Including Everyone in a City
Pedestrian-focused
System that aggressively favors those who share space
Upside-down road
Cars on shoulders, pedestrians on raised centers
Re-imagined bus system
Culture of citizenship
"Along with human rights, we all have duties. And the first priority fis to establish respect for human life as the main right and duty of citizens"
How do you fix a city
Hardware - public space and infastructure #
Software - attitudes and behaviors of citizens #
"Only a city that respects human beings can expect citizens to respect the city in return"
Mimes making fun of rude drivers
Red cards to "referee" antisocial behavior
Voluntary disarmment day
Urban design should be used to make people happier
Private vs Public Space
Private space and progress are systemically intertwined
"One of the requirements for happiness is equality. Maybe not equality of income, but equality of life, and more than that, an environment where people don't feel inferior, where people don't feel excluded."
Bolders on sidewalks to make it impossible for cars to park
Bikeways
Subjective feeling matters more than actually being equal
"Having less is okay, but having less than everyone else feels awful"
Status gaps are the harmful part of inequality
Redistribute benefits of the city to make it more tolerable for the most amount of people
The city's amenities are for everyone
In the fair city...
People who share space on transit enjoy the right-of-way on congested roads
Streets are safer for everyone, especially children
Everyone has access to parks, shops, services, and healthy food
Challenges that make change hard
Change requires time, money, and political influence
Typically held by wealthy people
Where change happens, land values increase #
Government intervention required
Mix low and high income housing
Hedonistic Sustainability
Sustainability is not a burden, but a sustainable city can improve quality of life
Everything is connected to everything else
"Sustainability and the good life can be by-products of the same interventions"
Easier to get people excited about plans that improve their lives
"Just about every measure I've connected to happy urbanism also influences a city's environmental footprint and its economic and fiscal health"
Designers and planners tend to overscale
Focusing on smaller organisms or economies allows stability and room to self-correct
Stacked businesses/housing
More revenue per acre
More room for connection
Who has the right to shape a city
Earned through act of habitation
Citadin
A city shaper who is both citizen and denizen of the city
Grid-shaped cities prevent citizens from shaping their own spaces
"...great irony of the American city: a nation that celebrates freedom and weaves liberty into its national myth rarely gives regular people the change to shape their own communities."
Sprawl prevents involvement
Those two live in sprawl less likely to volunteer, vote, join political parties, or rise up
Not a human resource problem, a design problem
Loneliness
Damaging to psychological and physical well-being
Cities are life-shaping systems
"Even growth is happy growth and uneven growth is unhappy growth"
Roads are worse in low-income neighborhoods
People didn't mobilize
Land was cheaper (and continues to be with busy roads)
Wealthy neighborhoods push traffic elsewhere
Low-income people without cars aren't welcome in wealthy neighborhoods if they need to have bike- and walk- accessible shops
Urban Justice
Factors that contribute to our economic, human health, and cultural well-being, as well as the factors that contribute to the environment and aesthetic health of the built enbironment
Conditions of urban injustice
Concentrated poverty
Discontentment, crive, and the architecture of fear
Socio-economic division
Values for designing a just city
Equity
Choice
Access
Connectivity
Ownership
Diversity
Participation
Inclusion and Belonging
Beauty
Creative Innovation
Collective Impact
the commitment of a goup of important actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem
5 conditions of collective success
Common agenda
Shared measurement systems
Mutually reinforcing activities
Continuous communication
Backbone support orgs
Well0being can act as a common currency for city decision-making