What Cities Look Like

What does a city look like? OK, the obvious answer to that question is descriptivist, not prescriptivist: a city looks like whatever a city looks like. Anywhere that people have gathered in sufficient quantities and political organization that we can call it a city, that is what a city looks like, from Çatalhuyuk to the shores of the Great Salt Lake. 

So the actual question I'm asking here is: what does it matter what a city looks like? Why should we care how a city has chosen to express itself?

There are infinite answers to this as well, but I want to highlight three of them.

1. Urban Canyons: Dense, but Too Dense?

One urban form we might be quite familiar with in urbanist spaces is the canyon: the city that's made up (or at least whose core is made up) of super-high-rise office buildings and condos, creating a deep valley effect in the streets between.

This kind of effect.

Now, there are cities where this is more true, and cities that might be described this way that are less so in practice. New York is the canonical classic example, especially downtown Manhattan, and there's a reason for that: it's because you can get effects like Manhattanhenge, where the sun has to peek through the buildings (for in this case a beautiful effect). But lots of downtowns get described this way, even if they don't have the full canyon on display. 

Is this, for example, an urban canyon?

Seen from above, there's a case for Michigan Avenue in Chicago as one, isn't there? But you can see lots of lower density peeking through, and that's true even at street level. 

And this is the question that urban canyons raise: on the one hand, they seem to be the confirmation of those who decry too much density, shutting out the sun and enclosing humanity in something like a prototype version of The Caves of Steel. But on the other, they don't actually usually do that. And they allow lots of people to work and live in small areas, because one key thing about high-rise density is that it is high and dense. So are they worth it? 

It will probably surprise no one who reads anything on this blog that I think they are. 

It helps when there is something interesting to look at in the canyon, or when there are distinctive buildings within it, as the above and below London examples show.

Urban canyons are like other urban forms, in that they can be better or worse: a flat undifferentiated block fifteen stories high is one thing; a vibrant cityscape that happens to be very tall is another. 

Fortunately, in my experience, a lot of cities that get criticized for this are the latter, and not the former. So a city that looks like an urban canyon is, to me, a positive rather than a negative. 

2. The Midrise: Is It Enough?

Stepping down a size, there are many cities that are iconic for midrise height: from Paris and Montréal in the Francophone world to, for example, Amsterdam in the Netherlands). This is of course questioned by some in the same way that urban canyons are, in terms of it feeling monotonous, or imposing, or inhuman on the street level. But if I don't think that about canyons you probably can guess I don't think it about the midrise. The more interesting question is whether it can be enough: can a city really have midrise density and still fit all the people who want to live there?

The obvious answer is "not entirely, but it's better than nothing." After all, all those cities I just mentioned are experiencing huge housing crunches.

Amsterdam is lovely, but there literally isn't enough housing here.

Paris is iconic, but again: prices rise and people are pushed to the margins of the urban area.

You'll never believe what I'm about to say about Montréal...oh yeah, it also has a housing crisis, though not as bad as the other two. And since the housing crisis in its province has its own Wikipedia page, that should tell you something.

Of course, the counter to this is that not all of the city has been allowed to be this kind of height; it's iconic and typical, but not actually consistent. 

It does have major advantages: it tends to feel much less overwhelming on the street level than higher-rise development, and it often lends itself well to active streets and Jane Jacobs-style eyes on the street. 

It's also beautiful, I think. 

It's a key part of effective city-building; there's a reason that cities that lack this kind of development are referred to as having a "missing middle." The middle is a sweet spot for density without huge skyscrapers (which are both expensive and have their own other issues). It's not enough, but it's a dang sight better than our third category.

3. Single Houses: Automatically Car-Dependent?

The last we will look at is the classic American development: single family houses. 

That's most of what you see in this picture. Now, to be fair, not all single family zoning is cul-de-sacs like you see here. But a lot of it is, in the US especially, and that has a distinctive look. Even in more close-set settings, single-family homes, like the one I grew up in, have a very different street-level view than the other two we've looked at.

I like this house's urban setting. It's on a major bus route or two; it's walking distance to multiple grocery stores, a library, multiple parks, and other amenities. 

