Effects of Mass Transit, Tourism and e Commerce

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Introduction Man intervenes on the natural environment through the use of forms, ingeniously limiting and distributing the space through which he moves. The architectural phenomenon reflects the harmonization of material possibilities and architecture, both practically and theoretically, is a document of human civilization. This visible documentation can only intrigue us into it’s history: how did the urban space evolve and what were the factors that influenced its transformation? But the role of architecture is not limited to this, it also proposes premises of thought. In recent years there have been radical mutations without precedent: from the dogmatism of modern movement to a pluralistic ideology that embraces the high tech. How can architecture cope with the intricacies of human activity? Mass transit, tourism and e-commerce are three of the most important factors that determined the evolution of cities. In the chronological order of their emergence. These factors will be discussed, taking into account their influence on the development of the city, the changes they brought to the urban landscape, how they each contributed to the urban transformation and how they are interconnected. 1

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Mass transit, tourism and e-commerce are three of the most important factors that determined the evolution of cities. In the chronological order of their emergence. These factors will be discussed, taking into account their influence on the development of the city, the changes they brought to the urban landscape, how they each contributed to the urban transformation and how they are interconnected.

Transcript of Effects of Mass Transit, Tourism and e Commerce

Introduction

Man intervenes on the natural environment through the use of forms, ingeniously limiting and distributing the space through which he moves. The architectural phenomenon reflects the harmonization of material possibilities and architecture, both practically and theoretically, is a document of human civilization. This visible documentation can only intrigue us into its history: how did the urban space evolve and what were the factors that influenced its transformation?

But the role of architecture is not limited to this, it also proposes premises of thought. In recent years there have been radical mutations without precedent: from the dogmatism of modern movement to a pluralistic ideology that embraces the high tech. How can architecture cope with the intricacies of human activity?

Mass transit, tourism and e-commerce are three of the most important factors that determined the evolution of cities. In the chronological order of their emergence. These factors will be discussed, taking into account their influence on the development of the city, the changes they brought to the urban landscape, how they each contributed to the urban transformation and how they are interconnected.

Mass TransitThe history of architecture shows us that each new era rejects its predecessor in the name of modernity and Joseph Belmont argues that, over time, these cycles become shorter while the space becomes vaster. Pedestrian and vehicle circulation arteries can be compared to the arteries of a heart in the way they give life to the city and its communities. These arteries appeared either chaotically due to economic or technological booms, or as a product of an architectural plan, resulting in a mix of classic geometry and chaos.

The city of Ancient Rome (second century CE) perfectly illustrates the possibilities of the architectural plan. The two primary roads intersecting in the Forum, together with the bridges aqueducts, and traffic mediation laws demonstrate the extent at which the Roman Empire developed and maintained their cities, facilitating, among others, efficient transportation throughout their cities.

This example leads us to urban morphology, the study of the form of human settlements and the process of their formation and transformation. From historical data, the importance of these forms as created by previous generations was studied. However, scientists try to see beyond these forms, and explore how and why these organizations, processes and personalities were promoted, implemented or even imposed. Renaissance thinkers, for example, believed that the ideal town should be structured like in the following images. Images: Baity, Michael & Longley, Paul FRACTAL CITIES A Geometry of Form and Function, pg 23This structure allowed for workers to live, with their families, at a distance of up to a 10-15 minutes walk or donkey ride from their workplace. However, this maximum distance grew with the invention of rail vehicles - initially pulled by horses, later convening into electric trams and even later taking the form of buses. The development of transportation involves the territorial expansion of the city, and helped the development of clearly defined city zones: residential, commercial and industrial. Furthermore, when the dependence on water transportation, which was more efficient in terms of cost, time, safety and quality during a pre-mechanized era, lessened, cities that were not located on navigable river banks were able to grow and reach the levels of already established cities.

