Poster Project - Adam Karabenli

For my poster project, I decided to analyze this image from inhabitat.com. This image was a promo image for a competetion to redesign a community suburb that contributed towards sprawl. This website has become devoted towards possitively impacting the future of design, so that maybe one day sprawl can start to be reduced. In my poster project, I plan to address how these neighborhoods back up to these major highways. Also, these neighborhoods contain houses that are jam-packed together on neighborhood streets that curve into each other. This image shows the sheer worst of what sprawling neighborhoods are coming to. This image is supposed to motivate designers to devise a plan to help reduce sprawl. This contest had some compelling winners whose projects are shown below.

Poster Project

When we started to discuss this project and I was told to think of something that symbolizes something, I immediately thought of the Marine Corp. Museum by Quantico. I live less than 30 minutes from here and have been many times.
The Marine Corp. Museum is an amazing place. It is filled with symbolism, from the setup inside of the museum to the architecture of the building- meant to represent the well known WWII flag raising. This museum was built completely off of donations, and ended up getting more money than they actually needed for the museum. It is kept in excellent shape, and tells the story of the marines in an incredible depth and with immense power. I really do enjoy going here every time.
Then I read the requirements of the essay again and realized that the artifact we use has to symbolize a community, which the museum doesn't do... I was very upset.

-Paul DeVito

sprawl picture analysis -- Adam Karabenli

This photo was taken from San Antonio, Texas where sprawl is consuming the area. Link to the website.

The first thing that pops out at me is the construction of numerous wavy highways that continue on as far as the eye can see. This is a major contributer to sprawl due to the theory of induced traffic (as highways expand, traffic increases). The audience for this picture, as stated on the website, is people against the Bush administration that want to decrease transit funds to pay for highways. I also think the audience for this picture could also be city planners and officials as well as people thinking about moving to a city where sprawl is increasing. By looking at the details, it is easy to see that this road construction is confusing for the driver. There are big-name stores lining a few roads, but it looks pretty confusing to navigate to them. Also, traffic looks quite conjested due to increased numbers of commuters in the area. In addition, confusion navigating the area also wastes time in the car which leads to higher traffic rates. The composition of this picture can be described as wavy and confusing. The confusing composition to this picture can relate to the negative appeal on sprawl this picture is intending to display. In context, this picture of a downtown portion of highways is located in San Antonio, Texas. It shows that there is a lot going on in a confusing manner. In the end, the main reason for this picture is against sprawl.

Blog Revisit-Paul DeVito

I chose an article on Texas Sprawl for the blog revisit post. This article tells the story of how sprawl almost destroyed a very unique part of West Texas. The author starts off by saying how West Texas isn't really known for it's landscaping and scenery, but then brings the Palo Duro Canyon State Parkinto the picture and totally changes the mood. She goes from a strong emotional appeal to loneliness and emptiness, to a strong emotional appeal of beauty and serenity.
She then goes into the history and the makeup of The Canyon. She handles the imagery of the area very well and really makes the reader sympathize with what she is trying to get across. The might also be some "hasty generalization" or "oversimplification" that adds to her argument, but she doesn't rely very heavily on too many fallacies other than emotional appeals.
In her eyes, the community of Amarillo is big enough and should not be expanded any more than it already is; nature should not be tampered with.

-Paul DeVito