Published
Oct 2, 2023
by
Andrea Fanelli
How to design better cities?
By designing them for its users, who are the people. It takes space to do that, but in the end it has a big impact on their daily lives. Multimodal cities give people the power and options to decide how to get around. Access to services depends on density and proximity, and doing so results in compact, walkable cities with human-scale neighborhoods. By bringing people together, you get a side effect: better communities.
Published
Oct 2, 2023
by
Andrea Fanelli
How to design better cities?
By designing them for its users, who are the people. It takes space to do that, but in the end it has a big impact on their daily lives. Multimodal cities give people the power and options to decide how to get around. Access to services depends on density and proximity, and doing so results in compact, walkable cities with human-scale neighborhoods. By bringing people together, you get a side effect: better communities.
There are better options to choose from
After coming back to Copenhagen this summer, I felt completely in love with the city. I knew there was something different that made it so special. I spent 5 days walking around and biking without any problems. This is because it is a city designed for the people.
I was born and raised in Rome, which is really beautiful but also difficult to navigate. Most people here move by car or scooter, and this creates significant traffic. When the municipality announced to close the center to cars, many people protested and reasonably so. You cannot take away access without first having working transportation and space for sustainable alternatives.
Our streets have an enormous impact on our lives: How are they designed and for whom? I let my curiosity prevail and I went exploring the principles that guide good design.
What makes a good city
Let's start with the basic concepts. A city is made up of neighborhoods, blocks, streets and so on. A great city is made first and foremost for people. We like to meet other people, exchange ideas or just enjoy our time there and relax. We want places where we can live well and move around easily, where children can explore without danger and the elderly can grow old together with the community. But also, cities where crossing the street is safe and there is no risk of being run over.
Understanding the problem closely
I have always been very fascinated by the concept of smart cities. I thought those would be the cities of the future. Fortunately, I was very wrong. We don't need cities with fancy sensors, we need a place where people can walk or take public transportation to everything. A place where having a car is an inconvenient option.
“An Advanced City Is One Where the Rich Take Public Transport” - Enrique Peñalosa
When I moved to Milan, I made the huge mistake of taking my car with me. I learned the mistake the hard way, getting dozens of tickets and wasting hours looking for parking. I later found out that there was no free parking inside the city, and there was a reason for that. If you incentivize car use with free parking, you take away space from people. Even so, there is no space left for all 700,000 cars in the city, so many people park on the sidewalks, blocking the way for people in wheelchairs. I therefore assumed that the city was taking these measures to depend less on cars and rely more on other means of transportation.
A glimpse into the past
If we look back to the past, cities were designed according to different perspectives and priorities. Cities in history were designed with a strong emphasis on walkability and accessibility.
In ancient Rome, the center of activity was the Forum, where people gathered for all kinds of events, from business to social activities. In ancient Greece, too, the Agora space served a similar function, encouraging interaction among citizens and fostering a sense of community and cultural exchange.
Then in the Renaissance, European cities underwent a redesign characterized by human-scale urban design principles. In this historical period, narrow streets and a focus on urban beauty became established, emphasizing the link between the environment and the human experience. Mixed land use also took hold, with residential, commercial and cultural activities in the same neighborhoods.
So far so good, the shift happened in the 20th century with the arrival of cars and the expansion of urban centers. This change has had profound implications in our present.
Let's take back our spaces
We have been told that owning a car means freedom. Being able to go wherever you want, whenever you want. Actually, car dependence is the opposite of freedom. It takes away our ability to choose better options by leaving us trapped, not just in traffic. It is also very expensive, as are the roads, consumes time and space, leaving us mentally drained.
We live in a car-dependent society. We don't have to eliminate cars, only eliminate our dependence on them. Spending an hour stuck in traffic or looking for a parking space is not normal. These hours pile up and become weeks of our lives that are gone forever and no one will give back.
It’s not a car problem, but a space problem. Adding another lane will not solve the traffic problem, and neither will Elon Musk's tunnels. You may be thinking that self-driving cars will come to save us, but these will be temporary solutions that won't improve the situation. We already have vehicles that take us everywhere, look like living rooms, and drive themselves. Spoiler: they are called trains.
Imagine if all the lanes now dedicated to cars were used to create gathering places, where we could create new memories. We want to take back our space in cities, and there’s a name for that: it’s called street reclamation. In the streets, people should be protagonists and cars just guests.
“If you design a city for cars, it fails for everyone, including drivers. If you design a multimodal city, it works better for everyone, including drivers.” – Brent Toderian
We can learn from Europe
There is already a lot going on in European cities and they can be and they can be an inspiration to everyone else.
Barcelona made the concept of superillas (superblocks) the foundation to design a healthy city. Each superblock frees up more than 70% of the area previously occupied by cars, reducing noise, improving air quality, and providing the public space needed to install picnic tables, playgrounds, and trees. The city launched pilot projects in 6 neighborhoods with appropriate intervals to better refine the co-design process with citizens. Now that the concept has been validated, other cities are following the example.