Today, transportation faces another problem, the modern city needs to address efficiently the commuters needs. For the first 5000 years of their existence, cities were static and would have stayed so had it not been for the invention of the train. From there on, cities developed at a quicker pace, eventually merging into megalopolises. Commuting is in fact one of the characteristics defining and creating the megalopolis. When the train was the main means of transportation, traffic was bearable, but the new mechanized city is unable to support the number of vehicles on the road, causing constant traffic jams. The by-product, pollution, initially created by the locomotives thick clouds of smoke, is now caused by the means of personal transportation. Furthermore, people earning their living in the mechanized city spend more time and money to get out of the very city providing their income, either because they live in the suburbs or because they own a second house in the country. Nowadays, commuting mainly takes place between the cities and their suburbs, but what will become of the planet in a few years if we take into consideration the development of aeronautics? There are already weekly flights between London and Craiova, a city in Romania, that serve British commuters who work at a Ford car factory in the Romanian city.

In this case, the development of transportation has caused several repercussions and solutions for traffic decongestion, for example, went from being innovative to being radical. Venice has become the Occidental pioneer in excluding the mechanized vehicles from the city, reminding us of Ancient Rome where traffic was prohibited for half of the day. But even so, other projects prove that radical decisions are not required. If some bridges in Italy support shops and even residencies, why couldnt we make bridges to run on top of streets? This was the idea behind a public transportation vehicle proposed by Song Youzhou, a Chinese researcher, which would be connected to the side of the road and move above the cars, creating a leveled traffic flow.Song Youzhou's invention, www.gizmag.cm/straddling-bus-headed-forus/16762/This brings us back to the urban morphology. Ever since the cities have become mechanized and began to expand, they suffered because of following a standard model dating 5000 years back. Concentrating the activities in a single commercial centre creates pressure in the modern city and therefore, expansion is done through the addition of rings - in the same way a tree trunk grows in nature.

New challenges can be foreseen in the rapid and intense growth of urban population, with cities already exceeding 20 million inhabitants (Tokio 34m, New York 22m, Beijing 16m). The BBC documentary "Welcome to Lagos," portrays some of the problems encountered by the megaregions created by the poor population migrating to the big cities. By migrating they don't move into a city to have a decent life, but live at the margins of the city, near the dumps in improvised tents. And still, they seem to be very happy.

This picture is a shot from the documentary presenting the conditions in which they live.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/apr/16/welcome-to-lagos-sam-wollastonOur image upon the various types of our future is important, but, they have to be organized in a structural form. The essence of creativity is to play along with the absurd and only afterwards introduce the rigorous critical analysis of these new ideas.Tourism

The role of the modes of communication and transportation increased in the twentieth century, especially in the second half of the century when the explosion of demographics, urban spaces, economics and tourism appeared. Trapped in a mechanized and monotonous city, its dwellers want more space, more freedom of movement, and the release of the narrow space can be obtained by exploring other areas dominated by human architecture.

The relationship between tourism and architecture is complex. Since ancient times, holy places attracted tourists. Whether it was the Oracle of Delphi, or the more tangible architectural monuments such as the world of the Renaissance, architectural monuments have always brought a large influx of visitors.The Oracle of Delphi, http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-photo/alifebeinglived/3/1243309200/the-oracle-of-delphi.jpg/tpod.htmlOn the other hand, the desire to attract tourists, to improve local economy, nearly realized an audacious project to promote the area across the individualistic preferences of a wide audience. For modern planners the city is not designed as a simple collection of houses and streets or as a monument but as a set of human beings, based on their needs: housing, work, travel, leisure, etc.

The relationship between architecture and the creation of tourism activity is also defined by shifting tourism routes and objectives established by the routes and areas whose cultural, architectural and touristic potential have been neglected. This shift has multiple effects: relieving well-known sights of the aggression of intensive tourism, presentation of new tourism areas whether natural or man-made and socio-economic development of the respective localities.Architectural structures that match the city that hosts them, become the emblem of the city, some examples being the Eiffel Tower for Paris or Sydneys Opera House. Sometimes, the buildings give the city a new life, turning a small town in a star of international tourism, such is the case of The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, designed by architect Frank Gehry - one of the most esteemed and admired contemporary architects, working with the deconstructivist style. The economic success achieved has even generated a new terminology in the field of architecture, we speak of the "Bilbao effect 'or' wow-factor. Guggenheim Museum In Bilbao Spain http://thebesttraveldestinations.com/guggenheim-museum-bilbao-spain/Developing a certain area in a city with the intention to attract international tourists also puts pressure onto local authorities to improve the adjacent areas. This happened in Bucharest, where the Old Town was redeveloped, and as a result, by the summer of 2011, the streets were teeming with foreign languages, causing the redevelopment works in the entire city centre to be accelerated. This proves that it takes only one small step in order for tourism to work its way onto the city and its architecture.

