How To Make Cities Beautiful Again 7 Design Secrets

Have you ever visited a beautiful, attractive city and wondered, could we build something like this today? Well, you're not alone. Many people don't like the new types of city districts that they see arising nowadays. And many have lost hope in our ability to create new places that people genuinely love. But what if I told you it is possible to create more beautiful cities? A number of architects have been able to design amazing places people actually like to live in. By studying the principles behind these new designs and existing beautiful cities, we can learn how to replicate their success. In this video, we'll distill the essence of these charming urban spaces by looking at numerous examples of attractive towns, both old and new. Our goal? To understand how we can enhance any city. We'll identify seven design secrets that make places more livable and beautiful. It's crucial to get this right, because every poorly designed neighborhood makes urban problems worse. So, let's dive in and see how it's done. Gentle density When you're walking in a city like Stockholm, Amsterdam or Paris, or even a town in Morocco, you will quickly notice something. Most buildings aren't that tall. And where are all the skyscrapers? One of the things about a city that often stands out very clearly is its density. There are multiple ways to measure density, like number of inhabitants per hectare, or fancy metrics like floor and ground space index. In this video, however, we take it easy and use the number of floors of buildings. In the most attractive cities, this density seems to fall in a certain zone. Enough to ensure a vibrant city life, but not too much. Like Goldilocks, with her porridge that is not too hot, not too cold, but just right. The right amount of density for cities has a name too. Gentle density It's enough density to sustain businesses and public services, but not too high making it unpleasant, with enormous buildings everywhere. A good guideline for gentle density is buildings that are between 3 and 7 stories tall. That might sound little, but with buildings up to 7 stories, enormous densities can be achieved. Just look at Paris, London or Barcelona. Great Streets, a UK design and consultancy firm, made some wonderful videos about gentle density. Important side note, some cities, like New York City, are still pretty attractive and even beautiful, even though they have enormous density. This comes with downsides though, almost perpetual shadow, non-stop traffic jams and astronomical land values, driving lower incomes out. Also, New York is an exception and these tips are focused on the average city. Many places desperately try to be New York though and build towers, without any real need for them. I would say, by applying gentle density, a city can create far more attractive places than by placing a random tower somewhere. There are even more powerful ways to create beautiful cities. But before that, I'd like to share something about a new project. I'm working on a new website that will have all my videos, interesting projects and much more, all under one roof. For this purpose, I use Squarespace, the sponsor of today's video. Squarespace makes it super easy to create a completely personalized website using their new guided design system, called Squarespace Blueprint. For example, I could choose between a professionally curated layout or build a site from scratch. Squarespace also allows you to make and sell courses, has built-in analytics and powerful flexible payment tools. And it's all super easy to use. Check out squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash TheAestheticCity to save 10% on your first purchase of a website or domain. And now, let's get back to it. Attractive public spaces. Let's focus our attention to the next part of the city. The spaces in between the buildings, or the public spaces. What makes these beautiful and attractive? There are a number of elements we can think of. First of all, people tend to love places that have an interesting pattern and variety of streets, parks, squares, courtyards and connecting spaces, like bridges, gates, colonnades and arcades. Secondly, to have a pleasant, natural-feeling urban experience, buildings need to create enclosure and contain space to feel as if the city embraces you. In many modern developments, space is uncontained, meaning if the empty space between buildings were water, it would flow right out. Think of towers in the middle of nowhere or roads and squares that are far too wide. These destroy any feeling of being in a city. Just compare the experience of the public space on the left and the one on the right. Finally, the design of these public spaces matters a lot as well. Beautiful paving materials, detailed fences, benches and lampposts can improve any place. Compare the left space to the right one. In which one would you rather be? There seems to be an epidemic of minimalism that has sucked all of the soul out of street furniture. I'm convinced that with nicer lamps, benches and fences, designed with curves and some organic detail, our biophilia is activated check out my video about beauty for more about that and any place can be made to feel worthy and beautiful. Next up, a total open door, but I absolutely need to mention it. People love plants and water. Simply look at how people flock at parks and fountains, how streets with trees or at their waterfronts have higher property prices or how people stop to take a picture of flowers and we know this is one of our best weapons to make cities more beautiful. Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister of Singapore, famously started a greening project to make Singapore more attractive to investors, planting tons of trees. And it worked! Greenery can even help to fight vacancy in office buildings. I know of a Dutch greenery company that was able to fill up a large office block up to max occupation by designing and installing a beautiful garden in the courtyard. It became an instant hit with the tenants during lunch breaks and it immediately boosted biodiversity as well in a place that was grey and lifeless before. Water is another powerful way to create more attractive places. Where there's water, there's life. People and animals both flock to it naturally, both in nature and in cities too. Think of the canals in Amsterdam and Venice, or the famous fountains in Rome and how many people they attract. In Utrecht, the Netherlands, there's a beautiful example of the difference some water and green can make. In the 1970s, the city wanted to modernize and replaced a beautiful canal with a multi-lane road. After some decades, the modernist mall decayed and had to be renovated, at which time the city decided to bring the canal back and it