We Shape Cities and Cities Shape Us 07
The Market Square, the Town, and the Planet
Published in the Stratford Gazette, 5 July 2012
We shape cities, and they shape us. Think about that. We create an environment – in this case an urban space – and it shapes us, how we live in that environment and move around it, what its beauty or ugliness does for our moods and our mental health. (If you think that your moods and mental health are not important in this connection, just picture to yourself the ugliest urban environment you’ve ever seen, and the most beautiful, and imagine how it would feel to live in each of them every day. Wouldn’t you rather live in the beautiful one?)
An example: during the past fifty years or so, humans (mainly in the developed world but also, increasingly, in the developing world) have shaped cities that depend upon the automobile. Therefore we’ve become more and more dependent on our cars. Dependency on cars determines a great deal about our lives – where we live in relationship to our workplace, the children’s schools, the places where we shop or go for recreation, the kind of neighbourhood we have. It determines how our cities look and function. Creating more space for cars and more need for them has invited more cars into our cities. More cars have meant more concrete and asphalt, more sprawl, more noise, less greenery, more ugliness. We have been shaped by that environment: exposed to the noise and fumes, the heat beating up from acres of black-top, the stress of traffic congestion. Everything from road rage to broken families has been influenced in some way by the decisions made decades ago – by the society as a whole, and by us as individuals – about the environment in which we live.
Some cities have been reversing this dependency on the automobile. San Francisco, Milwaukee, Seoul, and others have been dismantling large road systems, and the result is not more congestion but less use of cars. It has also led to less pollution, reduced noise levels, and less demand for fossil fuels. The people of Copenhagen have been redesigning their city to suit people – not removing cars entirely but shifting the priorities so that far more people get around the city by bicycle or public transit, or on foot. In 2008, bicycles accounted for 37% of commutes to and from work and education, and after a snowfall the bicycle lanes are cleared before the driving lanes. More walking and cycling makes people healthier, easing the load on the health-care system and helping people to live more active and healthier lives.
There are other ways in which our cities shape us. City environments can be designed to discourage crime. Creating open public spaces that attract pedestrians and cyclists and people sitting on benches to read the paper or chat with friends discourages vandalism and random mischief and rowdiness.
All this requires a vision, and the will to implement it. Stratford is already a gem of a city with its cultural scene, its tree-lined streets, its heritage buildings, its park system, its community activities of many kinds. All this is a wonderful foundation to work on.
So what can we build on this foundation? Jan Gehl presents us with his vision of how a city can be – the city that we shape by the decisions we make individually and collectively. For him, a city should be lively, with people out and about, enlivening it with their activities and interests and just with their presence, their obvious enjoyment of attractive surroundings and well-designed open spaces. It should be safe, and the presence of people helps to makes it safe. It should be sustainable, with as much “green mobility” as possible – walking, cycling, public transit. Green mobility benefits the economy and the environment, on both the larger and the local scale. The city should be healthy, and an increase in walking and cycling improves people’s health. Lively, safe, sustainable, healthy: qualities which Stratford already has to some degree but which could all be increased.
We have a wonderful opportunity right now to contribute to shaping the city we would like to live in. Stratford’s official plan is being reviewed and revised, and we are all invited to express our ideas and vision. One meeting has been held already and there will be more, but in the meantime there is a website where all of us can have our say. The main website is www.shapingstratford.ca, and the survey is at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/shapingstratford.
So we shape Stratford according to our vision of how we would like to live, what sort of place we would like to live in. Stratford is a good size for this: individuals and small groups can be heard and can make a difference. And then the environment we create – physical, social, cultural, the natural environment and the built environment, the human mesh and the civic structure with which it interweaves – allows us as individuals, and our families, and our collective identity, to grow and develop and flourish.
Jan Gehl is again my source – I drew with thanks on his book Cities and People, which is full of insights and practical wisdom.
Brandis has lived in Stratford since 1996 and is a full-time writer. She is the author of a number of books – visit Marianne's website.
