New York City Superstructure

1699 Words4 Pages

1. A superstructure is an upward extension of an existing structure above a baseline. This term is applied both to physical structures like buildings, bridges or ships and to conceptual structures. Infrastructure is the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. Lodgings, restaurants, and recreation facilities are examples of superstructure the complementary one to superstructure is infrastructure, which are the more basic tourism supportive facilities like hospital, pipe line, signal towers. Infrastructure comprises all of the man-made facilities that make up a modern city including roads, electricity, water, sewer, buildings, …show more content…

Grid references define locations on maps using Cartesian coordinates. Grid lines on maps define the coordinate system, and are numbered to provide a unique reference to features. As a result of New York’s geographic location and role in the early stages of the United States, its population was booming in the early 1800s. People were already pouring in from all points in Europe, and it became apparent that eventually people were going to need all the real estate they could get on the island of Manhattan. In 1807, frustrated by years of uncontrolled development and a decade of public health epidemics attributed to lower Manhattan’s cramped and irregular streets, New York City’s Common Council (the predecessor to today’s City Council) petitioned the State Legislature to develop a street plan for Manhattan above Houston Street, at that time a rural area of streams and hills populated by a patchwork of country estates, farms and small houses. The commission created a plan which was accepted by the city and the state, now known as the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811. (You can read the original here.) In it, said commissioners laid out a plan for the entire city north of Houston Street. They determined that there would be 12 main North-South avenues and a series of East-West perpendicular cross streets, with Broadway being the only angled road, crossing from the Northwestern corner of Manhattan to the Southeastern corner. Today, the city is still very much exactly as it was …show more content…

The Adam’s Model shows the relationship between transportation technology and the pattern of growth of city. It explains changes over time in spatial form of cities. Based on changes in transportation technology. There are four stages: First, Walking-Horsecar Era in 1888 which included pedestrian city, horse drawn trollies, compact urban structure, grid pattern of cities, it had little specialization of land use, and no distinct neighborhood, they must live near where they worked. Second, Electric Streetcar Era from 1888 to 1920, didn’t have to walk everywhere, street travel wider, cities expanded beyond trolley lines, more differentiation of land use, didn’t have to live near where they worked, and city had industrial area and residential area. Third, the Recreation Automobile Era from 1920 to 1945, cars and highways, suburbanization, more individual mobility, don’t have to live near transportation corridors, center city at its peak “Downtown”, and residential areas broken up into distinct neighborhoods and tried to live near people like themselves (apart from people they weren’t like). Lastly, the Freeway Era from 1945 to present where big impact from cars, interstates, beltways bypass cities altogether, business moving out now too, creation of suburban downtown, “edge cities” on perimeter of city limits, and multi centered metropolis. The streetcars share their rights-of-way with automobiles and light rail has its own, reserved right-of-way. The arterial highways

More about New York City Superstructure

Open Document