It's a good urbanist example of a single family home, is what I'm saying. And I think the answer to the question above has to be that it's not automatically car-dependent: after all, I grew up in this neighborhood with my parents both commuting by bus and bike and myself taking the bus to school and walking around after getting home. There were certainly places we went by car, but it wasn't required; and when it was, it was because of the place we were going to, not coming from, or a function of bad connectivity in the transit network.

As a larger matter, there has to be a space for single family homes in any vision of the city, because there is a clear and marked demand for such housing in the lived behavior of human beings all over the world.

But it doesn't have to be as much as it is. Seattle (or at least its county) is 70% housing like this. That's a lot, and not all of it (not even most of it) is as urbanist as this one is.

To go back to our original view (or rather, another angle from the same photoshoot from the same vantage point), Chicago is also heavily made up of this housing, and you can see it stretching out away from the urban canyon into the distance. 

A city needs all of these, but the mix is key: a city should look like all these things, but if it looks too much like the house I grew up in it's going to have a hard time getting a lot of people into it, because there just won't be space. It needs some midsize housing, and even some urban canyon-like elements, in order to accommodate the sheer number of people who make it up. 

And when we design and plan our cities, we should perhaps nudge it a bit further up this particular page whenever we can--even as we keep a space for single family homes.

Views

We know there are protected views in urban zoning: from St. Pauls in London to various natural vistas in other cities. There are also characteristic views, even if not protected, in many cities, the ordinary things that you can look out, see, and know you are there: the skyscrapers of New York (and many other international cities, but New York in an American context); the rowhouses of Baltimore; the Vegas Strip.

I want today to talk about what makes a view worth noticing as a view, and why these are urban amenities we should cultivate (much of which comes back to placemaking, as in my last post this week). 

1. The Sense of Setting

Many good views are, I would argue, good because they provide a sense of setting: a sense of where you are, where the city around you is, and how they interact.

This can be narrow, as in this London laneway. Now, obviously I am not advocating for this as a protected view! What I am suggesting is that this kind of view, this sort of narrow, twisting street with a midlevel rise, is valuable in terms of letting you know the sort of place you are in and how it operates. It's a much narrower version of the sprawling views that do the same thing:

This is a more classic view, and it certainly contains more things we might consider as views: green space, height differentials, potentially iconic buildings. But I suggest that a good urban design needs both: both characteristic looks at street level as you turn a corner and distinctive large-scale sweeping views like the above. 

Both are, in my view (pun only noticed in retrospect but retained), doing similar work. They are giving you that sense of setting: what kind of place am I in, and how does my current situation fit into it?

2. A Sense of Nature

Part of setting can be but need not be nature, as in the above photo, or the below:

The Thames here certainly gives us a sense of natural setting, even if it's a bit damp and grey.

To be fair, that's been a lot of my experience with the Thames.

But more broadly, I mean that a good view allows you to see how the city interacts with its natural elements: is it constructed around them (as with London and the Thames), or does it perhaps revel in its contrast with them, as in this view of Vancouver:

Beaches and mountains: a classic combination. 

Natural elements in a view alongside manmade ones are the key here, for me. I'm not talking about a view like this:

Lovely mountains, New Mexico, but really just natural. Which is fine! I love nature too! But I see something special in the combination; the tall Vancouverist high-rises just on the edge, or the sprawl of London along the river.

3. What's In A Landmark Anwyay?

Look, I do love an iconic landmark, and I'm not pretending they don't matter here.

St. Pauls views are protected for a reason.

Notre-Dame de Paris was reconstructed for a reason too.

But in a sense, to me, those aren't really views as much as they are landmarks alone: our eye is drawn to the landmark itself, but not to the view as a whole. Mount Rainier can dominate the Seattle skyline (in ways that are totally hard to capture on film, so pardon the lack of picture) but it's so dominant that it doesn't really let the city part breathe. The cathedrals above dominate the picture likewise (though that's somewhat a function of angle in the second, I admit). 

What I think of as a view involves the larger sweep of the thing. The St. Pauls picture is edging towards it (the Millennium Bridge also draws focus, for instance) but I'm really thinking of something like this:

I love Chicago, so I recognize literally everything in here. But no one building or sight stands out to the point of exclusion or focus. Rather, the impression as a whole of the view of Grant Park looking north takes precedence. This is a view that screams Chicago without slamming over it "The Bean" or "Wrigley Field" or any such individual icon.

