Tying Everything Together . . .

Buckling down to work this evening, one of the things I really needed to work out was how to tie Lynch's 5 elements theory into my work. I have already made the connection between his 5 elements making up the city and our 5 elements making up the community but I felt that I needed to go deeper than then to enable me to use it in my project.

While Lynch uses them to critique the city and its imageability, as I am in the process of doing with Newcastle, I've realised that I can reverse engineer his method and use it to create a space that allows a community to either begin or grow.

I can turn the theory into a formula:

Paths + Landmarks + Nodes + Edges + Districts = City

People + Employment + Markets + Street + Housing = Community

With the quality of each of these elements making up the quality of the total (City or Community). In Lynch's text, he works out the quality of each of them to find the quality of the city. In my project, I know what I want the end result to be and can work backwards by looking at what the current state of each of the elements is to then create what is lacking or improve what is in poor condition in my project.

In order to do this, another trip up north (that is, to Cheetham Hill, not Newcastle) may be needed and a closer look at the other groups' findings is definitely needed. However, just from looking at the area and listening to presentations etc, I can already make a start piecing together what is required:

People: Cheetham Hill has such a diverse population that I would be willing to say that the richness of the community in this sense doesn't need to be altered.

Employment: As with much of the country in the current climate, the state of employment in Cheetham Hill is not good, although I think it was suggested that this area is one of the worst. Something that needs looking into.

Markets: I've looked at markets in Cheetham Hill enough to know that this isn't an issue within the community and doesn't need faffing with by architecture students.

Street: This varies throughout the area but while the sites are in the centre, there is a good sense of street life although the street is something that is the main focus of my work anyway.

Housing: I already know there is a lot of housing around Cheetham Hill, much of it off the main high street through the sites though. Housing does however form part of our brief.

After quickly listing what the state of each of the elements is, I can see that my project will mainly be focusing on Employment, Street and Housing although I will still keep People and Markets in mind throughout the project.

Now to choose my site!