In Gibbs' approach to city design, his whole focus was how to design a shopping area that will draw in the most amount of people and the most sales. Everything about an area's design should be geared towards getting people to buy what's in the store. Whyte, on the other hand, was focused on the overall look and feel of the downtown area. He looked at the area as a whole, and didn't so much focus on what specific things designers should do to make a lot of sales. While making sales and drawing crowds in is important, because it sustains an urban neighborhood, he wasn't focused on commercializing the area to the extend that Gibbs talks about. Gibbs was very focused on the retail aspects of design, definitely more so than Whyte. Again, Whyte focuses more on the overall feel of the environment, not just the retail; he doesn't just focus on stores, how they can draw people in. He places an emphasis on environment, and how to create that urban feel. Whyte's argument is more convincing because an area that has great stores doesn't necessarily have what people want. People want a comfortable environment where they can spend several hours of their day at, not some commercial area that only wants to get them to buy stuff.
2. What elements of an urban area are particularly attractive to you? What elements repel you?
Since I'm from Chicago, I am completely biased towards the city, but I do think it's a perfect example of a well-rounded urban area. You have plenty of greenery (trees, grass, etc.) and you have Lake Michigan which is always busy with people who love to run, walk, ride their bikes, rollerblade, and whatnot. It's a place everyone can enjoy, young and old, and there's something for everyone. One of the things I love most about the city is the parks because first of all they are beautiful, but they are a great place to socialize and hang out when there's nothing to do. In the summer in particular the parks host free events as well. The city is a great place to live because there's always something to do, and even if there's not an event you like taking place somewhere, just being in the area is an event in itself. There are tons of restaurants to choose from, upscale and more affordable. There are movie theaters, concerts all the time, broadway plays. The element about Chicago that I hate the most is the traffic, the one way streets, and just driving in that area in general. There are always a lot of pedestrians, which isn't always a bad thing. I like that the city is lively, however it tends to get really crowded in certain areas like the train stations.
Egg Design:
The process of designing an egg container was frustrating at times and definitely took a lot of patience. However in the end we were happy with our design, and thought it had a good chance at protecting the egg. We kept throwing different ideas out in the open about what might work, and most of the time we had to abandon our ideas. When we thought we came up with a good design, we actually tested it and threw it off a three story building to see if it would hold up. We thought it would definitely keep the egg safe, but we were wrong. Testing it was a good indicator of what we really needed to do, so we knew what didn't work and built up from there. Building the container didn't take as long as I had expected it would because once we thought of a good idea and had a vision of what it would look like, it was pretty easy to design. We just cut open a beach ball, stuffed it with a bunch of scarves (which we thought would be more than sufficient padding) and then put the container with the egg all padded inside in there as well. I wasn't there to test the egg, but Mayra told me that it had failed so I think that about sums it up! Here's the link to Mayra's blog: http://maysalcido.blogspot.com/
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