9: The Model Applied Elsewhere Index |
|
|
|