And that, to me, is the best part of an urban view: it makes it crystal clear where you are and which city it is and where you are in that city--but it doesn't do it by giving you an easy out of a landmark. Or if it's a city like Paris or London that has a long history and a famed skyline, maybe it does--but it has so many that again, they fade against each other.

Also, it's at human level, not an aerial shot.

I think the more cities can cultivate this kind of view, the more I get that sense of place--and the more I want to look at the view all the time.

Placemaking: London

 I was recently going through a recovered drive of photos and thinking about just how often my family (individually and therefore collectively) has been to London, and what it is about the place that draws us there repeatedly from quite far distances (after all, none of the family I'm referring to live in the UK, though we do have more distant relatives there). 

And while I don't have a definitive reason (though perhaps the fact that London won my CityBracket challenge might provide a clue), I wanted to take this space to speculate a bit about what makes London a desirable space--to visit at least, since I have lived there only three months at a stretch and so don't feel like an expert on that topic.

1. Multicentrality

There are certainly places I go to in London repeatedly. It has absolutely no lack of iconic structures:

Above: two of them, though one is trying to hide. 

Some of them, I visit repeatedly, due to my own recurring interests.

Hello Globe!

Others, like Stamford Bridge above, are iconic less for their looks than for what happens in them: Premier League football can happen in lovely locales, but doesn't have to.

The point is that there are many different major draws in London. And that's before we get to the kind of attraction that isn't so much "iconic building" as "place that humans gravitate to for non-architectural reasons."

This way to Experiences indeed, Battersea Power Station.

There are some repeated shots in my various folders, but honestly not as many as you'd think--even between multiple visitors taking the photos--because there are so many places in London worth going to.

Much as I love cities like Seattle and Chicago--genuinely and deeply--the cities are still rather more focused on a single downtown neighborhood than a place like London. You can see it in their transit networks, for a start. The Circle Line in London is...rather larger than the Loop in Chicago. Seattle hasn't even managed that kind of encirclement. And while I'm hardly saying London is unique here (Paris for a start would like a word) I am suggesting that it is a distinctive element of London placemaking that it is indeed multiple places, rather than purely focused on a distinctive downtown.

2. Consistency of Presentation

But the flip side of there being multiple major places in London to experience is that there is a common thread to how they are presented and experienced that makes them all feel like London. That's another part of what sets something like Greater London apart from, say, Chicagoland; suburban Chicagoland does not present itself as Chicago (except for money-related branding purposes) whereas Greater London presents itself much more similarly to the central city. Not identically of course, but similarly:

The roundel is a great example. Not only does it provide a consistent brand experience across the Underground, as above, but Transport for London uses it even in areas where a US city might not even have transit, let alone transit branded and integrated with the urban fabric:

Not that Brockley is actually that far from central London--but socially and economically it is quite suburban. And yet it is visibly integrated into the sense of place that is London through the roundel (and other elements like that Way out signage). 

This is also why the doubledecker red buses matter; they're not physical infrastructure in the same way but they also give that consistent sense of place--both visually and by literally connecting disparate parts of the city.

3. Interconnectedness

That last point is vital: London is an easy place to get around, as well. It matters that the signage at Brockley is for a train station. It means that not only does it look like it's part of London, it is practically part of London too. The place feels like one place because it is. Yes, this is where it matters that I'm seeing this as a tourist, because I'm well aware that there are social and other barriers to actual integration of the city. I'm not positing it as some kind of prelapsarian paradise. I'm suggesting that if I actually want to go from place to place in London, I can. And quite easily (in the US sense--very easily). 

And as the creation of the Elizabeth Line speaks to, that's getting easier. 

Even my least favo(u)rite London transportation mode reveals the interconnectedness of the place. Not only does it provide an additional crossing of the river, but you can see things like the dock above from it. 

There are just so many ways to get around! And they are all branded! So you know where you are, where you can go, and how easily.

And that's without considering the most basic of ways of moving around: foot. The Millennium Bridge (above) is a reminder that you can also just move between parts of London on your own, without too much difficulty, if you have good shoes and a tolerance for whatever weather might be happening.

Sometimes the bridge is even a train station too (thanks Blackfriars). 

