presentation of Analyses Slow Urbanism Riga

Recently I finished my analyses period by presenting my findings about Riga, Slow
Urbanism and the design area Andrejsala, Petersala and Skanstes. It's mostly about how Riga is and to tell her story here in Holland as the city is not yet very known in general public. At the end I come to some strategies on the scale of the city. These strategies follow the Slow Urbanism principles which I want to apply also on the design area in a more detailed form.

Here below  are the posters, I would like to get some reactions on it, feel free.

Moscow Mayor Plans for traffic

Sobyanin is the new mayor for Moscow. Luzkhov and Moscow became too much a city state with it's own king. As long as the king listens to the emperor and keeps his people silent there are no problems. Now the new appointed mayor must do something to keep the people silent. This is done in a way which is very smart. By promising to take away the gridlock which irritates the Muscovites daily. City Hall's web site crashed Wednesday after Mayor Sergei Sobyanin published his long-awaited plan to fight Moscow traffic jams.



Tversjkaya carpark-free



Harsh measures are directly in effect:

- City employers should wake up an hour earlier to be present at work at 8:00 reducing the transportpeak
- Trucks are no longer allowed to to appear on the streets between 07:00 hours and 22:00 hours
- banning parking on pavements (Tverksaja, the main shopping street is allready complaining)
- pedestrian passes are to be removed from streets and should go underground

- kiosks are blocking pavements and attracting cars and they should be removed, all of them.

Contemporary architecture in Riga and the Skanstes, Petersala and Andrejsala area

Contemporary architecture in Riga and Jurmala in hundred pictures. I especcially also show the many small projects, mainly infill in the existing city. All together they form more built mass then the icon projects like the one I start with. This is called Citadel and is located in the north of the old city, Vecriga. The area used to be a citadel and afterwards became a place to put big office blocks in the modernist  way. Nowadays it's mediaviel atmosphere is mainly destroyed, it's cut of to the medieval center by a big citystreet, Valdemara. It seems the best solution for this piece of the center is to build many qualitative contemporary architectural projects here and try to bring a new structure into the area uniting the loose projects.

Moscow architecture video

One of my interests is the city of Moscow and it's developments. It is one of the biggest metropoles in Europe, together with London and Istanbul. I have visited it many timesnow and every time I find a new development or interesting area. On the Russia Today site I found a nice video which gives an overall impression of the current developments of the city, please check it.

Schematic development of Riga and Skanstes

In a previous post I showed the development of Riga by historical maps. Now to compare them good and see wat actually happened I made a schematic map of each period. Interesting is how defining the first plan was to make a rectangular city extension for the suburbs. Every city fire and redevelopment it seems they made more progress according to this design plan. Skanstes area, Petersala and Andrejsala developed much later than the rest of the suburbs more tot the east and south.

1600

Foto impression of the designarea Skanstes

Skanstes iela in northern direction; on th left the NORD bank and on the right the Riga Arena

Historical development of Skanstes area - Slow Urbanism Riga

Keeping a blog means you have to add a message frequently otherwise it's not interesting to keep coming back to the blog. My apologies for not posting for a while.
Recently I have been to Riga for inventarising and registrating developments in the study area. After that I started to work on my first part of my thesis, the Analyses book. Part of this analyses is the historical development. By doing research on the maps available and comparing them a lot of things become clear why the study area looks nowadays as it is. Also I found out that the development of Riga has been very much influenced by Dutch and other European designers during the past centuries. It shows again how open and what an interesting mix of East, West and North Europe this city actually is.

An english common meadow in Sudbury

The preventive city fire of 1812 destroying the wooden suburbs, nowaday central rayon

Other remarkable discoveries where the fact that this area was really a long time the cities common cattle meadow (Deutsch: Stadts Vieh weide, Nederlands: Meent of veeweide) and that the grid structure central rayon actually is the result of 7 or 8 city fires after which the layout of the city was optimalised again and again.
Hereby the maps on the development of Riga and the Skanstes area starting from 1600 to nowadays:

Riga - the metropolis of beauty

Slow Urbanism Riga: the study area

Some times only after deep thinking you understand things. For instance I was wondering why I all the time had such a good feeling about Riga, as if I knew it for a long time. Only after spending a weekend at my parental house I understand. Just around the corner of the house where I used to live is an old warehouse with the name of Riga on it. The city where I am from, Harlingen, has a big harbour. Probably they where trading wood with Latvia via Riga. As a small boy I always wondered how that city would look like. Then I imagend a city with a river full of loggs floating around. Sadly this is not true as I know now but still I really like the old city center next to the big open river landscape. This again is reminding me of Harlingen where the city center is also next to the big open sea.
 

Back to Riga
The study area which I plan to visit composes the innercity, the 19th century city, Kipsala where the new city center should take place and off course the design area, north of the innercity. On the map you will see there used be a train depot, garden allotments, a old harbour and many factories. The design area will be on another position in the mental map when the Baltic Highway and the northern bridge will realised. Then it can become one of the main entries when coming from Tallin (north) or from the ferrie city Ventpils in the west.

Video's on Riga's 19th century area and some studentprojects

I found this video very beautiful and telling the qualities I see in this 19th century neighbourhood. I call it in my thesis the 'european city' with some certain features like big blocks with parcels in it. The parcels can be developed independently. In Riga you see they made plots for a certain type of appartmenthousing because they are all limited to the same width and height more or less.

thesis plan Slow Urbanism Riga

To communicate easily with people interested in my thesis I decided to place my thesis plan online. It's available in both English and Dutch.

Thesis plan 'Slow Urbanism Riga' approved!

Last Friday, the 10th of September, I held my presentation on my thesis plan at the Academy of Architecture Amsterdam. I told about my theme which is slow urbanism and the location where I want to test it. I have two goals, learning how Slow Urbanism works and how to design it and to offer Riga another course in developing the city.