Image238.
unrealised buildings in Pļavnieki
Image239.
unrealised buildings in Pļavnieki
the residential environment unnoticed. When they reached the neighbourhood boundary was reached, the assault took place: hand bag burglared, or person pushed to the gorund. Another, even more worrying story was by the elderly lady, whose sister was assaulted in her staircase in the building which is just at the nieghbourhhod boundary at the Southern side. The criminals were able to escape unnoticed due to lack of any conditions for control — surveillance, presence of other people, lighting and so on. There are another arguments to consider restructuring the neighbourhood transition from its current state to more integrated one. The bad luck of large scale estates is also the case for Pļavnieki 2 microrayon. It is common in professional environment, in Latvia, they are mostly architects who were working several decades during times of Soviet Union, to blame the system for the current shortcomings evident in the areas. According to the architects, large scale estates are good and were planned thoroughly to satisfy the needs of their (initial?) residents. The problem is, according to professionals, that microrayons were not fully implemented: service facilities were not fully implemented (neighbourhood centres, cinemas, swimming pools), employment base (factories and production entrerprises were not created in integrated way with estate creation, and finally, the initial concept of building ensembles was only partially built. In Pļavnieki 2, the neighbourhood boundary should have accomodated many more program when it does right now (image rt). On the Eastern side, parking garages should have been built together with some residential building ensembles thus accomplishing Sakharov street ensemble. On Southern side thourh, only two free standing buildings are lacking from the initial masterplan: the area was not thorouglhy planned anyway. It is doubtful however whether even initial masterplan is beyond reproach — there is a need for thorougn reconsideration of landuses from user control perspective.
Theory about the problem
The area of neighbourhood transition is quite large in Pļavnieki–2. It is hard to understand its role for the user control quality and as a part of residential environment under control of its users. One possible idea can come from the theory of the territoriality. The territory as it was shown in the Thoery of User control part, is a not simple entity, it is a rather nested system (see page DF). The territory, thus, it may be assumed, moved towards higher level of complexity (containing larger number of nested territories — primary and secondary, and secondary of the lower level secondary). What if neighbourhood transition could becaome a secondary territory for eleven thousand of the residents of Pļavnieki–2 and adjoining areas? How the quality of control would change if it becomes a territory on even larger scale, say, the whole Latgales district or even city?
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