Paris went quickly from being an automotive city to being a bike friendly one. This is mainly thanks to Mayor Anne Hidalgo and her big bang of proximity. Under her guidance, they installed several bike lanes, green areas and recreational spaces. What happens if you create bike infrastructure for people? Unexpectedly, they use them. If you create better conditions for cyclists, you get more cyclists. In fact, today there are about 1 million people on a daily basis biking through the city.
London is always one of the first, when it’s about time spent in traffic. So the city has set up the Mini Hollands program for people who live outside the city and reach the center by car. Following the Dutch model, it has transformed the city's suburbs through bicycle lanes, traffic calming measures, redesigned city centers, bicycle hubs, and a range of behavior change measures.
Milan, as I mentioned earlier, is in step with other European cities. In fact, 750 kilometers of bike lanes are scheduled to be built around the metropolitan city by 2035. This will have 1/3 of the cost of rebuilding the Chicago highway interchange. At the time of writing, it has been five years since the launch of Piazze Aperte (Open Squares), a program for enhancing public space. This tactical urban planning approach, thanks to its designers and the help of citizens, is changing the city, for the better.
These are examples of cities where cars have always been in control. It would have been too easy to cite Dutch cities. If you think that everyone in Amsterdam is a cyclist, you are wrong. There are many people going out by bike, but only because it is the most convenient way to get around. Even Dutch cities have not always been like this. It took people protesting in the streets to get them back.
Access = Density + Proximity
Great ideas spread quickly, often too quickly to become marketing slogans. This happened with Carlos Moreno's 15-Minute City concept, now abused by architects and urban developers. The model follows the vision of a decentralized urban area where all necessities are within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from home. While Barcelona and Paris are trying to apply this model to their cities, Sweden is pushing this idea to the limit with the hyperlocal 1 min city model.
The power of proximity
However, the idea has not been fully understood, receiving much criticism and being targeted by conspiracy theories. I don't think the model is applicable to everyone, but perhaps working remotely can help. I support the idea of creating compact, walkable cities with human-scale neighborhoods. When everything is close, there is no need for speed. Instead of taking the car to get groceries on the weekend, people can stop for groceries while walking home from work.
Order + Variety
Having orderly cities is nice, but when they are too orderly they become boring. If you look at the most livable cities, you won't find ones that are orderly and full of skyscrapers, but rather the opposite. We need to leave room for diversity. I am not just talking about what buildings offer, but also what residents have to offer in terms of cultures and backgrounds. Density does not mean having huge skyscrapers, but maybe mixed-use buildings where there are public services but also restaurants and places to live. Proximity means having high urban vitality. If you bring people together, you get better communities.
Published
Oct 2, 2023
by
Andrea Fanelli
How to design better cities?
By designing them for its users, who are the people. It takes space to do that, but in the end it has a big impact on their daily lives. Multimodal cities give people the power and options to decide how to get around. Access to services depends on density and proximity, and doing so results in compact, walkable cities with human-scale neighborhoods. By bringing people together, you get a side effect: better communities.
There are better options to choose from
After coming back to Copenhagen this summer, I felt completely in love with the city. I knew there was something different that made it so special. I spent 5 days walking around and biking without any problems. This is because it is a city designed for the people.
I was born and raised in Rome, which is really beautiful but also difficult to navigate. Most people here move by car or scooter, and this creates significant traffic. When the municipality announced to close the center to cars, many people protested and reasonably so. You cannot take away access without first having working transportation and space for sustainable alternatives.
Our streets have an enormous impact on our lives: How are they designed and for whom? I let my curiosity prevail and I went exploring the principles that guide good design.
What makes a good city
Let's start with the basic concepts. A city is made up of neighborhoods, blocks, streets and so on. A great city is made first and foremost for people. We like to meet other people, exchange ideas or just enjoy our time there and relax. We want places where we can live well and move around easily, where children can explore without danger and the elderly can grow old together with the community. But also, cities where crossing the street is safe and there is no risk of being run over.
Understanding the problem closely
I have always been very fascinated by the concept of smart cities. I thought those would be the cities of the future. Fortunately, I was very wrong. We don't need cities with fancy sensors, we need a place where people can walk or take public transportation to everything. A place where having a car is an inconvenient option.
“An Advanced City Is One Where the Rich Take Public Transport” - Enrique Peñalosa
When I moved to Milan, I made the huge mistake of taking my car with me. I learned the mistake the hard way, getting dozens of tickets and wasting hours looking for parking. I later found out that there was no free parking inside the city, and there was a reason for that. If you incentivize car use with free parking, you take away space from people. Even so, there is no space left for all 700,000 cars in the city, so many people park on the sidewalks, blocking the way for people in wheelchairs. I therefore assumed that the city was taking these measures to depend less on cars and rely more on other means of transportation.
A glimpse into the past
If we look back to the past, cities were designed according to different perspectives and priorities. Cities in history were designed with a strong emphasis on walkability and accessibility.
