Geometry in the city

Hello guys! I hope you are doing great. Today's topic is geometry in the city. With this, I mean every posible aspect we can encounter in our daily lives in the city, that being the supermarket, the library or the coffee shop. I live in a city where, as a lover of mathematics, I can see many aspects of geometry in. Let me talk to you a bit about this!

Geometry becomes a very effective instrument for organising the city and materialising concepts such as order or hierarchy, or establishing the appropriate relationships between the different areas of the planned layout.

Planned cities that have made use of geometry for their foundations usually present urban spaces with emphatic formalisations. Of course, these can be seen in parallel street grids or forming precise angles, but, above all, they can be seen in the squares. It is in these places where geometry expresses itself in all its splendour, showing polygonal foundations, relations, proportions and configurations of very varied conditions, but following mathematical patterns.

In the city, there are many spaces with a polygonal base. There are triangular squares (less frequent in the city), squared, pentagonal (their existence is exceptional), hexagonal (the geometric advantages of the hexagon lead to find it in many urban designs and as the basis of spaces of difficult categorisation), heptagonal (more difficult to find), octagonal, dodecagonal (scarce), and pentadecagonal (there is literally one and it is in Barcelona).

Triangular square: Place Dauphine, Paris, France.

Squared square: Plaza Mayor, Salamanca, Spain.

Pentagonal square: Plaza de la Ciudadela, Pamplona, Spain.

Hexagonal square: Piazza Carlos Maria Carafa, Grammichele, Italy.

Heptagonal square: Plaza Techada in San Diego, Venezuela.

Octagonal square: Plaza Ochavada, Archidona, Málaga, Spain.

Dodecagonal square: Moray Place, Edinburgh, UK.

Pentadecagonal square: Plaza Milans, Barcelona, Spain.

To name something else rather than just poligonal squares, let's also share the very famous "plaza de toros" in Spain which are circles and also share this geometrical topic we are touching today. Like for instance, the one from Málaga. 

The geometries of urban layouts, together with the architecture of buildings, create environments that reflect specific ways of understanding everyday life, different styles of coexistence. Two historical and opposing examples of the influence of urban geometry on the lives of its citizens are the hutongs of Beijing and the skyscrapers of Manhattan in New York, the horizontal city versus the vertical city. 

Beijing:

New York:

Let me also share how some cities are viewed from above because I just find it very interesting! 

This would be Barcelona:

Madrid:

As a teacher, I think it would be interesting to offer the possibility of working on geometry beyond the book with research projects on geometric concepts such as those I have mentioned throughout the publication. Bringing learning closer to our students and making them find real interest in geometry.

I am sure there are plenty of more geometrical topics that we can find in the city, so if you find them, share them with us!

I will now share a video with you about a man that talks about geomtry in the city. Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-UjB28pYQs&ab_channel=ALLCITYCANVAS 

That's all for today. I hope you liked it. Comment what you thought of the post. 

See you in the next one! :)