All of these things contribute to the sense that London is one big place with a lot going on. And these are all elements that can be built towards by other cities as well: cultivate multiple areas of the city that matter; don't brand them differently or radically distinctly, but treat them all as one coherent whole; and connect them with good transit, good walkability, and a general sense that you can and are meant to actually travel between them.

It's a shame that getting all three of those things at once is often so hard.

Urban Freeways

 I grew up with urban highways, and I have never really lived anywhere without them, so I'm well aware of the costs of urban highways. 

I also understand the impulse to build them.

When you're in a city and all you have is a car, or all you imagine your population will have is a car, then access to a highway feels like a necessity. You want to get places faster, don't you? You want people from elsewhere to come to you, don't you? You want to be integrated into the nationwide system, don't you?

Well, yes, you do. But that of course ignores the negative externalities of urban highways. And while from Seattle to Boston to Chicago to Rochester to the Quad Cities, I've never actually gotten away from them, I want to expand on why I wish I could.

1. Making Pleasant Spaces Unpleasant

A highway is a fine place for driving, usually. But underneath or around a highway is not a pleasant place for people.

That's usually fine in the middle of rural areas where there aren't many people to experience the unpleasantness, and those who are there generally have wide open non-freeway spaces to escape into.

It's less fine in an urban setting where the literal point is to have a lot of people.

It's even less fine when the freeway is not only urban but taking up prime urban real estate, places you should want people congregating. Places that, because of the positive aggregate effects of density, would be really pleasant if there weren't, you know, a freeway overhead.

I'm going to pick on Milwaukee here for the paradoxical reason that they've done about as well as I think you can do with an urban downtown freeway. The area around the Public Market is great. But it would be infinitely better without a literal freeway just above you.

They've used this space very inventively, and it's nicely decorated, and it's a space I want to spend time in when I'm there.

It's also impossible to pretend you aren't actually directly beneath a huge multilane freeway deck.

This is a space that is pleasant, and should be more pleasant, but the existence of the urban freeway depresses its excellence. 

2. Disconnecting Cities

The  Milwaukee Public Market is the best case in some ways because it is made less pleasant by the freeway but at least you can walk under the freeway. In many places, the freeway is an actual barrier, cut across only by a few overpasses or literally nothing.

Here in Louisville, yes, I'm taking the photo from an overpass. But look: no one is going to cross this in any direction down there. And while there are nice trees implying that you're in a rural area where you wouldn't need or want to cross, that's not actually the case. Behind those trees are city. If there were no highway, that city could connect across (but it doesn't, of course).

Even in some cases where the main freeway is elevated, like here in Toronto, the Gardiner Expressway is accompanied by a big surface road, which breaks up the continuity of pedestrian or even just street-level non-car transportation. This is what Alaska Way is (or at least was) with the viaduct and the surface street both blocking Seattle's waterfront when I was growing up.

There are more vile examples of redlining and the destruction of whole neighborhoods by urban freeways, but even when that didn't happen freeways tend to break apart a city.

Even when there is legally a sidewalk, there isn't necessarily connectivity, Boston. This is why I say Milwaukee is the best version here: it's made less pleasant, but they at least put a there there.

3. Noise

All of this is about the physical built environment. Now let's talk about there being cars going 55-75 mph at all times on a freeway. 

This guy is quiet when parked, but not when moving.

The tires, the engines, the roar of traffic; freeways are loud. And if the cars aren't moving, that has other problems: gas fumes, to start, not to mention the removal of the supposed benefit of speed.

Basically this: almost every city I like has urban freeways but I'd like them a lot better without.

Hmmm, maybe there's a reason Vancouver and London, with their lack of (downtown) freeways did so well in my CityBracket...after all, no one wants to live next to a freeway.

Why Build Metros?

 This article on how metros divert trips from cars struck a nerve with me. Of course, removing cars is not the point; the point is that removing cars is necessary to larger issues (like the green energy transition that the article is about, or like allowing for better, more walkable cities). But I think it's worth reminding ourselves of what it is that metros do so well.

1. Space Available

A metro frees up surface space in two different ways. The first is the most obvious: the metro itself is not on the surface. That means it produces transit capacity that does not demand surface space (well, besides station space, and even that can be largely off the surface). 

These people are in a station, but they are not on the surface either.

This goes even for things like the Chicago El or Vancouver SkyTrain that are not below the surface. 

Pictured: a highly efficient way to move people off the surface of the street.