In ancient Rome, the center of activity was the Forum, where people gathered for all kinds of events, from business to social activities. In ancient Greece, too, the Agora space served a similar function, encouraging interaction among citizens and fostering a sense of community and cultural exchange.
Then in the Renaissance, European cities underwent a redesign characterized by human-scale urban design principles. In this historical period, narrow streets and a focus on urban beauty became established, emphasizing the link between the environment and the human experience. Mixed land use also took hold, with residential, commercial and cultural activities in the same neighborhoods.
So far so good, the shift happened in the 20th century with the arrival of cars and the expansion of urban centers. This change has had profound implications in our present.
Let's take back our spaces
We have been told that owning a car means freedom. Being able to go wherever you want, whenever you want. Actually, car dependence is the opposite of freedom. It takes away our ability to choose better options by leaving us trapped, not just in traffic. It is also very expensive, as are the roads, consumes time and space, leaving us mentally drained.
We live in a car-dependent society. We don't have to eliminate cars, only eliminate our dependence on them. Spending an hour stuck in traffic or looking for a parking space is not normal. These hours pile up and become weeks of our lives that are gone forever and no one will give back.
It’s not a car problem, but a space problem. Adding another lane will not solve the traffic problem, and neither will Elon Musk's tunnels. You may be thinking that self-driving cars will come to save us, but these will be temporary solutions that won't improve the situation. We already have vehicles that take us everywhere, look like living rooms, and drive themselves. Spoiler: they are called trains.
Imagine if all the lanes now dedicated to cars were used to create gathering places, where we could create new memories. We want to take back our space in cities, and there’s a name for that: it’s called street reclamation. In the streets, people should be protagonists and cars just guests.
“If you design a city for cars, it fails for everyone, including drivers. If you design a multimodal city, it works better for everyone, including drivers.” – Brent Toderian
We can learn from Europe
There is already a lot going on in European cities and they can be and they can be an inspiration to everyone else.
Barcelona made the concept of superillas (superblocks) the foundation to design a healthy city. Each superblock frees up more than 70% of the area previously occupied by cars, reducing noise, improving air quality, and providing the public space needed to install picnic tables, playgrounds, and trees. The city launched pilot projects in 6 neighborhoods with appropriate intervals to better refine the co-design process with citizens. Now that the concept has been validated, other cities are following the example.
Paris went quickly from being an automotive city to being a bike friendly one. This is mainly thanks to Mayor Anne Hidalgo and her big bang of proximity. Under her guidance, they installed several bike lanes, green areas and recreational spaces. What happens if you create bike infrastructure for people? Unexpectedly, they use them. If you create better conditions for cyclists, you get more cyclists. In fact, today there are about 1 million people on a daily basis biking through the city.
London is always one of the first, when it’s about time spent in traffic. So the city has set up the Mini Hollands program for people who live outside the city and reach the center by car. Following the Dutch model, it has transformed the city's suburbs through bicycle lanes, traffic calming measures, redesigned city centers, bicycle hubs, and a range of behavior change measures.
Milan, as I mentioned earlier, is in step with other European cities. In fact, 750 kilometers of bike lanes are scheduled to be built around the metropolitan city by 2035. This will have 1/3 of the cost of rebuilding the Chicago highway interchange. At the time of writing, it has been five years since the launch of Piazze Aperte (Open Squares), a program for enhancing public space. This tactical urban planning approach, thanks to its designers and the help of citizens, is changing the city, for the better.
These are examples of cities where cars have always been in control. It would have been too easy to cite Dutch cities. If you think that everyone in Amsterdam is a cyclist, you are wrong. There are many people going out by bike, but only because it is the most convenient way to get around. Even Dutch cities have not always been like this. It took people protesting in the streets to get them back.
Access = Density + Proximity
Great ideas spread quickly, often too quickly to become marketing slogans. This happened with Carlos Moreno's 15-Minute City concept, now abused by architects and urban developers. The model follows the vision of a decentralized urban area where all necessities are within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from home. While Barcelona and Paris are trying to apply this model to their cities, Sweden is pushing this idea to the limit with the hyperlocal 1 min city model.
The power of proximity
However, the idea has not been fully understood, receiving much criticism and being targeted by conspiracy theories. I don't think the model is applicable to everyone, but perhaps working remotely can help. I support the idea of creating compact, walkable cities with human-scale neighborhoods. When everything is close, there is no need for speed. Instead of taking the car to get groceries on the weekend, people can stop for groceries while walking home from work.
Order + Variety
Having orderly cities is nice, but when they are too orderly they become boring. If you look at the most livable cities, you won't find ones that are orderly and full of skyscrapers, but rather the opposite. We need to leave room for diversity. I am not just talking about what buildings offer, but also what residents have to offer in terms of cultures and backgrounds. Density does not mean having huge skyscrapers, but maybe mixed-use buildings where there are public services but also restaurants and places to live. Proximity means having high urban vitality. If you bring people together, you get better communities.
