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| One Woodbrook Place
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One Woodbrook Place is
located at the western boundary of Woodbrook where St. James begins. One
Woodbrook Place offers 2 and 3 bedroom apartments with security, either for
rent or sale. Its modern, state of the art design incorporates leisure, dining,
shopping, banking and entertainment for the convenience of residents in this
built community. Real estate websites convince the consumer that they enjoy
the best of two worlds by living above the excitement of a city that never
sleeps while still being in the midst of it.
While this contemporary
structure adds a different element to Woodbrook and St. James since it is the
only strikingly modern feature, I question the relevance of it to this urban
area. This alludes to Lara (2011) where he pointed out that cities in Brazil
that incorporate New Urbanism, already have high density, mixed uses
and reduced automobile dependency and so this concept is irrelevant to their urban space.
Woodbrook and St. James are both multifunctional, have high densities and are
easily accessible so living in these areas already makes access to everything
easy. The concept of New Urbanism in this area in my opinion is redundant and
unnecessary as it seems to be an imitation of the ideas from the Global North
without assessing the real housing needs of the area.
Reference List
Reference List
- Lara, Fernando. 2011. "New (Sub) Urbanism and Old Inequities in Brazilian Gated Communities." Journal of Urban Design 16 (3): 369-380.
A very interesting and informative blog! I like how you looked as the historic architecture of the city as well as the new and emerging architecture of high rise buildings and skyscrapers. Many persons tend to forget the importance of architecture in telling us about our development over time and how it makes Port of Spain similar or unique when compared to other cities of the world. I'm glad that you reminded us! Also good use of theory, job well done. I would however like to see how the fringe areas or squatter settlements of Port of Spain add to or take away from the architecture of the space.
ReplyDeleteI like how you mentioned the marketing of the concept of New Urbanism as redundant, but the style is not popular in Woodbrook. The area has many upper class people living there who like the suburbian lifestyle. What I would like to see is a multiple use structure like this that is more affordable to live in
ReplyDeleteSomething to think about adding to the urban slum blog Simone thanks! And Savi, out of curiosity, will you live in a multi-functional structure like this if it was more affordable even though it's in the midst of everything?
ReplyDelete