Urban Fractality and "The Concise Landscape"

 

Binary aerial picture of an area of Downton Buenos Aires

Binary aerial picture of a the historical sector of Downtown Boston

There are many publications about the analysis of the Fractal Dimension of different cities in the world. Each publication leading to conclusions about the methods used, and sometimes a projection of the city growth in the future, given a certain pattern.

I took a rest from writing about the subject, I traveled instead, and took notes and lots of pictures of the (visited) cities perceptions to open my mind to several urban morphologies, which at first where focused on Buenos Aires and Los Angeles. This year, I went to waterfront cities, among them, Buenos Aires and Boston, and I immediately realized their Fractal Dimension would be pretty similar. But the perception, the experience of said cities, are radically different.

I selected two downtown areal pictures of them, and decided to run a quick analysis of their Fractal Dimension, using the ImageJ medical software. As a side note, ImageJ has newer versions: Image J2 and Fiji. But I could not upload jpgs, pdfs and pngs files with them, so I returned to the original old version.

If it were a strict analysis, I would have drawn the buildings solids and streets emptiness with Autocad, but for the purpose of this post it was not necessary, and I even left the Google references and the trees, which we may be considered or not part of the urban morphology, depending on the research objectives.

Buenos Aires Fractal Dimension and Boston Fractal Dimension of the first two binary images

The results for the first two images were, respectively, Buenos Aires 1.8462 and Boston 1.8130

I have also considered inverting the solid and empty areas, to test if the results are quite different or not. Here we have two binary images inverted for both cities:

Buenos Aires aerial binary image, inverted.

Boston, binary aerial image, inverted.

Then I took the Fractal Dimension of both inverted images:

Buenos Aires, inverted fractal Dimension= 1.8402

Boston, inverted Fractal Dimension= 1.8654

There is not a significant change in the results, so I'm taking an average of 1.8. Now, let us see how different the plot surfaces are:

Surface plot of Buenos Aires, where we can read the urban orthogonal grid.

Surface plot of Boston, with more morphological irregularity.

When I was in Boston, one of my favorite urban books "The Concise Landscape", written by British architect and urban designer Gordon Cullen in 1961, came to my mind. It was the first book I have read on urbanism. Walking around Boston contained the perfect examples to illustrate the book, most probably due to its British origins, while Buenos Aires grid is Spanish.

For us who work on Urban Morphology based on science, (and sociology in my case), I think that somehow, Cullen has stated a visionary concept on page 8 of the 1971 edition:

.."we have to rid ourselves of the thought that the excitement and drama that we seek can be born automatically out of the scientific research and solutions arrived at by the technical man"....

And he takes into account the perception of the city, in general terms, and per my brief summary below:

. Element of surprise and serial vision.

. The relationship between urban buildings is different with added elements (trees, water, traffic, etc...).

. The relationship between our human body with space and scale.

. Content: colors, texture, scale, style.... -I will add the weather-.

In other words, even if we have the same or similar Fractal Dimension between two cities, our experience of them is not the same. 

For example, Boston has tunnels of traffic circulation, while Buenos Aires streets are wide open (it does not snow in Buenos Aires) with long -French- perspectives and monuments as focal points. We are not allowed to have such a view in Boston, when you walk or drive in Downtown, there is always a building or block intersecting the perspective, giving us the feeling of "being inside" the city.

I am posting some of my pictures for better explanation, they belong to my personal archives, dated 2022. Please do not share without my permission.

Let us begin with Buenos Aires:

A typical avenue in Buenos Aires and the infinite perspective

A street in Buenos Aires with eclectic styles (French, Spanish...)

The corner is usually designed as an important element. See the trees, the mullions, the light color. The British green is incidental, just for doors here.

More interesting corners of Buenos Aires. The beautiful corner cupolas everywhere.

A street of Buenos Aires which is slightly winding. The gray cement "medianeras" (demising walls), the cupolas and most of all, this morphology of "decayed teeth", which is a result of different zoning regulations along the years. The balconies, for residential and offices uses as well, add architectural articulation.

 One of the many monuments in Buenos Aires, as seen from a car.

Nocturnal view of Downtown Buenos Aires. The endless avenue with aligned trees, the "decayed tooth" morphology.

Now, let us continue with some pictures from Boston:

Access to the underground train, a broken perspective, lots of materials together. The typical Boston brick (there are different colors), modern glass and classical gray finishes.

The British colors and the broken perspective. See that the green extends beyond the doors. The red is added for commercial purposes.

An open plaza among buildings. We feel "inside". Note the lack of balconies.

A broken perspective and lack of balconies.

This is pretty interesting for me, the building at the end of the perspective is rotated.

Broken perspective and the use of dark color.

The serial vision with columns on the front. The broken perspective while the urban lamps are perfectly aligned.

This is a picture of the Beacon Hill neighborhood, with the brick buildings combined with the English deep green. But, here, more textures are added with a climber on the left. This type of climbers are unusual in Downtown Buenos Aires (the Ciudad Autonoma) but the sidewalks are wider and with lots of trees.

To get to the Boston Tea Party building, on the waterfront, I had to walk through a park so covered in vegetation. It took me a while to find the water, but here it is, the element of surprise.

Of course I could find common elements between the two cities, but they would be isolated examples.

It is clear that a fractal urban analysis cannot get rid of The Concise Landscape basic but primary teachings. Any research should be completed with historical and social facts in order to deeply understand the urban shape, this is not only a matter of numbers. This is what makes us architects more extensive and less scientists in our points of view, compared with physicists and geographers who share our field of research.