Smaller Public Art

 It's been a while since I talked about public art, but since it's an important topic about what makes cities both distinct and livable, I wanted to revisit it: but this time with an emphasis not on big elaborate set-pieces, but on the smaller touches that can make a city beautiful.

1. Idiosyncrasy

I love little pieces that make the city seem like it has a personality:

This piece in the Montréal subway isn't huge; it's easy to miss. But when you notice it, it makes that station stand out a little bit, and makes Montréal as a whole feel a little more lived in, a little more human.

Or look at this little light-up rainbow ribbon in the Village in Toronto. It's not something huge or permanent; but it does give the neighborhood personality.

These little touches make a place feel different, but not foreign (despite, I suppose, these literally being foreign to me, as Canadian cities). They make it feel like a place people like enough to make their own.

2. Texture

Now, individually these produce this sense of idiosyncrasy--but collectively, in large numbers, they can create a larger texture to the city that makes all of it (even the bits without public art) feel more human-scaled.

Sometimes that's practical in terms of actual use, like these little steps in the Boston metro area that people can sit on and such, but often it's just a sense of place.

Things like fountains are common as an example of this kind of low-stakes creation of distinctive spaces--though not all of them have this many dog statues, Toronto!

3. Public Doesn't Necessarily Mean Government-Funded

Of course, not all "public" art in the sense of art that makes the city feel distinct is "public" in the sense of funded by the government, whether directly or by things like a "percent for art" program. 

Graffiti is the most obvious example of this: a culture that accepts or even promotes graffiti in certain locations looks different than one that scrubs every instance of it off as soon as possible.

A little free library may be a less contentious example. But the point is that encouraging this kind of smaller-scale, non-monumental public art can make a city feel special. 

And having places that feel like distinct places is a key part of urbanism, just as much as housing or transportation.

Heights and Streets

 Well, since there seems to be some further chatter about optimal density in the air, this seems like as good a time as any to address some thoughts I've been having regarding streetscapes and density, particularly in terms of height. 

After all, height is a key to density in urban space: rowhouses are only so dense if they are still one story (and you can get a lot more density from buildings further apart if they're taller as well). But also density is key to density: that spacing is also critical. So what works?

1. Consistency is Key

One of the elements that I think the article I linked above does a really good job with is the idea that we're not necessarily talking about every building being the same size or shape (that's a different kind of urban form anyway), but we are talking about the default background of the city being consistent--and consistently dense.

The far side of this street in Amsterdam, for instance, is pretty much the same design (though you can definitely tell where each building starts and ends from coloration and decorative details) but the close side has clearer variation (though I'm sorry about the photo, which did not capture that as well as perhaps it might). The general overall sense of the built environment here is consistent though, on both sides of the street, even if there is more color and material variation on the closer side.

Likewise, this Parisian street scene has more variation (it's not literally all the same height) but a general consistency of size, if not appearance: it's all in the 3-6 story range. Nothing is short (no single family homes) and nothing is huge (no 8+ story buildings standing out). 

That consistency is key both for a coherent urban form and for efficient use of land.

This is especially true if you have narrower streets, as in the above London picture--which again showcases how consistency of size does not have to mean uniformity of building material or appearance.

You can have an interesting, varied city without having to radically alter heights--although I do want to emphasize that I quite like the left side of the street in that first Amsterdam picture too. There's nothing wrong with attractive consistency in appearance as well!

2. Width and Spacing Matter Too

Relatedly, the width of the street and the spacing between houses/apartments/buildings/etc. is also key to effective and consistent density.

Gazing across the Thames at St. Paul's Cathedral we have a natural experiment in heights: due to regulations of St. Pauls views, none of the buildings in front of it can be taller than it, or even rival it. But they're sitting on extremely premium land in the City and adjacent to it (the City of London, that is, the square mile at its heart, not just Greater London). So they want to get maximum value out of their parcels--which means that you can see very little space between the buildings.

That closeness can be key to density in an overall urban setting.

Take this shot across Chicago. Ignore for the moment the truly high-flying towers of the dense downtown core, and look at the overall urban fabric: most of the green is deliberate parks, not open space between apartments except where there are a few overdense apartment blocks surrounded by greenery--itself an intentional choice. By and large when you look at a dense, urbanist urban form (and Chicago does pretty well on this by US standards) you see this kind of close together, 3-6 story "midrise" apartment/condo construction.

