What is a human city?

Five Guiding Principles for Human Cities

A human city consists of physical and social infrastructure; it is neither one without the other, but two parts of a whole that are mutually supportive and reinforcing. It provides functional infrastructure that fulfill basic human needs for shelter, food, and livelihood. It also enables the fulfillment of higher order needs such as belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

A human city achieves a balance between the Four Pillars of Sustainability. It provides environmental protection to ensure that natural resources can be enjoyed for future generations to come. It supports economic vitality by providing healthy levels of production and growth to ensure material comfort in both formal government-sanctioned and informal settings. It strives for social equity in which all members of society have the same access to basic needs, as well as their aspirations for purpose and achievement. Lastly, the human city nurtures cultural continuity and recognizes diverse histories, preferences, and behaviors that affect how we relate to place and space.

How does one achieve the human city? It is both a humanistic and technological undertaking with an unfinished ending as long as we continue to write the story of human history. The human city is not a problem to solve or to be built once and left alone. It is kept alive and maintained by the collective contributions of people.

The timeline for the human city extends beyond a single election cycle, a developer request for proposal, or a comprehensive planning document. The human city is expected to outlast any generation; it embodies the art form of building spaces and places that exist for as long as humans inhabit the earth.

The human city can be identified by Five Guiding Principles:

#1: Human Scale: Build cities for people

The invention of the automobile has changed the way we move through and relate to cities. An obsession with speed and modernity has made the urban form of cities, especially in the United States, too unwieldy, distances too great to explore by foot at a leisurely pace, to hold an audible conversation with our neighbors, or interact with people we encounter on the street. The current landscape of vast highways, endless skyscrapers, and cordoned off areas of privatized consumption has stripped away our sense of humanity and what it means to have a human experience of the city. At its worse, it has disenfranchised an entire generation of designers, engineers, architects, and planners who believe that the purpose of their profession is to enact and reinforce codes that perpetuate these urban forms.

It’s time to build and reclaim cities for people to be experienced at a human scale. Successful public spaces reinforce Ray Oldenburg’s concept of “third places” as unique and separate from spaces of work and the home, which encourage social mixing, expression, and exposure to diversity.

Too many megacity projects are focused on technological gadgets without understanding how societies adapt and use technology to complement human needs. Cities have a simple mandate: they are made for and by people to live. Technology alone does not make a human city; it needs to be coupled with an intuitive understanding of place and how people inhabit place.

#2: Radical Inclusion: Embrace the periphery

Community “bottom up” engagement has become a widely-used term de-coupled from a vigorous understanding of what it means to practice community engagement in a responsible and ethical manner. Some employ community engagement as a means for driving a project forward regardless of community feedback, to avoid litigation, or as a defense against claims of technocratic impulses. This is not community engagement. When the term becomes misused as to dilute its efficacy and reward processes that are not participatory, or may be detrimental to the community, the idea loses its power and significance.

Community engagement can be transformative. We should engage people not because we have to, but because we want to and because we believe in achieving better outcomes as a result. Radical Inclusion is part of that vision: it is about having the foresight and humility to be adaptable to views and methods that you may not have considered, being open to new ways to inform the project, and learning to involve diverse stakeholders in a meaningful way.

Many people and institutions find themselves in a position of initiating or providing technical assistance. In this role, it can be seductive to believe that the world will fall apart without your efforts, drive, and ambition. It can be difficult, terrifying even, admit that even if you walked away, the world will continue to sustain itself with the collective efforts of many other people who have called their communities their home long before you took an interest. That is just the way it is. A project is simply not about you — it has never been — and if you believe otherwise, then you are not practicing Radical Inclusion.

To practice Radical Inclusion, you can suggest approaches that a community can adapt for the purpose of advocating for themselves. You could provide the community with a wider platform to amplify their efforts so that they will benefit from additional resources when you leave.

#3: Existing Knowledge: Seek new from the old

Places consist of layers of history, social networks, culture, and advocacy that have existed before you enter a site or community. Many things may be new and unfamiliar, and it can be overwhelming to grasp context. Who do you talk to? Who is the “community”? Are these the right questions to ask?