Bucharest shot of Old Town in the city centre http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=303931&page=90In the same manner, a small artistic intervention, meant to remedy the effects of a huge touristic trend can have a strong impact onto the city and its community. An example is The NYC Tourist Lane by Improv Everywhere which puts a line on the sidewalk separating the tourists from the New Yorkers in order to ease the residents journey.

http://popupcity.net/2010/06/the-nyc-tourist-lane/"Architourism: Authentic, Escapist, Exotic, Spectacular" is a buildings guide that has fixed the coordinates of international tourism, from Mont Saint Michel and the Taj Mahal to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and Building Blurin in Lake Neuchatel, Switzerland. It is written by Joan Oackman, Director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University, who enshrines a new term that describes a phenomena of the modern world "Architourism". The author believes that the desire to create reference buildings is not new, the difference "lies in the number of tourist-magnet buildings underway, as well as the global marketing considerations going into all aspects of project planning, design including."

E-Commerce

"We are standing at the threshold on a New World. It is as if we had just invented printing or the steam engine" Matthew Barrett, Chairman of the Bank of Montreal.

It all began in 1995 when amazon.com was launched in the USA. The enormous success had caused the phenomenon to spread throughout the world in just a few years, strongly impacting commerce and society.

http://avondaleassetmanagement.blogspot.com/2011/09/is-best-buy-losing-market-share.htmlAnd why not shopping online? From the consumers point of view, there are the advantages of not having any temporal or geographical barrier. At the same time, there is the avalanche of promotional offers from online stores, which grows interest into this kind of commerce to the detriment of the traditional one. Today, consumers are still skeptical when facing payment before acquisition, or quality control, even though this has been severely remedied by Paypal.com and return policies. From the companys point of view, there are only advantages, especially from an economic perspective. The maintenance costs of an online store are incomparable to the costs of a physical one, taking into consideration rent and staff hired. In both cases there is a problem of deposit space and shipping to the shop or to the customer, but in the case of the online store, these expenses are often times covered by the consumer.

When analyzing the specifics of the situation, everything seems perfect, there are only advantages, but if we analyze it on a macro social level, from a drastic perspective - when e-commerce would develop according to statistics and become the most common form of shopping - we would end up with a malfunctioned society where all "brick 'n' mortar" shops would disappear. Even so, this does not sound that dramatic either, if we do not take into consideration the importance of shops in a city. Their disappearance would have a strong aesthetic, social and even emotional impact with effects in the architectural space and with consequences in the psychology at an individual level.

The activity of shopping is more than just the acquisition of a new product, it is a social and recreational act within the community. This idea contains the basis of marketing strategies for shopping centers, promoting the experience of this activity through pictures of happy families or a group of friends that are having fun whilst shopping. Same idea is being implemented in the design of shopping malls, in a manner in which there is little natural light so that the consumer loses the sense of time, and the more time, the more money he spends. A similar debate has been going on in regards to the digitization of the print medium, with many believers that the printed newspaper or even the book would disappear. So far, this has not been the case, and one reason for this is the social aspect, whether it is the newspaper you are reading whilst on the metro, or the act of flipping through the pages of the book. Yes, the digitization of the print medium has made reading more convenient, but, holding a piece of technology is not the same thing as holding a book.Commercial For Fremlin Walk Shopping Centre, Kenthttp://www.daysoutguide.co.uk/fremlin-walk-shopping-centreBuying online has indeed had a very strong impact and will attract more and more followers, but it is only addressing to a particular category of people, the ones who do not have time. No matter how much technology advances, there will never be a way to replicate the experience of being there, retailtainment being based on this ideology. George Ritzer, in his 1999 book Enchanting a Disenchanted World, Revolutionising The Means of Consumption, defined "retailtainment" as "the use of sound, ambience, emotion and activity to get customers interested in the merchandise and in the mood to buy".