Published in the Stratford Gazette, 5 July 2012
We shape cities, and they shape us. Think about that. We create an environment – in this case an urban space – and it shapes us, how we live in that environment and move around it, what its beauty or ugliness does for our moods and our mental health. (If you think that your moods and mental health are not important in this connection, just picture to yourself the ugliest urban environment you’ve ever seen, and the most beautiful, and imagine how it would feel to live in each of them every day. Wouldn’t you rather live in the beautiful one?)
An example: during the past fifty years or so, humans (mainly in the developed world but also, increasingly, in the developing world) have shaped cities that depend upon the automobile. Therefore we’ve become more and more dependent on our cars. Dependency on cars determines a great deal about our lives – where we live in relationship to our workplace, the children’s schools, the places where we shop or go for recreation, the kind of neighbourhood we have. It determines how our cities look and function. Creating more space for cars and more need for them has invited more cars into our cities. More cars have meant more concrete and asphalt, more sprawl, more noise, less greenery, more ugliness. We have been shaped by that environment: exposed to the noise and fumes, the heat beating up from acres of black-top, the stress of traffic congestion. Everything from road rage to broken families has been influenced in some way by the decisions made decades ago – by the society as a whole, and by us as individuals – about the environment in which we live.
Some cities have been reversing this dependency on the automobile. San Francisco, Milwaukee, Seoul, and others have been dismantling large road systems, and the result is not more congestion but less use of cars. It has also led to less pollution, reduced noise levels, and less demand for fossil fuels. The people of Copenhagen have been redesigning their city to suit people – not removing cars entirely but shifting the priorities so that far more people get around the city by bicycle or public transit, or on foot. In 2008, bicycles accounted for 37% of commutes to and from work and education, and after a snowfall the bicycle lanes are cleared before the driving lanes. More walking and cycling makes people healthier, easing the load on the health-care system and helping people to live more active and healthier lives.
There are other ways in which our cities shape us. City environments can be designed to discourage crime. Creating open public spaces that attract pedestrians and cyclists and people sitting on benches to read the paper or chat with friends discourages vandalism and random mischief and rowdiness.
All this requires a vision, and the will to implement it. Stratford is already a gem of a city with its cultural scene, its tree-lined streets, its heritage buildings, its park system, its community activities of many kinds. All this is a wonderful foundation to work on.
So what can we build on this foundation? Jan Gehl presents us with his vision of how a city can be – the city that we shape by the decisions we make individually and collectively. For him, a city should be lively, with people out and about, enlivening it with their activities and interests and just with their presence, their obvious enjoyment of attractive surroundings and well-designed open spaces. It should be safe, and the presence of people helps to makes it safe. It should be sustainable, with as much “green mobility” as possible – walking, cycling, public transit. Green mobility benefits the economy and the environment, on both the larger and the local scale. The city should be healthy, and an increase in walking and cycling improves people’s health. Lively, safe, sustainable, healthy: qualities which Stratford already has to some degree but which could all be increased.
We have a wonderful opportunity right now to contribute to shaping the city we would like to live in. Stratford’s official plan is being reviewed and revised, and we are all invited to express our ideas and vision. One meeting has been held already and there will be more, but in the meantime there is a website where all of us can have our say. The main website is www.shapingstratford.ca, and the survey is at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/shapingstratford.
So we shape Stratford according to our vision of how we would like to live, what sort of place we would like to live in. Stratford is a good size for this: individuals and small groups can be heard and can make a difference. And then the environment we create – physical, social, cultural, the natural environment and the built environment, the human mesh and the civic structure with which it interweaves – allows us as individuals, and our families, and our collective identity, to grow and develop and flourish.
Jan Gehl is again my source – I drew with thanks on his book Cities and People, which is full of insights and practical wisdom.
Brandis has lived in Stratford since 1996 and is a full-time writer. She is the author of a number of books – visit Marianne's website.