Architecture+vs.+Urban+Design

First, I want to say that I really enjoyed both readings, I found them very insteresting because both professions are related to human behavior, and how it can be influenced by its material context, which is actually created for both architects and urban planners.

Some of the common aspects I find between architects and urban planners are: 1. Both jobs consist in creating spaces were humans relate with each others. 2. To create their designs, they have to consider everything that's around. 3. They have to work together and with other professionals, such as engineers, landscape architects, etc.

The differences are: 1. Architects use to work more with the particular, for example: while an urban planner designs a neighborhood's distribution, the architect designs each house 2. Urban design is more general, it doesn't go to details such as furniture. 3. Architects' priority is to fulfill the particular needs of a client, while urban planners are directly compromised with the city.

These differences between both fields don't mean that they can't be mixed, because at the end architects and urban planners have the same purpose: to create spaces.

About Caracas... As citizens, we have to deal with a big amount of problems that we have inherited from our city's cultural background, which includes its history. For everyone who knows something about Venezuela, it is obvious that we had an amazingly fast development since the discovery of petroleum in our land. Caracas, as the capital city of Venezuela, suffered the consequences, such as a fast economic development, sudden international importance, an external transformation from an agriculturist country to a petroleum exporter one. I say "external" because it was not produced by us, as it happened in European countries, where changes were made trough thousand of years, not caused by an unexpected thing hidden in the soil -sort of speak-. This brought a huge advance in all the aspects of Venezuela's life, I will talk particularly about architecture and urban design.

In the beginning, the reaction to all the money coming from the new discovery was the most natural: to invest it in constructions such as public buildings, highways, new streets, etc. Consecuently, a period of greate constructions and urban development created the Caracas we know nowadays, the problem is that, when the big money ceased and economic problems started, architectural and urban development stopped being priority number 1, and the city became the result of an addition of buildings without relation with each others, and a lack of maintenience of the already existing ones. Also, there were no more highways or big avenues built, so now the ones we have are insufficient for the amount of people that lives in our city.

As a conclusion, we have a city with a poor system of vehicular circulation, which causes traffic and deterioration of the existing ones. Buildings are more and more each day, while streets and highways stay the same. Architects and urban planners have a lot to do in this city, let's work on it!

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