No abstract

No abstract

This paper catalogs the suburban expansion of San Antonio, Texas by decade between the years 1890 and 2009, a time frame that saw the city reorganize its morphological structure four times. The city inhabited a 36-square mile grid until the late nineteenth century; expanded radially along streetcar lines during the early twentieth century; grew concentrically along automotive ring roads during the mid-twentieth century; and has assumed a polycentric organization within the past two decades. This research places San Antonio's recent demographic and geographic boom into historical perspective, utilizing construction completions in host Bexar County to answer the following question: how did the form, location, and type of suburban growth shift over 120 years? The research reveals three trends: first, that historically concentric growth patterns began to assume a polycentric configuration in the late twentieth century; second, that patterns of centrifugal expansion began to accelerate dramatically during the same time period; and third, that the relative increase of multifamily completions has surpassed that of single-family completions in five of the last six decades. These findings suggest that the City of San Antonio, in order to establish a sustainable growth model, must prioritize the opportunities and constraints associated with polycentric suburban expansion.

This project explores the power of lines to tell stories. For architects, lines are elemental devices: they catalyze and structure our ability to describe space. But can they describe time and experience? The following case study explores this question in depth while tracking the historical expansion of suburban life in San Antonio, Texas. The research focuses on five roads, re-imagining them as a series of concentric timelines that stretch from the city's historical center to its suburban periphery. To date the multi-disciplinary team—led by architect Ian Caine with collaboration from a historian and an urban geographer—has utilized three distinct media to represent the chronological growth of San Antonio: 1) a large two-dimensional timeline that the team exhibited in a museum gallery, 2) a video-based spatial-temporal narrative that simulated the experience of driving through the city, and 3) a web-based interactive timeline. 1 This article establishes the merits of the first two approaches—which are both complete—before speculating about the potential of the web-based version to recast the timeline as a narrative device capable of illuminating the complex relationship between time, space and experience in the contemporary city.

By the year 2050 the United States population will increase by half, with 70% living in a megaregion (Regional Plan Association, 2006). These numbers emphasize the critical link between large-scale territorial expansion and the prospects for successful urbanism. Currently, 11 mega-regions exist in the U.S., each bound together by a unique mixture of demographics, infrastructure, culture, and environment. As each megaregion grows, it must identify and leverage critical infrastructures that are capable of binding geographies and increasing efficiencies. This project speculates about one such strategy for the emerging megaregion known as the Texas Triangle.