The Economist when selecting the most liveable cities excluded cities like Paris, London and NYC. Their metrics were many but they focused on measuring what lead to a better quality of life. The Globe and Mail does much the same.
Calgary...lots of green space, river, good transportation etc high in both...and is always in the Top ten.
Lets look to Calgary and how that city is managed.
I’m always a bit wary of the metric based city rankings, even if they’re still interesting. They all have a bias in the ranking with how house prices or affordability or crime rate gets counted against other more feeling based qualities.
Personally, I’m really not a fan of Calgary, very car centric, sprawling single family home suburbs, a pretty sad downtown … though lots of work going on to make it more than office monoculture.
Quality of life is quite a subjective thing, and that’s good. Having spent a lot of time working in Calgary, and enjoying it, I know I wouldn’t want to live there.
But you’re right, for places that have space to their advantage, there’s things to learn from Calgary, and Edmonton actually. Both are building in density well for the North American context.
Oh, mate; I can so agree! And as an urbanist with an architecture degree I can relate; we as a group would gain more if we were a bit less serious and technical to achieve our vision. Like politicians, we need to speak with the "people" -community representatives (not just the big stakeholders, mind you); stop taking ourselves so seriously and listen to their needs and concerns, so we can deliver a message and guide them to achieve a better quality of life. So yeah, thank you!
As someone with an architecture degree who went into marketing, and now works for a non-profit to share these ideas... YES. I remember the days of explaining an architecture or planning project to my parents. The glazed look on their faces... I just felt silly afterward. That's when I, too, realized this communication problem needed to be addressed. Thanks for writing this.
Nice article and some great points. The pop at Birmingham at the end seemed a bit odd, yes there's a lot to be done to undo the 20th century planning but there are plenty of examples of bold and innovative design and planning in the city with many more exciting plans in progress.
Maybe there are, but the lack of the ability to communicate or tell the story is perhaps part of the point. Reputations are hard to shift right? So you’ve got to do something different to change the narrative, locally, nationally and internationally.
Many excellent points. When selling, do not use jargon. When you say 'urbanists', you mean urban planners and advocates in the United States. The other urbanists are more experimental, free-thinking, willing to fail, and accepting of reality. A key factor you miss is that petrol and automobiles in the USA are abnormally cheap, and there are almost no tolls. In any other country, the cost of driving is much higher than in the U.S. The current crisis is laughable; US$1.00 per litre is not expensive. U.S. urbanists assume that most people will own an automobile and then want them to abandon it in favour of a better solution. This will almost never happen.
If you own an automobile first then got a better solution, it's hard for you to abandon your car as selling it means significant financial lost. However, we can encourage next generation of people choose non-car transportation solutions at the very beginning. It works.
There is a second half to that sentence though. If we’re going to try and take the words out of context, we’re probably exposing much of what I was writing about.
The second half copied below makes no impact on the original critique. If you want to change how a professional group works, calling them dim-witted is the fastest way to make them stop listening. As such, your thesis (which I agreed with, btw) gets buried under the insult. Then again, if this article is only a rant looking for yes-men to contribute, and not a serious attempt to change anything, I will accept my comment as invalid.
"Not because urbanists are cleverer than these people, mostly because they’re not, but because it’s like any other business talking to their customers in the industrial code."
I didn’t call them dimwitted though. There is a difference between saying a group is no more clever than another, and calling them stupid.
If Urbanists get insulted by my words here, I’m probably exposing their own existing insecurities.
I’m not going to directly change the mind of the mist stubborn planners or professionals in this piece (or any I write). But the feedback I tend to get beyond the comment field (we turn nasty fast) is typically how something I’ve said on here has sat with someone for a while.
This has been the piece that’s performed best for me at that btw
Urbanism doesn’t just have a design problem, it has a translation problem. As long as we explain cities in policy-speak and diagrams, we lose most residents. People want to feel what a new street or neighbourhood means in daily life. Many planners think in images, not essays, that’s where visual storytelling matters : one strong, immersive scene can replace a thousand words and finally get everyone looking at the same future.
Amen. Rory Sutherland and many other marketers have been some of my best urbanism mentors.
The Economist when selecting the most liveable cities excluded cities like Paris, London and NYC. Their metrics were many but they focused on measuring what lead to a better quality of life. The Globe and Mail does much the same.
Calgary...lots of green space, river, good transportation etc high in both...and is always in the Top ten.
Lets look to Calgary and how that city is managed.
