Modelling density

In Alan B Jacobs book, Great Streets there is a section which contains block plan drawings (as above) of various cities around the world. These drawings draw fantastic comparisons between the urban fabric of the various cities and also raise questions about the density of individual cities.


The below table charts the varying densities of 5 major cities:

The chart shows a surprising variation in density between cities. I wanted to communicate this variation in model form and attempted to achieve this first by creating a grid like model which would represent the density of various parts of an individual city.

However I found that without physically surveying each city I was unable to achieve this accurately. The above image is of a plaster model representing the changing density across the city centre of Rome. In order to create the model I had to make a series of assumptions and guesses in order to complete the model. As this was the case I decided that this was an inappropriate method and have simply decided to model the densities of cities in individual blocks which can then be compared.