thesis: urban planning

Week one of the proper production of my thesis film, I've thus far focused mainly on the construction of basic elements that makes up a city. Been mostly dealing with things such as signs, railings, doors, gates, windows and cables. Production of these elements are mostly mundane busy work, challenges consist mostly of getting the scale correct and knowing at what level of detail do I go to.

The reason for pre-building most of these elements is the felicitate the smooth process of the construction of the city. By spending the time now in getting the basic elements done, I can spend more time in figuring out creative ways of using these elements.

The interesting thing about creating a city block from scratch is that you assume you get to play urban planner, that you get to decide how and why things goes where they go, similar to playing Sim City of sort, applying a certain logic  in defining how the space is used. But it's a completely different thing when trying to create a location that feels organic, lived in and real, rather than fabricated.

You quickly realize things don't really make any sense, people use spaces for things the designer never intended it to be used, they add their own ideas, modified to their needs. A balcony gets closed off and becomes a living space, a doorway becomes a bay window, scaffoldings are built to hold extra air conditioning units, these modifications are limitless and rather unpredictable.

It is this unpredictability that makes creating a real looking urban environment so difficult, how much variations and details do you put into the scene? How do you balance the level of detail you go into verses the amount of detail people will actually notice? Currently I feel like I need much more detail, but somehow I feel like I might have gone overboard already.