That doesn't mean that your close together buildings can't have flair: I have concerns about the accessibility to people like my parents of apartments like the above, in Montréal, but they're distinctive and dense at the same time. And they even have a setback from the road to allow for the staircase and the front yard--though it helps that the street here is not particularly wide by North American standards.

To me, the greatest flaw in neighborhoods like Wallingford in Seattle (above), is the combined failure of these two elements: the street is too dang wide and while you can see one little apartment behind the grocery store in the above picture (and another is across the street to the right), the vast majority of what you see is separated single-family housing.

Of course we need to have that in the mix as well. But combining the spaces between houses with the lack of consistent height in the buildings we do have and the width of the roads...they collectively undermine the effective density of the city overall even if each individual plot has something not too bad on it.

3. Background and Variation

Again, the major point of the linked article I want to reinforce and highlight is that we're talking about the basic background of a city. There's plenty of space for variation, be it to parks and other open spaces, to single-family homes, or to high-rises.

This nice midrise part of Croydon is just a short walk from this open space (a park):

The idea isn't to banish parks and open space, but to make them deliberate and communal, rather than haphazardly attached to whatever property you individually happen to possess or occupy.

Likewise, this reasonably dense (if very wide in the street!) section of Chicago is just minutes from these high-rises:

So again, the idea isn't to say "only midrise housing please, get rid of the bigger stuff."

I've been pretty open on this blog about my love for Vancouver-style urbanism, and the mix of high-rise and mid-rise there is one of my favorite elements, for instance. 

It's really about making sure that the basic unit of a dense urban city isn't trying to somehow be detached single-family homes set against a wide four-lanes-plus-parking street. That is an inherently undense form, no matter how much you vary it with high-rises. Those should exist (at least the homes--the roads are perhaps a different question) but they should exist as a variation to a consistent urban emphasis on those 3-6 story buildings that allow for a mixture of density and openness that allows a city to actually house its residents.

Most of the time: it's not like Amsterdam doesn't have (like the whole West doesn't have) a housing crisis. But it's certainly a better start than just single family homes like a typical US design.

How Late is Late? How Early is Early?

 One thing that I constantly find myself thinking when I visit larger cities than the QCA is that things are just open later.

Now, that's not always true. I've visited places where the only coffee shop closes at noon, and where you'll be lucky to get a dinner at 9 pm. The QCA does a lot better than that! But transit (such as it is) ends before my internal clock says dinnertime is over, and grocery shopping after 9 or 10 is a matter mostly of Walmarts. 

Conversely, you have places like New York, branded as "the city that never sleeps," where the trains run overnight and supposedly you can get anything anytime. But most cities aren't like that either: they do have a time when things are shut down, whether for people to sleep, for maintenance to happen, to save costs, or just because.

So how late is late and how early is early? Or, what are some benefits and drawbacks of when things are and aren't open?

1. Varieties of Schedule

One of the more legitimate critiques, in my mind, of 15 minute cities is that they may only be 15 minutes for some people--usually privileged and/or wealthy--who have the chance to take advantage of what they offer in the timeframes when it's available. If I'm working third shift, or rushing to get kids home and to bed, or anything that moves me off a "standard" time schedule, a 15 minute city may not be one at all.

And that goes for all cities too--there are people with all kinds of schedules in the day, and an ideal city should accommodate them all.

This 24 hour fruit stall in Montréal is great for someone (anyone) who needs fruit, whenever that may be. You don't need to make it when the grocery store is open, because it always is.

This market in Croydon requires you to be there at a particular time on a particular day. 

Now, there are benefits to both: the Croydon market will feel like an experience, and that can be a great way to organize a day or a week, and can serve as a relief from everyday pressures.

This Way Experiences indeed.

And the 24/7 shop may have create noise or light at times others would prefer to sleep, or traffic when it's inconvenient. 

But overall, having flexible and varied times (whether they're 24/7 or not) that amenities and necessities are available is a net positive for a city, because there are always people who need the flexibility.

