People might think of city life as necessarily “hard.” But the creative director at a Copenhagen-based urban design firm begs to differ. There are a few simple principles that can “soften” our city, drawing us closer together and radically improving our quality of life.
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Public spaces are often shortchanged in government budgets. Yet they provide outsized benefits compared to how little our communities usually invest in them. Public spaces should be celebrated and protected. Here are four reasons why.
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It’s a paradox, but cities can set the stage for the unscripted. These playful surprises cater both to young and the young-at-heart, and they endear the community to visitors and residents alike.
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Learn how Stronger Denton—a Denton-based, Strong Towns Local Conversation—took an incremental approach to invest in a park in downtown Denton.
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Our cities increasingly isolate us from those who are unlike us. To rekindle civic trust and empathy, we must make communities where people enjoy mixing it up with others: where they will live a portion of their lives in public, not because they are forced to do so, but because it is delightful to do so.
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What do you do with an old freeway in the heart of your city that never should have been built? In Akron, it’s become an experimental pop-up park that is stitching the city back together.
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Something as small as public art can help transform the public’s perception of a troubled neighborhood park. It’s a testament to the power of bottom-up, incremental change.
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Akron, Ohio’s Main Street Corridor project will produce a safer and more attractive street, with more space for people, activities and public art. But this dramatic, expensive overhaul is not an end in itself. If it’s going to deliver on its promises, it must be viewed as a beginning.
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Communities of faith stand in an important position to support vibrant, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods; and in recent years, some have stepped up to the challenge at a variety of different scales.
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Land use planning should be a means to an end — not an end in itself.
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After the crowds clear, what type of long-term impact does a public event leave in its wake?
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Here are 8 small things you can do to make a place more inviting, productive and happy.
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After years of being a largely windowless, uninviting one-story building on a dreary corner, this library was transformed into an exciting, lively mixed-use space that is now a focal point for the neighborhood.
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Strong Towns member Paul Fritz recently worked with a group of residents in his town of Sebastopol, CA to construct three temporary parklets, to resounding success.
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Parks aren't just pretty green space where kids can throw a ball, they're the heart of our neighborhoods, gathering places for people young and old, and could even be the site of future revolutions
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When citizens who care decide to stand up for something they believe in, the built environment affects where they instinctively gather. Does your town have a public place that's ready for revolution?
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We live in cities starved for good public space. There are so few spots in North America where you can sit comfortably for free. And when we do try to create sittable public space, we often fail spectacularly.
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Many of us tend to think of water as something to be seen on vacation. But you don't need to live in a beachside villa in the Caribbean in order to experience the value of water.
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There
This bench example is symbolic of a larger problem in the architectural and urban design worlds, which involves the design of buildings and urban elements as sculptural things, designed in ways that overlook human needs for comfort, familiarity, and delight, in favor of their being original, unusual, and unfamiliar, above all else.
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