I’m always a bit wary of the metric based city rankings, even if they’re still interesting. They all have a bias in the ranking with how house prices or affordability or crime rate gets counted against other more feeling based qualities.
Personally, I’m really not a fan of Calgary, very car centric, sprawling single family home suburbs, a pretty sad downtown … though lots of work going on to make it more than office monoculture.
Quality of life is quite a subjective thing, and that’s good. Having spent a lot of time working in Calgary, and enjoying it, I know I wouldn’t want to live there.
But you’re right, for places that have space to their advantage, there’s things to learn from Calgary, and Edmonton actually. Both are building in density well for the North American context.
Oh, mate; I can so agree! And as an urbanist with an architecture degree I can relate; we as a group would gain more if we were a bit less serious and technical to achieve our vision. Like politicians, we need to speak with the "people" -community representatives (not just the big stakeholders, mind you); stop taking ourselves so seriously and listen to their needs and concerns, so we can deliver a message and guide them to achieve a better quality of life. So yeah, thank you!
As someone with an architecture degree who went into marketing, and now works for a non-profit to share these ideas... YES. I remember the days of explaining an architecture or planning project to my parents. The glazed look on their faces... I just felt silly afterward. That's when I, too, realized this communication problem needed to be addressed. Thanks for writing this.
"Why not back home" is the million dollar question.
Renderings. People need to see the vision.
Nice article and some great points. The pop at Birmingham at the end seemed a bit odd, yes there's a lot to be done to undo the 20th century planning but there are plenty of examples of bold and innovative design and planning in the city with many more exciting plans in progress.
Agreed - there’s some really interesting new and built planning projects in Birmingham which are having a huge difference.
Maybe there are, but the lack of the ability to communicate or tell the story is perhaps part of the point. Reputations are hard to shift right? So you’ve got to do something different to change the narrative, locally, nationally and internationally.
Many excellent points. When selling, do not use jargon. When you say 'urbanists', you mean urban planners and advocates in the United States. The other urbanists are more experimental, free-thinking, willing to fail, and accepting of reality. A key factor you miss is that petrol and automobiles in the USA are abnormally cheap, and there are almost no tolls. In any other country, the cost of driving is much higher than in the U.S. The current crisis is laughable; US$1.00 per litre is not expensive. U.S. urbanists assume that most people will own an automobile and then want them to abandon it in favour of a better solution. This will almost never happen.
If you own an automobile first then got a better solution, it's hard for you to abandon your car as selling it means significant financial lost. However, we can encourage next generation of people choose non-car transportation solutions at the very beginning. It works.
I was nodding in agreement until I stumbled upon, “Not because urbanists are cleverer than these people, mostly because they’re not…”
I’d probably “communicate” better with urbanists if I wanted to truly impact their approach. Just saying
There is a second half to that sentence though. If we’re going to try and take the words out of context, we’re probably exposing much of what I was writing about.
The second half copied below makes no impact on the original critique. If you want to change how a professional group works, calling them dim-witted is the fastest way to make them stop listening. As such, your thesis (which I agreed with, btw) gets buried under the insult. Then again, if this article is only a rant looking for yes-men to contribute, and not a serious attempt to change anything, I will accept my comment as invalid.
"Not because urbanists are cleverer than these people, mostly because they’re not, but because it’s like any other business talking to their customers in the industrial code."
I didn’t call them dimwitted though. There is a difference between saying a group is no more clever than another, and calling them stupid.
If Urbanists get insulted by my words here, I’m probably exposing their own existing insecurities.
I’m not going to directly change the mind of the mist stubborn planners or professionals in this piece (or any I write). But the feedback I tend to get beyond the comment field (we turn nasty fast) is typically how something I’ve said on here has sat with someone for a while.
This has been the piece that’s performed best for me at that btw
Lovely. Good luck!
Urbanism doesn’t just have a design problem, it has a translation problem. As long as we explain cities in policy-speak and diagrams, we lose most residents. People want to feel what a new street or neighbourhood means in daily life. Many planners think in images, not essays, that’s where visual storytelling matters : one strong, immersive scene can replace a thousand words and finally get everyone looking at the same future.
Like minds. Just wrote a similar piece about the messaging behind mass transit (spoiler: it’s bad)
https://open.substack.com/pub/selfbrandstudio/p/move-me?r=das2f&utm_medium=ios
A lecture on the need to stop lecturing.
Cheers mate.
Urbanism is not coherent theory. That's worth discussing, if not with the general public, but amongst ourselves.