You Can Take It With You

Again, I want to be very clear that these neighborhoods are not some hell on earth, and anyone from the rest of world would be smitten to have the chance to live in them. As I wrote above, if an average African, Asian, or Latin American asked my advice I would tell them to move there. It would be downright weird of me to tell them otherwise, given ... See more

Cities Are a Merry-Go-Round (But Lack Community)

After all, cities are where people are supposed to have serendipitous encounters—as the writer and critic Jane Jacobs said, “The metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.” By comparison, the cliché goes, people become more atomized the farther they move from urban environments into the clinical, safe,... See more

Suburbia is not for the most part a naturally occurring settlement pattern, and the suppression of density and traditional urban forms, in most places for coming on a century now, has made it impossible to divine public opinion. Our opinions are shaped by our surroundings and possibilities. In different circumstances, we can be different people. Of... See more

Is another kind of density possible, with close-knit communities, sustainable places where car use is minimised, where consumption is decreased, and where people can walk out their front door into a unique and enlivening environment?

It feels nearly impossible to imagine what that might look like, but what we shouldn’t do is feel paralysed by FOBO (fear of better options). An emphasis on the local, on smaller, walkable neighbourhoods and more central job and amenity centres is a good place to start. It’s not just tiny villages that can reap the benefits of this spatial reconsid... See more

My humbler assertion is that 2020 has punctured my confidence that the internet cannot encroach on the benefits of urban density and proximity. Going forward, many fledgling companies may agree, as they find that the city in the cloud essentially acts as a more accessible version of the city on the Earth, eerily reproducing its forces of agglomerat... See more