5 Aspects of People-Friendly Cities
And why this type of city can be the solution to 21st-century problems.
It’s a fact that most of our cities are planned around cars, highways, and parking lots while the most important element of urban planning is callously put in the back burner: people.
Having cars as protagonists is inadequate, seeing that the social functions of the city are completely disregarded, resulting in cold and uninviting spaces that lack human life.
Cities are supposed to be a place of encounters, spontaneous conversations, or to relax and people watch. Cities should invite us to sit and enjoy ourselves for a while. They should be a place where we can create new experiences, or to simply take a nice walk.
For an urban setting to be planned around people’s well-being and social needs, it is key to pay attention to the human dimension. To accomplish that, some aspects — that often intertwine as you’ll see — are of crucial importance. Here are 5 of them:
1. Places to Sit and Enjoy
Once, when I went to Germany for a college workshop at a university in Oldenburg, I spent a few days in Frankfurt before heading north. It was my first time in Germany and I was the core definition of a foreigner — I was alone and…