2. Downtime Needed

That said, not everything does need to be 24/7.

The NYC subway is famously one of the only ones in the world that runs 24/7, and there are legitimate critiques of that, and reasons that other subways don't. Basically it comes down to this: almost every system (transit, business, a human body) requires downtime.

And as we know with our sidewalks even, if you don't schedule maintenance it may schedule itself for you.

And a lot of stations are pretty empty at night: is it really a good use of time, energy, and money to keep them all open and staffed?

That goes even more for a business, rather than a public good like transit.

3. Both? Both Is Good

The real key is that good urbanism does or should require both some things that are available later or earlier than a standard 9-5 schedule allows for and available downtime and maintenance on the system. I think of London's Night Bus system as a good model: it allows for transit all night, even if the Tube isn't running the whole time.

In fact, buses are usually the answer for transit issues like this, since they're more flexible than trains (hello Toronto buses!).

For businesses, a good rule of thumb to me is that the city should be encouraging late hours, but not necessarily mandating them: if the rest of the city's design encourages people to operate all day, so will businesses unless they're not allowed.

That means encouraging density (more people to use the businesses), providing transit (allowing people to move themselves around to get to the businesses), keeping the city inviting (lighting and such matter a lot at night, unsurprisingly!) and getting out of the way (don't make it hard for businesses to get permission to be open late).

This Parisian street lighting is not invasive, but it invites me into the space even in the dark.

So how late is late? As late as you need. And (even though I'm a night owl) the same goes for early. Cities should enable both--with reasonable reductions in services when people aren't as frequently present, but without shutting down with the sun.

The Good and Bad of Houses

 So as I mentioned in my last post, there's a bit of a blind spot to this blog sometimes, which is that while urbanism is about how people live and move in their cities, I tend to focus more on move than live.

I'm not going to fix that with one post and I'm not going to try. But I do want to talk a bit both about how I see the value in the urban form that is most commonly idealized in the US (the single-family detached house) and how I see it as a limiting factor--and that the tension between those two can be, and should be, mitigated to at least some extent by design choices.

This is particularly important if we're going to get the kind of density we need both for urban transportation to work well and to accommodate all the people who want to live in our cities, let alone if we have the idea of something like a 15-minute city in the back of our minds.

1. Why Houses Rule

Look, I have lived most of my life in a single-family detached house and I'm not going to pretend I don't see the appeal.

There's privacy (see the wall?). There's beauty (OK, I don't love the house color myself but look at those trees!). There's ample space (that house has so many bedrooms!). There's fairly efficient design given the space (it's pretty easy to heat and cool because of its compact nature, if done right). 

This is a good house to live in and a nice place to make your home.

You can have space you make your own; you hear relatively little from neighbors or street noise; you can park cars, play basketball, grill out, do whatever your heart desires in your own space.

Of course lots of people want and like these. It'd be stranger if they didn't, especially as we cannibalize and remove public spaces that might be venues for some of that personal expression and social activity.

2. Why Apartments Rule--or the Limiting Factors of Houses

What we have, in a sense, is a tragedy of the commons. Because single-family detached homes are great for the people living in them. But too many of them in one spot tends to bring a whole series of problems--not least that all those houses tend not to actually be full of families and so the space per person goes way up.

That building above? It's right next to an apartment building. I say this to make clear that you don't need to build only one type of housing in an area. It's not like joinery, where a certain cut only goes in with another cut. It's more like LEGO: you can stick whatever the heck you want next to each other and it works within some basic constraints.

But we often build out, especially in the US, through zoning that emphasizes or even allows only a single kind of home, and then act surprised when too much of that kind of home produces problems.

Gaze out into the fringes of Chicago, where everything becomes a single family home...

If every house is this big, every house is great for all the things listed in #1. But also every house has some limitations too:

a) Cost 

That house sold for over a million dollars. Not everyone can afford this (obviously).

b) Space

As mentioned above, that house is big. How many people are actually living in it? How many per square foot? How much space does that take to house your population? Some of these houses can be reconfigured to fit more than one family, but that's usually inefficient and awkward especially compared to purpose-built multi-family housing. I lived in one in Rochester, NY; I know from personal experience.

c) Size

The flip side: if I have a family over a certain size, I need a bigger house.

d) Flexibility

Due to the above, this house doesn't flip easily, it doesn't rent cheaply or easily (if it were even rented), and it doesn't provide much option for younger families coming up the housing ladder or elderly families downsizing. 

