Varssni Karthick
Tekton
Tekton: Volume 10, Issue 2, December 2023
pp. 15 – 32
Varssni Karthick is an architect, who recently graduated from MEASI Academy of Architecture, Chennai (2023) treading the lines between the real and imagined worlds. Her academic field of interest spans the study of urbanism to the discourse around architecture and cinema. She believes writing and drawing are essential tools in an architect’s arsenal and is an aspiring urban designer keen on bridging the chasm of inaccessibility, between users and the design of the collective realm.
varshkarthick2000@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
This paper deduces that crime which is omnipresent across time and cities, is perpetuated by the spatial configuration of the city, while crime changes its location based on the social climate and urban physical interventions developed by man. Gotham City is chosen as a vestibule due to its portrayal of an unsafe crime-thriving city, both cinematically and through the Batman comics. Its extensive database spans between 1940 and 2022, thus helping discern Gotham City’s evolution in the Batman series. The study finds patterns across three Batman films from 1989, 2012, and 2022 concerning Gotham’s urban characters and that helps in co-relating it with real-life urban theories, providing potential guidelines preventing crime-instigating urban spaces.
KEY WORDS:
Gotham, Street Character, Legibility, Criminal Spaces, Neighborhood, Morphology, Urban Crime Instigators
