The Ideal City

Image by FreePik

When you want a night out, to watch a show and eat great food, where do you go?  If you are looking to experience culture, diversity, or unique environments, where do you go?  You don’t go to the suburbs or to shopping malls.  You go to the city.

Cities are where people and activity come together.  Cities are where we look for and find unique places and experiences.  When we travel, we often begin or end our tours in cities.  They are the social collectors, concentrations of all things human.  Indeed, they are what define and capture civilization itself.

I think we all long for the ideal city: that place where we can find community, belonging, identity and even fullness in life.  Our cities are not perfect, but what if we can make them the places we long for?  What if experiencing, celebrating and appreciating the moments, conditions, senses and emotions we love in cities, we can make our imaginations all the more real?  After all, we know what elements elevate cities to be desirable, memorable, and livable.

We know that great urban environments are walkable, compact, and pedestrian-friendly.  They are multi-modal instead of car-centric.  They are uniquely beautiful, original, experiential, and attractive.  They are human-scaled, comfortable and inviting.  They are communally-oriented, equitable, accessible, intergenerational, inclusive, and socially and economically diverse.  They are packed with “third places,” intimate indoor and outdoor environments that cultivate the informal human rituals that shape communities. 

“Third Places” bring us together. Image by FreePik

Moreover, they have a diversity of inviting, experientially rich, open spaces.  They are areas of biodiversity, full of green and lots of trees.  They are sustainable and resilient. They are healthy environments with access to natural light, wonderful air quality, acoustic quality, and nature.  They embody work, life, and play with a variety of housing, workplace environments, entertainment, culture, and of course, really great food.  They are self-contained with child care, education, markets and neighborhood retail.  They are child and youth friendly.  And with all this energy, they are inherently safe. Together, this is the picture of the ideal city.

This is the subject and dream of this blog: to promote the vitality of cities by celebrating everything that makes them great.  And while doing so, to explore the richness and complexity of urban living. Join me to consider deeply what it means to live in and be a part of the city.  And as we explore, experience, and imagine, we can make it all the more real.