Some communities have been approached many times with offers of technical help or assistance. Sometimes these offers require more resources to train those who offered help, exceeding the amount of assistance received, making future requests for technical assistance more likely to be viewed with skepticism. However, this can also be an opportunity to provide technical support that can help the community actualize the goals that they have identified. Along the way, you may pave the way for future members of your institution to develop stronger, long-term relationships with the community.

To work effectively, seek inspiration from past stores of knowledge. Listen carefully, take an inventory of what you know and what you don’t know, and aim to come from a place of inquiry. Find out how things have been done in the community over time: what has been tried, what failed, and why it failed. Open yourself to a broader universe of possibilities that are part of the whole. If you do not see the whole picture, you may miss out on a critical piece.

#4: Transdisciplinary Mindset: Work across disciplines

Cities are complex systems that call for more than one approach and method. One discipline cannot hold the keys to all possible knowledge about the human experience. Instead, we should seek to form transdisciplinary teams of engineers, artists, designers, anthropologists who can bring their unique frameworks but remain open to new ways of approaching problems and borrowing from the best of each field that proves relevant for the task at hand. While we should bring the expertise of our discipline to transdisciplinary teams, ultimately the magic happens when we dissolve the siloes of a traditional discipline and see the possibilities of combining methods.

Collaboration, active listening, and trust are necessary to achieve a transdisciplinary mindset. It is first necessary to develop a common language that is informed by values: What do you believe a city should be? Who should the city serve? All members of the team should have the same understanding of community needs and a foundation of history and context.

The team should also develop a manifesto for how to work together. Strong teams embody a diversity of opinions and approaches, which is necessary to address the complex urban problems that we face.

#5: Scale and Intentions: There is no single prescription

Modern infrastructure development tends to follow a predictable timeline. First, a team of experts decides to build a project. They conduct a lengthy review process and propose several alternatives for public comment. The project may be tweaked until the team arrives at a single prescription for the project. Barring significant protest or lack of funds, the project is built. Infrastructure, once it is built, has a minimum lifespan of fifty years. If it is a mistake, an entire generation has to suffer its consequences.

A human city acknowledges a range of scales and intentions beyond the single prescription model. Projects can involve a single block or corner, while a medium-scale project may involve a neighborhood park or a multifunctional street. An extra-large project may involve an entire city district.

The intention of the project depends on longevity and resources. Interventions or experiments are temporary, lasting no longer than a moment or a few hours. Its purpose is to spark conversation about alternative uses of space without requiring significant time or resources. A longer-term pilot project can last a few days, weeks, or months and generates data and knowledge. It is intended to be replicated, in which the results can be measured and studied over time. Pilot projects can provide the foundation for the highest level of intention — the “design-build” — a more permanent state of intervention that requires the most resources and intended longevity.

Building the human city means seeking beyond a single prescription. Instead, it is about defining a process that brings together multiple stakeholders to decide at which scale a project should be undertaken. A range of intentions can ensure future, more expansive opportunities for community engagement and greater flexibility for solutions that are suitable for the local context.

Conclusion: Turning Vision into Action

If achieving Human Cities seems like a daunting task, do not despair. You are not alone, and together, we can contribute to this pursuit.

For those of us engaged in the work of building human cities, let us consider whether we are defining the issue in front of us as an appropriate problem.

Perhaps we might ask why we want to do this work, or if we are the right person for this undertaking. Perhaps we might discover that such a project should not be undertaken in its current form, or we may assemble a team of transdisciplinary thinkers to approach the issue from multiple perspectives.

How have we devised a process that is inclusive from the beginning and will generate a sense of ownership among the people live in the community?

Building Human Cities requires patience. Asking the right questions is crucial. Cities are made of people who have dreams, aspirations, and needs. Beyond asking what cities should be, we should ask: for whom cities should serve. With this vision, we are all encouraged resurrect city building as an art form, move humanity forward, and create a better quality of life for all.

Deland Chan is a sustainability planner, reseacher, educator, and co-founder of the Stanford Human Cities Initiative. Illustrations by Sandra Wong.