All of the above are things apartments and condominiums do a lot better. They cost a lot to build but recoup that by spreading costs over a lot more people. They can be carved up to allow more and less space in various configurations much more easily than a house (and can be built with multiple options in advance, even). They  allow families to move in and out of an area, or to find larger or smaller space, much more easily, and with a lot less friction than constantly buying and selling real estate.

And that's not even getting into the fact that it's rare for houses to have street-level retail, which pushes buying and selling into their own designated zones and feeds both car dependency and lack of options in a neighborhood.

3. Resolving Tension

The basic point of how to resolve this tension is of course to permit multiple zoning options. If you don't have to build single-family, someone will take a chance on other options. But it goes beyond that. We need to make apartments and condos attractive to people, not just force them into them.

What does that mean?

It might mean having a greater variety of apartment/condo options on the market: not just studios and 1-bedrooms that assume singles and couples, but more 3-4 bedroom options as well that allow people to be part of apartment or condo living while having children, even multiple children, and space.

It might mean using some of that space savings not just on more housing, but on housing-associated amenities, like this park in Toronto that's surrounded by high-rise condo/apartment living (and an urban highway, but sssh!).

It might mean emphasizing those unique elements of apartment-heavy streets, like the street-level retail and the attendant Jane-Jacobs-style eyes on the street, to drive home the benefits of that urban fabric.

It might mean better upkeep of social housing and other high-rise options that have a bad reputation so that people don't associate them with negatives as much.

There's a lot of things it means. But fundamentally, it means remembering that since we can't all have single-family detached homes and all the other things that make cities great, we have to make it appealing to live in other ways--and it can be. 

We can't do that by denying that single family homes are great. We do it by making the alternative just as great or better.

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.

Compelling Scenes

I've been thinking a lot about what makes me want to take a picture of something urbanist--whether while I'm traveling or just here in the QCA--and I have some principles in mind about what makes a streetscape or a scene compelling to the viewing eye. At least mine. I suppose others might be differently compelled.

1. Profusions and Absences

One of the most striking elements of a streetscene is whether there is anything present in excess of expectation or anything that might be expected that isn't there. Think about the empty streets or the appearance of dolphins during the heights of the lockdowns over Covid-19. It doesn't have to be a pandemic to bring this about. Ordinary everyday things in one place can seem like a profusion or an absence to a different eye.

The bikes in this Amsterdam street scene are normal for Amsterdam. But they're striking to an American visitor.

So striking, indeed, that I took several such shots.

This is just an ordinary commuting day in Amsterdam, but not for me. 

Absences can operate similarly. 

This isn't really "urbanist" per se, except insofar as the concentration of museums in London is a function of urbanist principles themselves, but the lack of an exhibition in this hall of the Tate Modern was notable to me--so I took a picture.

2. Uniqueness and Typicality

Of course, the Amsterdam bikes above are also proof of another principle: it makes a good scene when you see something that seems typical of or unique to a particular place or environment. Amsterdam (and the Netherlands in general) is known for bikes, and biking culture, so the bike parking reinforces or typifies that.

This is part of why iconic monuments (as Notre-Dame de Paris, above) make for good photos. But also it helps if this uniqueness applies not just to the place (there is only the one Notre-Dame, as memorialized in one of my favorite video game series) but to the angle or other elements of the picture: this picture of the still-rebuilding Notre-Dame feels more significant to me than this one of the stereotypical view of the Eiffel Tower.

I was the only one photographing Notre-Dame from that angle; thousands of others were photographing the Eiffel Tower at the same moment.

This goes for urbanist scenes as well as for distinctive architecture.

This double-decker red bus is a transport of delight, and very distinctive.

So too is the above older-style Tube train. But because the bus has more distinctive elements in the photo to my trip (the specific 172 to Aldwych, the background, etc.) it feels more meaningful; the Tube train photo was fun to get but could be almost anywhere by almost anyone at almost any time.

