Development of Suburbs in Berlin vs. Regina
The concept of suburban living between Regina and Berlin are
two very different things. The idea of suburban livings within the city of
Berlin revolves around large apartment complexes and nearby services with efficient
public transportation. The area known as Marzch
in East Berlin is a prime example, with an S-bahn station, tram station and
some small shops in the immediate area for the necessities of living, all
within walking distance of the main concentration of residential buildings. The
idea behind this area was to build affordable housing for the working class.
These buildings were put up very quickly and designed to fit as many people
into them as possible, particularly small families.
When
examining the development of suburban living in Regina, there are several
similarities in that, lots are designed to be long and skinny as to fit as many
houses as possible on one street, and these houses are typically meant to be
aimed at young families. The houses are also put up very quickly. Through
working on the development project in Regina known as the Greens on Gardiner,
it is easily to see that the houses are slapped together over the course of one
or months. And apartment or condos styled dwellings are no different. The crane
comes in, trucks come in with what resembles giant lego blocks and the cranes
stack them four stories high.
The difference between these two
areas is the amount of space needed to hold a certain sized population. Marzch
originally had 150,000 people living in a very small amount of space. It takes
the entire city of Regina to house that many people. And despite both Regina
and Berlin having very unstable soils the large apartment buildings in Marzch
seem to be withstanding the test of time very well, whereas the houses built in
The Greens on Gardiner or Harbour Landing
can suffer from structural damage in as little as 2 years.
3 comments:
I think its interesting that you note the different things that attacted people to a location, ie. transportation, small shops, etc. Here you really do need some sort of close shopping, particularly grocery, closeby because people are more likely to be drawn to that. Where as in Regina quite a few suburb areas like that don't have any stores in the neighbourhood but they are within driving distance.
Yes I agree, it really shows how little we rely on public transportation in Regina. I live in the North West of Regina, an area which is constantly being expanded. Many people are moving to this location although there is absolutely no close bus stop(our only means of public transportation in Regina). This totally puts a new perspective on a key difference in the attractiveness of new developments in Berlin versus new developments in Regina!
Regina is built on essentially a marsh, and much of Berlin is the same way. We saw in class that the North-West part of Berlin is a different soil type than much of Berlin. Do you think this has any correlation to the lack of structural problems we see in Marzahn compared to Regina?
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