Segue City One

Segue City One is what I have seen as the first of many mega developments which work as a unit to increase efficiency and effectiveness in global trade. The city discussed here is a result of research done earlier this semester in Mega Blog posts and the Mapimation project.

The Mapimation project was the precursor to Segue City One; here I explored global transportation networks. The map overlaps the world’s largest cities, ports, airports, and rail and road networks to find areas of intense overlap of the world’s largest transportation networks. These areas are crucial as distribution hubs in the global economy. However, the cities that act as major player in global trade, unsightly ports, noisy airports, and disruptive road and rail networks lower the living quality of these cities. Segue cities are meant to be new developments at the crossing of major transportation systems. The segue city acts as a mega hub for all passenger and cargo traffic entering the region it serves. For example, here Segue City One serves most of Western Europe as a gate to the entire continent. In this way, undesirable characteristics of transportation networks are retreated to the segue city leaving behind prime real estate on the mainland and leaving the exchange of goods and passenger layovers to one specially designed location.

Segue City One is located in the North Sea, it lies central to some of the main cities it supplies such as London, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Paris and others. The city is constructed as a collage of the areas it serves. Five main elements create Segues City One, those being: 1) the city itself, 2) the green spaces, 3) the airports 4) the seaports and 5) the rail and road circulation network.

We will begin with the city. The city is a composition constructed of large samples of the largest cities of the region served—London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt. These are some of the most influential cities of the region. The sections of the city are oriented in a way that corresponds with the actual cities they have been modeled after. While Segue City One’s purpose is to house rather industrial processes, the city is created in a way that still offers a comfortable living environment.

This brings us to the green spaces. A ring of green grounds foreseen to have a park like atmosphere surrounds the perimeter of the city. All of the industrial operations, the ports and airports are located outside of this “green ring” and are thus screened from the city itself. A bay has been left in the center of the city to give occupants a comfortable waterfront to enjoy seeing as the border with the ocean on the perimeter of the city is surrounded by the transportation networks.

The transportation network consists of a central loop from which arteries branch down the length of each port. These arteries support both rail lines and roads which carry goods to and from ships in the ports. The network is then connected to the mainland of England and Holland via Chunnel system thus plugging goods directly into the rail and road infrastructures of Western Europe. The central loop is located under the city while the arteries surface onto each port dock.

The ports are a collection of Western Europe’s largest ports; that is the ports in Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, Copenhagen and Le Havre. They have been designed as a negative of the areas making up these ports. That is to say what are channels and canals in the existing ports have become the docks in the Segue City One ports. The hope is that a similar organization of operations can continue since the structure of each port is essentially the same as its inspired port. Like the city fabrics, the ports are oriented in directions pointing to their original locations.

And finally the airports, I have selected three of Europe’s existing airports, those in London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt. The load that these airports carry today are equivalent to what I have calculated would be needed to support all intercontinental cargo and passengers entering and leaving Western Europe. Like the ports, the have been located outside the “green ring.”

In essence, the Segue City is a collage of the largest urban spaces and transportation networks of Western Europe designed to take the load of the exchange of goods and international trade off of the mainland leaving valuable real estate and more comfortable living conditions.

The following link will lead you to an earlier study massing model which has a similar effect to the final project: Segue Interactive Model

Below is my PowerPoint presentation, to be replace by images later.

Global Transportation Networks

European Network Collisions

New European Road Map

North Sea Location

Veiw from Space

Component Collage

London/Paris Collision

City Block Figure Ground

"Green Ring"

Airports

Seaports

FormZ Model

View over Segue City One Bay

View Down Rotterdam Port

View Along Inner Bay