3. Beauty in Composition

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that all the other elements that ordinarily make any art compelling can apply here as well: color, light, shade, angle, etc. And they can come in surprising ways to an urbanist view, compounding the urbanist elements in a scene:

I don't usually consider the old brutalist dorms of the University of Washington compelling, but the trees, the lighting, and the interplay of cement and nature practically forced me to stop and take this picture. And the fact that they highlight the density around UW didn't hurt.

Likewise, the train to the airport was the focus of my attention when I snapped this photo in Toronto, but the composition of trees in front, train in the midground, and dense but colorful urban apartments/condos in the background contributed to why this photo, and not any other.

Was all of this an excuse to just share some photos that I liked that I took? Certainly! But I think these principles are also useful for considering what to photograph and why going forward--and maybe for you too to consider when you snap your own urbanist photographs wherever you may go.

True Costs of Living

 The last section in this article on Tacoma made me think more about how cost of living estimates often misstate the "real" cost of living in a place.

Specifically, it made me think about how the "fifteen minute city" (which is the ostensible topic of the article as a whole) is fundamentally about reducing cost of living in invisible or semi-visible ways.

1. Commutes

The most obvious (and semi-visible) way in which a 15-minute city reduces costs of living is by reducing how far the average person has to commute. This is a cost in time (of course) but also a cost in, well, cost: with rare exceptions, the further you have to commute, the more you have to pay, whether in train fare, gas, or wear and tear on vehicles. Obviously these scale differently and may vary on the particular fare structure of a system or the difference in available routings, but at the very least shorter trips are not usually more expensive than long ones, and often much cheaper--even before you factor in lost time.

And of course you should do that. That time is valuable.

The other way in which a 15-minute city reduces commute costs is the one we briefly talked about with congestion charges: even if you yourself still work more than 15 minutes away, the more of your neighbors who work less, the less traffic you face, and the easier your commute is even if it stays the same distance.

If you live in the Loop, you don't need to go as far--but if you don't, it's still better for you to have your neighbors not also commuting to the Loop with you.

This doesn't change a traditional cost of living calculation, because the cost of moving a given distance (held steady to compare) doesn't necessarily change. But if you can reduce the distance you're commuting or increase the speed, the act of commuting becomes less costly, even if the per mile cost of a standardized commute doesn't.

2. Maintenance and Readiness

Another big cost of living that is hard to calculate changes in is the cost of needing to be ready to use multiple forms of transit, most notably the number of cars your household might need. Again, a traditional cost of living calculator is likely to give you the cost of a car, or of gas, or of both, held steady to make the comparison apples to apples. But a good 15-minute city reduces the need for an apple at all: if you can not have the car, then it doesn't matter if the car is more or less expensive to own or operate. Or if you can one car instead of two, or a fuel-efficient car instead of a behemoth, or any other way of reducing that car cost.

Even in semi-suburban Indiana, the bus is the cheaper option if you can use it.

This even goes for transit costs as well: if I can walk places, I don't need to expect to pay as much for transit. If I can pay by the trip because I'm using transit less rather than buying a monthly pass, my costs go down. If I can buy a single monthly pass instead of cobbling together three rides on three separate transit agencies because they weren't designed to operate together....you get the picture.

Good, integrated urban design means you don't need to have a car every day, which might mean you don't even need to keep a car in readiness for most days, which can create a virtuous cycle of cheapness without changing the actual cost of a car at all.

And don't get me started on the cost of maintaining and storing those vehicles--which is a separate cost not usually calculated in CoL calculations but definitely exists.

3. Time Is Money

I don't mean this in the above sense that saving time means saving money because your time is valuable, though that's true.

I mean that saving time in the rest of your life allows you the time to save money in it as well. Less takeout because you have time to cook; fewer doctors' visits because you have time to exercise (or build it into active lifestyles); less stress because you have the time to do things you enjoy or to make sure you get done the things you were squeezing out of your life.

If you have the time to sit here, you have the time not to worry about sitting here, and you'll feel better about yourself and your life.

So the cost of living can't just be calculated by looking at a basket of goods and comparing their prices (though that is certainly a useful exercise). Rather, it has to include what the city around you actually allows you to do--and how much of that basket (at what price point) you're actually using.