Rebecca Solnit's Monarchs and Queens is a study based around the extinction of butterflies and homosexual bars/clubs along San Francisco. She details the city and its changes through lepidopterology and an ethnographic study of gay culture. She shows how you can map a city through its culture rather than it's physicality; she shows just how important a culture is a to a city, rather than the buildings. The opposing view is brought through Wade Graham's Dream Cities in which he explains that what really builds an environment and makes a city real is all of the buildings and the spaces between them. He explains that each city is planned out with an intention but cities often can become disjointed over time because "they can be read as layers recording change over time...or like partial graveyards of old architectures." I very much like the idea of a city as a graveyard and think that that is something that I could try and emulate.
Le Corbusier models the type of structure that I want my city to follow. Very block-y and rectangular. (Probably why The Stuynessant Town by Peter Cooper - inspired by Le Corbusier - is probably my favorite set of buildings we've looked at so far.) I also love Corbusier's idea that a "city must be contracted vertically" as I want all of my buildings to be more vertical than they are horizontal. I want my city to be overwhelming. However, his love futuristic technologies and modern architecture is where we differ. I prefer - as I've said many times before - decrepit and run down buildings.
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