I find many parallels between the work i do as a product manager and that of a urban designer. Eventually, it is about what to build for who and for which purposes - under a heavy constraint of resources and time. Obviously, the scale at which an urban designer operates and the dimensions of the problem is vastly more significant as compared to a petty product manager like me.
Wanting to read up more on urban design, with a very hopeful vision of working in this field sometime in the future, i mined google for introductory books on urban design. And after having made an unsuccessful attempt to reading the very popular The Rise and Fall of Great American Cities, i have stumbled on a book which makes for a fine introduction to the world of urban design.
The book lays out very well some first principles of urban design, the most important of which is - what makes people happy in a city? The author dedicates a lengthy introductory chapter just to discuss this peculiar matter which is at the core of all urban design. And fair enough, considering this is a very fuzzy subject and some of the observations are strikingly counter-intuitive. For example, a city dweller would gladly buy a house with a beautiful view even if that is a long commute away from work, with the assumption that a good house, a nice view and a less noisy neighborhood will more than compensate for the long commute. But extensive research shows the 'goodness' brought upon by the house and the view recede steeply whereas the pain from the commute is perpetual. This is insightful, but yet most city dwellers would continue to make sub-optimal decisions because the immediate returns are alluring. Not only the dwellers, but city planners have run with similar assumptions and designed sprawling, spread-out cities (which the author calls dispersed cities) resulting in lonely suburbs, higher crime rates, long commutes filled with road rage, and lifestyle diseases like hyper tension and diabetes.
Misplaced assumptions around what citizens need is not the only reason why basically most cities make people sad. Vested interests have played a major role and the book talks very well about it. It was surprising for me to learn that car and tire companies lobbied hard to increase the width of roads, increase the speed limits, de-commission street cars and introduce legislations which would encourage city dwellers to purchase a house in the suburbs - all this to increase car sales. But what it did is change the shape and the very definition of streets - from being a medium of transport to being meant only for cars. Streets, roadside curbs and even billboards are now designed around cars and their speed, not around humans. Pedestrians have been (literally) driven into small pavements and distances are no longer walkable - which is why you would see Americans using their car even for a small pleasure like buying ice cream. Jane Jacobs talks in detail about how this reduced travel by foot leaves no space for accidental meetings and a low intensity interaction between neighbors (like a wave or a handshake). This in turn reduces the number of eye balls on the street and increase the crime rates in the neighborhood. I noticed this first hand while on an internship in Kuwait. Most of the cities in the middle east are modelled on the big North American cities meant for cars, and it is exhausting and dreary to even walk to a nearby grocery shop, forget about chancing upon a cute café or a bookstore.
This proliferation of cars and realignment of cities to accommodate them has resulted in 'urban sprawl' - essentially staying farther away and travelling longer to work. It goes back to the idea of a quaint house in suburb being the idealized image of home. A city dweller would go to any extent to have that - including travelling 2 stressful hours everyday, spending less time with family, meeting friends less often because they stay far etc. But the one of the biggest drawbacks of staying in such a sprawl is a reduced chance of low intensity, casual contacts with people in your neighborhood. These go a long way in creating a feeling of 'belonging' to a community, which is one the primary, often unarticulated, needs of humans.
These and many are the perils that plague the North American cities. Indian cities, i feel, are a mish mash of some residue from pre-colonial structure of the cities, good and bad British additions, socialistic ideals of post-independence urban planning, and the current new zeal of trying to replicate Shanghai. Which is why in the city of Bangalore you'd simultaneously find small crisscrossing lanes of Malleswaram (amazing for walking around and starting a conversation, but not for car traffic), Gulmohar lined wider streets around IISc, the township like structure of the HAL colony, and the mix of dust, glass buildings and diesel smoke that is Bellandur. But more on the perils and fixes on Indian cities on a separate blog post!
Many people have worked to solve the problem of how to improve cities - like the famous Danish urban designer Jan Gehl (whose book Cities for People i have been trying to get my hands on for the longest time). The author talks about their work, but more importantly he talks about what it would mean by fixing - he defines it in 3 major dimensions: being closer, improving conviviality and enhancing mobility. The key theme is to keep the basic tenets of what makes humans happy as the core of the solution. There is no size fits all solution, obviously. So i would keep myself from talking about what other cities have done and a much more complex problem - what will work for India cities. Suffice to say, it goes back to the product lens - starting from the basic principles on who is the city meant for and what is the purpose of the city and improvise!
Next book in line around urban design - Walkable City.
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