Urbanism — the art and science of making cities — encompasses a broad range of perspectives. There’s the conceptual and long-term, about the role cities and urbanization play in humanity’s future. But there’s also the immediate and tactile, what you might call street-level urbanism: how to mix uses on a street, the right way to position doors and windows, the height and arrangement of buildings. The details.
I got a much greater appreciation of street-level urbanism when I took a bus up to Vancouver, BC, to take a downtown walking tour with Brent Toderian.
Toderian was the Vancouver’s Chief Planner from 2006 to 2012, a time of furious change for the city that saw the 2010 Olympics along with a broad range of programs to increase density, non-auto mobility, and livability. He’s now a consultant to cities that want to move in the same direction. (The tour was part of the 25th annual meeting of the The Congress for the New Urbanism.)
Walking along the waterfront and through downtown with Toderian (and a few old friends and colleagues, still in city government), it became apparent just how much thought and attention have gone into every building, street, public space, and park in the city.
It’s not that Vancouver is perfect — Toderian and his friends are quick to point out where a park is a little too wide, or a building doesn’t match its neighbors, or a particular strip of retail isn’t working. It’s clear these kinds of things haunt them.
But in Vancouver, like few other North American cities, nothing is simply left to chance, or developers, or the market. There is a deliberative regulatory framework in place, and every decision within it is made consciously, working backward from a clear vision of the city residents want. That’s one reason Vancouver is consistently ranked among the world’s most livable cities.
Experiencing urbanism this way, at street level, through the eyes of those who crafted it, is a little like taking the red pill in the Matrix. Once you start noticing the fine texture of the built environment — the details, the spaces and edges, how they make you feel, what kinds of activities they encourage or discourage — it’s impossible to stop.
And it turns out that most of the spaces most of us inhabit most of the time are pretty poorly designed. That’s why it costs so much to live in the well-designed places.
But Toderian is relentlessly optimistic that every city and town can get better. He stressed that Vancouver is not magic — any city can do this. He has practiced and explained city-making for over a decade, but he still has the enthusiasm of an evangelist. (His twitter feed is worth following as well.)
I talked with him after the tour in Vancouver, and over the phone a few times afterward. To make the conversation manageable, I’ve broken it in into four thematic pieces.
Making cities more dense always sparks resistance. Here’s how to overcome it.
Vancouver’s waterfront. (Brent Toderian)Urban density, done well, has all kinds of benefits. On average, people who live in dense, walkable areas tend to be physically healthier, happier, and more productive. Local governments pay less in infrastructure costs to support urbanites than they to support suburbanites. Per-capita energy consumption is lower in dense areas, which is good for air pollution and climate change.
Plus, dense, walkable areas tend to be buzzy and culturally vibrant. There’s a reason they are often so expensive to live in — lots of people want to live there. Demand exceeds supply.
Read Article >Walkable urban areas can become playgrounds for the rich. Is there any way to prevent that?
Publicly owned family rental housing in Vancouver’s Olympic Village. (Brent Toderian)The most frequent criticism of dense, walkable, livable urban areas is that they are too expensive to live in.
Cities like New York, Seattle, and San Francisco, which contain some of the most celebrated examples of US urbanism, also boast some of the highest real estate prices. Longtime residents have come to see the arrival of condos and bike lanes as harbingers of rising rents.
Read Article >Young families typically leave cities for the suburbs. Here’s how to keep them downtown.
Elementary school and playground in downtown Vancouver. (Brent Toderian)In North America, we take it for granted: When couples have kids, they move out of the city to the suburbs.
The trend has only accelerated lately. Some of the most attractive and fastest growing cities — San Francisco, Portland, Pittsburgh, Washington, DC — have seen their numbers of children plunge in recent years. My home city, Seattle, is now the fastest growing big city in the country ... and has the second-lowest number of households with children. (According to Governing magazine, as of 2015, 19.6 percent of Seattle’s 304,564 households have children. In Laredo, Texas, it’s 55.3 percent.)
Read Article >Dense urbanism is great for downtowns. But what about suburbs?
Little boxes on the hillside. (Shutterstock)Post-war America has largely been built around cars. Many existing cities (including my home of Seattle) permanently scarred themselves with new urban freeways. Newer cities were oriented around freeways, extending out into low-density suburban development — the kinds of places where virtually any activity outside the home requires a car.
Though the status quo of big, bland, car-centric subdivisions retains enormous inertia, there is now a real counter-movement of urbanists trying to reclaim the virtues of pre-car towns and cities: scale, character, and walkability. As low-density developments become a drain on regional budgets — the infrastructure and service costs exceed the tax revenue — city officials are listening.
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