transformed the area from grey and dead to green, livable and attractive. If you were there, you would almost ignore the buildings around it. If you watched my other video, This Town Did The Impossible, you will know about Le Plaisir Robinson, a newly built place next to Paris. Its garden city area has an entire river ecosystem with enormous biodiversity consisting of fish, waterfowl, and many insects. Very importantly, greenery is not only beautiful and good for nature, but it connects people as well. This one might be a bit controversial in many places, like in the US for instance, but one of the best ways to make a city more attractive is to have some amazing pedestrian zones. You might think of Amsterdam as a cycling city that has always been cycling and pedestrian friendly. Well, you would be mistaken as it looked like this in the 70s. Streets where you see mostly cyclists today were flooded by cars and even tiny alleys were consumed by traffic. Today, the city has returned to a state in which it is much more attractive to walk and cycle. The reduced amount of cars made the city safer. In general, it reduces noise, stress, and pollution when car traffic is reduced. Pedestrianized zones are good for commerce as well. Many entrepreneurs fear that it will hurt their revenue when customers cannot park right in front of their store, but the positive effect of being able to spend time somewhere comfortably should not be overstated. In most cases, pedestrianized zones lead to increased revenue because they become safe havens for people to relax, spend more time, and spend money. Of course, a parking solution in walking distance is often necessary. One final thing we shouldn't forget is that increasing the amount people walk and cycle can make them more healthy and it can help to connect people. If you're always in your car, how many chance meetings will you have? Except for the road-raging driver who comes through your car window. Or maybe the employee of the fast-food chain who hands over your burger and shake at the drive-thru. Mixed-use development One of the things most people love about the city is its vibrant city life. The wealth of restaurants, cafes, shops, offices, all mixed together in this complex beast that forms the city. One of the biggest problems of modernist planning was functional zoning and the separation of functions. This led to places where nothing happened, as there were only offices, only houses, or only shops in the mall. When people are at work, the suburbs are dead and quiet. When the offices are empty, the central business district becomes a creepy no-go zone. The solution is to mix the various functions, so there's always something happening. This also improves quality of life, as this enables you to get a nice cup of coffee just around the corner, instead of having to drive somewhere. This can also lead to less traffic between various parts of the city, as you don't have millions of suburbanites going into the city in the morning at the same time and back home in the evening. And mixing homes and businesses means being able to live closer to your work. 6. Huge golden statues 6. Urban form One of the ways to make cities more attractive is by using the form of the city itself for dramatic or playful effects. One of them is the terminated vista, or the placement of a striking, elaborate building at the end of a street axis, creating a monumental, exciting effect, like a tower, a monument, a church or a civic building. Another way to create interesting streetscapes is by creating sequences of spaces, turning a city walk into a mesmerizing journey. Imagine going through a gate that opens to a square, which continues in a street that ends in an arcade. This is much more interesting than just a plain street going on forever. Also, using curves in streets can lead to beautiful effects, as to create either suspense by hiding parts of the street or creating beautiful, sweeping curves that stimulate the imagination. Like the Royal Crescent in Bath for example. Last but not least, we need to talk about architecture, because the city cannot exist without its buildings. And architecture determines what these buildings look like. When you walk in a city, you're surrounded by buildings and their facades. 30-40% of your brain's cortex is involved in processing visual information. What you see influences you. It either stresses you out, bores you, excites you or comforts you. To create cities where people feel happy and healthy, we need to fill them with buildings that minimize the stress and boredom, and maximize comfort, joy and positive excitement. Secondly, people like to feel at home somewhere. To achieve that, we need buildings that give us a good sense of place. For this, we could use the types of architecture that were locally developed to adapt to circumstances like the weather, local culture and local building materials. This type of architecture is often called traditional architecture, consisting of both vernacular and classical architecture. With the arrival of 20th century ideas, we let go of all this knowledge, and buildings became monotonous and bland, and lost a sense of place. No matter where you are in the world, nowadays you can find the same type of buildings everywhere. The blandness has spread to every continent, and pushes away everything that is special and local. So, let's fight this blandness and celebrate local differences. But, I hear you ask, shouldn't we go towards a shiny, exciting future? Why stay in the past with traditional architecture? Well, who said that the future has to be filled with glass blocks? And who said that we can't adapt traditional architecture to our modern needs? Or build on it to develop new styles that still use symmetry, proportion and composition? Finally, beautiful buildings also have a transcendental, uplifting quality, leading to more inspiration and joy in life. Of course, there are more principles that lead to beautiful cities, but these were some of the most important ones. The final result is a place that is lively, green, pedestrian-friendly, with great public spaces, interesting streets and beautiful, harmonious architecture. Places like Le Plaisir-en-Saint, Cayala, Poundbury and Brandevoort have already used these principles very successfully and show they still work. I got some good news and bad news, however. The bad news is that many universities don't teach how to create such places. The good news is that there are more and more universities who do teach this. Check out my previous video to hear about this story. Even better news, I'm thinking of making a course to dive deeper into this material. If this sounds like music to your ears, find a link in the description to join the waiting list. A big thank you to my patrons and thank you for watching.