According to Fast Company Design, the perfect city is all about illusions.
Crumbling infrastructure, two hour commutes, sprawl, economic stagnation, and obesity are just some of the problems facing the many increasingly unlivable American cities today. But many cities and urban planners across the country are quietly working to make urban areas more vibrant and livable.
Anthony Lyons and David Green, an urban designer from Perkins+Will, are teaming together to re-imagine how we address the challenges cities face in the coming decades. Some of their findings include:
- Walkability. It’s all about smaller blocks.
People like to walk through cities that have small blocks. It’s about making progress when walking but it’s about the perception of progress in space. Think about Manhattan, it’s a great city, an unbelievably walkable city. Manhattan has small blocks. But even so, you feel different walking down different streets in New York.”
- Simplicity. Forego complex plans for concise solutions.
“Cities today confront a whole array of challenges that couldn’t have been dreamed of in the past. But too often we respond to complex problems with even more muddled action. You can see exactly this principle at work in the original plan for Manhattan, a very simple document. It was a single map, really, it was just streets and blocks. Without ever changing the location of streets, blocks in New York have accommodated everything from farm houses to the Empire State Building.”
