Eerlier design
Since I have the urbanism background from my bachelor at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (Amsterdam University) I notice that I always take traffic into consideration in my projects. For us urban planners and designers the connection is very important. This is one of the most vital part in the design process before you can even start to design. Questions such as "How can I get the people into the are how can I get them out?" or "How are we going to deal with the amount of cars that will come into area when people are living, visiting and working there?". All these questions you first answer before you start the design process. I my case I notice that I take the traffic flow very seriously and I always try to solve the problems of traffic jams and public transportation. Although I can show many examples of my previous work how try to do all of this but I think the project of Haarlem I did something more drastic. In order to connect the city with the water again I needed to made the River Spaarne accessible for the people. On the western river quay of the Spaarne I created an Esplanade that is pedestrian friendly so the people can have a river walk in their city. Because the traffic flow in that part is one of the most important connection for the city of Haarlem and it is a node where traffic congestion form almost every day I needed to keep this part accessible for the car traffic. To solve this problem I propose a tunnel underneath the Esplanade and I made the lanes twice wider to the traffic flow can go faster.
 |
| fig.1 Infrastructure in Haarlem current situation |
 |
fig.2 and fig.3 perspective show the Esplanade on the west side with a track for tram and the tunnel that runs underneath the Esplanade and comes out to the end of the Esplanade. Section shows the tunnel and the River Spaarne |
The traffic will stay a very important actor in the pattern we call urban. For the future design I would like to learn more about the theory of traffic structure and parking. Also the importance of public transportation is becoming a bigger issue. The population is expanding and people that commute are becoming every year more. We as urban planners can have some influence in how we can carry on with these problems. Together with new technologies like electric trams or trams on solar energy we can introduce a whole new way of moving and commuting.
Of course as designer we hope that proposals like this will help to solve some traffic problems but of course we never know how it really going to end up. To have an idea how it is going to we can use the excel program made by Prof. de Jong where we can make some calculations. The excel program Prof. de Jong develop for us future designer we can calculate different type of traffic use. One of the sheets I think that I am going to use often is the part of Public Transportation where we can calculate how many stop is needed in a certain distance. Also the sheets about the lanes I think I will use in the future to calculate and design roads. I believe that infrastructure is one with a design I every urban designer or planner should calculate this very good in order to get a better design. Below you can find the some fragment of the excel sheets from Prof. de Jong.
 |
| fig.4 excel sheet about Public Tranportation by Prof. de Jong |
 |
| fig.5 excel sheet about lanes by Prof. de Jong |
No comments:
Post a Comment