One example could be the futuristic fashion shop Cyberdog in Camden, London. The loud music makes the passerby curios, while the phosphorescent light draws attention onto the products and the club atmosphere causes a prolonged stay in the shop. "Bright colours, flashing lights and hard house pounding from the speakers - it seems like half of Camden is given over to cyber clothes shops"

http://pinup.punkrockelite.org/2011/06/cyberdog-where-rave-never-ends.htmlAnother example is toy stores. A very important category in the field of retailtainment represents the children, where the experience of shopping can be compared to the one of visiting Disneyland. Here their heroes can become real and the intensity of the experience cannot be surpassed by any website or even computer game. Peter Cross, business partner of Mary Portas,a retail expert, said: "Retail theatre is not a new thing, but the sheer power of the internet and its efficiency means that so much transactional retailing can happen online, so shops have to up their game."

Imagination and creativity led to finding a middle ground between the two ways of commerce, where you can enjoy the advantages of online buying, without neglecting the physical space. The Apple Company is using such a strategy, their stores taking the form of showrooms where you can test their products, even though the majority of their customers prefer buying the products online. Another strategy, that combines the two spaces, has been implemented by Tesco in a subway station from South Korea, through pictures of real size supermarket shelves. Whilst waiting for the metro, one can scan the QR code in order to purchase a product that is delivered within the day. Therefore, customers enjoy the advantages of e-commerce, such as time saving and the home delivery, but can also enjoy the physical space. Tesco (Homeplus) virtual shop in a subway stationhttp://www.littledoremi.com/tesco-homeplus-subway-virtual-store-in-south-korea/In the end, e-commerce can have a positive impact onto the city and its architecture through the competition it creates between the virtual and the physical space, competition which can be won by the traditional shop only by implementing a strategic design. Thus, higher standards would be set and only the stores that can face the competition will survive.

Conclusion

In a world transformed by technology, internet, demographic explosion and globalization, everything is in a strong connection and mutual dependence just as the science of complexity highlights. Accelerated speed of transformation involves an analysis of phenomena and their consequences. Addressing the issues of transport, tourism, e-commerce and architectural space, the natural conclusion is their interdependence and the historical evolution of the community is largely determined by these three aspects.

There is a time of virtual experiences, but there is a time of physical living as well.

In order to reach the various destination, whether for a touristic or commercial purpose, a means of transport is required. The car, train, ship, plane or helicopter are the modern means of transportation, but, we should not neglect the bicycle or even the carriage used in touristic purposes. Transport, of any form, can be procured through the use of the internet, method chosen by more and more people. Virtually one can obtain information regarding tourist destinations, but this would not diminish the number of visitors, on the contrary, it would increase the attraction of the area. The desire to buy products from another country can be fulfilled by tourism with the purpose of shopping but, now, it can also be fulfilled through e-commerce.

A question that always arises in front of new phenomena is whether it will be viable, or just an experience of moment. The natural dilemma is if e-commerce will ever replace the classic commerce or if it will become just an alternative for some buyers. Leaning towards the latter idea, the emphasis lies on the transformation of traditional shops within the urban planning and the marketing plan policies.

The typical 21st century city, with its dominant functions regarding industry, services, trade, housing and recreation gives way to its new urban system, in which the basic components (universities, malls, industrial districts, scientific parks, recreational areas, etc) operate on two levels: the three-dimensional nature of the world and the cyberspace of the Internet. Merging the two innovative environments, the real and the digital, creates a new dimension of cities, where the tasks of urban planners is to facilitate the emergence, development and proper maintenance of innovative islands by meeting the challenges of technological changes.

Idea extracted from the book "L'Architecture, cration collective, d. ouvrires," Paris, 1970

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum I,2,593, line 56,57:C.G.Bruns,Fontes, Juris Romani Antiquied 7. Tubingen,1909, Mohr,pg 105

Idea extracted from Toynbee, Arnold: Orasele in miscare (Cities on the move) pg 240.

as Arnold Toynbee suggests in Orasele in miscare (Cities on the Move).

Idea extracted from Michael de Kare-Silver: E-shock the new rules, pg1.

In 2011, 85% of people that have internet are buying online comparing to 13% in 1999 HYPERLINK "http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/3440.html" http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/3440.html

Idea extracted from N. Bandyo-padhyay E-commerce context, concepts and consequences, McGraw-Hill Education, 2002.

www.camdenguide.co.uk

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