The second way a metro produces space is the way that the article I linked to brings up: it takes cars off the road and thus reduces the need to use surface space for other modes, as well as for itself.

None of the people in this train are in a car, obviously.

Trains like the above are why the Boston metro area can give up street space to bicycle lanes (well, that and the fact that bike lanes are actually very efficient people-movers themselves, but it certainly makes the political argument easier).

2. Non-Linear Transportation Options

Of course I don't mean this literally: a metro does indeed run in a line. Rather, I mean that a metro is not restricted to the existing linear layout of the city in which it is built, and can connect areas that are not easily connected (or connected at all).

Metro maps, like this MBTA map, are often schematic precisely because they don't model onto the existing street network easily.

And it's a lot harder to walk or drive to the airport here than to take transit.

Metros thus allow for a more integrated and effective plan of city transportation than streets alone can.

3. Centralized Development

A metro also provides a very clear opportunity for transit-oriented development and clear spaces for where development is happening and where it will happen in the future.

This development in Somerville, MA is intimately connected to the Green Line expansion there; no expansion, likely no development.

Likewise, Canary Wharf and its surroundings were revitalized along with the deployment of the Docklands Light Railway.

If you're the sort of pedant who is pointing out in your head that both of those are technically light rail masquerading as and integrating in with proper metro, first of all welcome, this is a safe space, and second of all how about the very development of Central London itself, both a driver of and a result of the origination of metro systems in 1863 and following? Not to mention the towns of Metroland built up by service from the original metro, the Metropolitan Line. 

Metros unlock the potential of so many places. Not only do they help us get to where we need to be in terms of energy use and car dis-use, but they actively make cities better.

Maybe we could stand to build and expand a few more.

Bike Infrastructure as Virtuous Cycle

 This article about bikes in Cambridge, MA suggests an unsurprising result: making it easier to bike places makes more people bike.

But while this is obvious, it is also massively controversial, as many efforts to make it easier to bike are routinely "refuted" by pointing out that few people bike anywhere right now.

The Catch-22 should be obvious, but let's try to unpack it here.

1. The Easier The Better

Look, I love biking, but I didn't start actually commuting by bike, transporting my children by bike, or doing other errands--I wasn't on my bike often--before I got an e-bike.

That's because with the current infrastructure where I live, here in the QCA, and with my current levels of fitness, and with the weather, and so on and so forth, it was hard to bike consistently or for any serious purpose. I know this because I had in fact commuted by bike before, in Seattle, without an e-bike. But the activation energy here in the QCA was higher than that, until I got the e-bike.

Not everyone needs an e-bike. The e-bike here is an example: biking needs to be a certain kind of easy to actually happen. For me that was e-bike here, but it was better bike lanes (and worse car options) back in Seattle. Better infrastructure will make it easier for everyone to bike, and that will make people do it.

2. Connections Connect

Again, we are explaining the obvious, but a connected set of lanes and trails will make it easier to get from place to place. 

A bike lane or trail that goes somewhere will help more than a bike trail that just exists like the one above. Even if you have an e-bike, or calm traffic, or some kind of other easiness that gets you on the bike, you want that to translate to actually using the bike frequently or regularly. And for that, having more infrastructure isn't just a matter of making biking easier; it's making biking effective. 

So building infrastructure creates connections that weren't there before. Especially for bikes, where there are chances that the connection may not be actually bikeable (say, if it's on a freeway or a high-speed road with minimal shoulder) or only bikeable if you're brave or desperate, built connections are critical to making biking not just easier but possible.

3. The Power of Crowds

Biking is also something people are more likely to do if they see others do it, or know others are doing it. So better bike infrastructure also draws in people who may not have been its first customers, but are still part of the change.

Bikeshare can help with this (this mostly empty bikeshare in Toronto implies that people are using the bikes). But it's really visible infrastructure with people biking on it that brings others in.

The host of bicycles at Sloterdijk makes a more compelling argument for biking in Amsterdam than any bikeshare could.

Another Amsterdam street scene, just to pound the point home.

Seeing others use bikes is the best way to get a bike culture going. Arguably, it's the only way. And better bike infrastructure employs points 1 & 2 above to make point 3 happen. Of course there's a virtuous cycle at play here: once people bike, you can no longer deny that they will.