1.1 RESEARCH_ARRANGEMENT AND AMENITIES

1.1 RESEARCH_ARRANGEMENT AND AMENITIES

Farmers Market Pavilion located on 8th Ave & Oak St thrives with life and refuge for commerce and community alike. Creating a virtuous environment for capitalistic ideals by allowing farmers to gather at a place that can greatly accommodate the public during weekends. While this one area within the Eugene area can feel promising and create a safe environment, there are various places that surround it and act as dormant remnants of what they once were. Such as Eugene’s old City Hall building on E 7th Ave and Pearl street, now serving as a public service building as well as the lot across from it. There had been some time before the City of Eugene brought down the fence that surrounded the site and repurposed it. There can be ways to repurpose some structures that surround Farmer’s Market to accommodate the place and allow for Eugene’s downtown area to feel more inviting. Although those were just two small examples, there are various buildings, lots, and streetways that can provide better infrastructure to make for Eugene’s downtown area to be safer and viable for shoppers and visitors alike.

Repurposed Buildings

The use of repurposing old structures is not to have them as a means for commerce or business, but to allow for them to not be continued as uninhabited. In the reading, The Phenomenon of a place discussed the locality of a well designed layout in a city. Phenomenology is the term in which people experience and interpret places as their own, almost connecting the relation of places . By adjusting some of these structures we can repurpose them to accommodate people’s needs. (Antony Flew, A Dictionary of Philosophy, rev. 2d ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984, 157) 10 years of urban renewal in Barcelona also claimed the need for intervention when restructuring some of their city’s needs. (VV.AA. Manuel Bailo, 22@BARCELONA – 10 Años De Renovación Urbana. 2014, 1-35, 220-221) Although intervention had occurred years prior to the Olympics which had been hosted there, it’d occurred 6 years prior. Although Eugene itself hosted the Olympics several years ago, the fix had only been temporary in the ways in which renovated the downtown and surrounding parts of campus to appease visitors. Should there not be ways to accommodate the city’s infrastructure regardless of events here in Eugene?

Urban Density

In the reading The Eixample, the practical success of a theoretical project, Ildefons Cerda’s Project, had initially been imposed by the city of Barcelona.(Diez Lecciones Sobre Barcelona: Los Episodios Urbanísticos Que Han Hecho La Ciudad Moderna, Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya, 2008.) One of the various reasons why his brutalistic approach had been denied by the city was due to his idealistic conception of egalitarian isotropy to allow for the continuation of urban growth. Allowing for various modes of transportation to gain access at ease, while establishing a limitless grid. While I believe that the city of Eugene is ever growing, there should be some control and limitations to the city’s expansion and should reconsider utilizing and updating its current infrastructure. Although Eugene fluctuates with various economic changes, so does its population, as a result buildings have often been vacated and often left inhabited. While economic opportunities change in the Eugene area, commodities for residential living and neighboring sites should always remain updated or renovated to avoid being recognized as a mere ghost town in some parts of the city. 

When we maintain the city’s infrastructure, it does not only present itself with its own image, it also brings some stability to the local residents. In order to keep a growing population, we also have to maintain a feasibly safe city. Farmer’s Market on 8th Ave and Oak serves as an exemplary structure to repurpose a site, while also providing the community with amenities and services.

Neighboring Commercial Sites

Much like Ildefons Cerda’s practice in arranging and spatially adjusting city blocks by 100 m by 100 m, there should be some form to allow gradual space for commercial sites and amenities such as the existing parts in downtown Eugene. Using presidents from Barcelona’s infrastructure, data can also reflect just how effective using grids and city blocks are effectively in a dense city. The BCM chart, Barcelona, Ciutat Mediterrània, exemplifies decent demographics in terms of general necessities and people’s conditions such as age and cultures.  (Speranza, P. (2017) “A human-scaled GIS: Measuring and visualizing social interaction in Barcelona’s Superilles”) Just how complacent are residents in the current existing conditions here in the downtown region of Eugene?

Needs for a sustainable city:

• Transportation
• Affordability
• Housing
• Amenities
• More places like Farmer’s Market

Sources: 

Speranza, P. (2017) “A human-scaled GIS: Measuring and visualizing social interaction in Barcelona’s Superilles” Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability”

Solà-Morales i Rubió, Manuel de. Diez Lecciones Sobre Barcelona: Los Episodios Urbanísticos Que Han Hecho La Ciudad Moderna = Ten Lessons on Barcelona : Urbanistic Episodes That Have Made the Modern City. Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya, 2008.

https://nbc16.com/news/local/eugene-to-open-up-butterfly-lot-in-hopes-of-solving-parking-problem