The Civic Life of the City Block

Abstract

Town planning and political interaction of citizens are the main factors that affect civilizations on the most basic level. My study comes from an understanding of a need for a society to develop politically active citizens that are ascetic in nature, less they wish for a more despotic government. This study makes an attempt at understanding the basic elements that make civic structure of a city at the scale of a block. These elements are broken down into: Site, Boundary, Axis, Residence, Commerce, and Civic. The major focus being on Civic and the engagement of making a virtuous citizen through the study of the self and the formal decisions that make the Architecture. Civic structure comes after the forming of the city and its managerial needs, so before civic can reside within a city other formal decisions must be made to create structure for the greater need of the civilization. I will attempt to layout the structure needed and my projection of this structure and the preceding Civic Life that comes from this architectural study.