I recently came across a March 2015 article in Slate titled “Why do we love Paris but hate Frankfurt? A Swiss author’s six qualities of beautiful cities”. That Swiss author is Alain de Botton, and he had a lot to say about the topic. And one of the most important and provocative things is that we need governments to step in and do what they used to in regulating the aesthetic decisions of our structures and our spaces. Because there are beautiful cities that attract visitors, and there are ugly ones that don’t, and we can identify the reasons why they are beautiful or ugly.
There are very clear and compelling reasons, he says, why no one vacations in Frankfurt, Germany, or Birmingham, England. And we need governments to be more assertive, not less. If we leave urban design to the developers our cities are doomed as attractive places to live and work.
“We think that no one has a right to say what’s beautiful and what’s ugly,” de Botton says. “Let’s stop being dangerously relativistic about this. Yes, there is such a thing as beauty. Sydney and San Francisco and Bath and Bordeaux have it, and most other places don’t. The proof lies in the tourist statistics. Let’s stop saying that beauty is just in the eye of the beholder. That’s just a gift to the next wealthy idiot who wants to put up a horrible tower.”
Mr. de Botton lays out his six key things a city needs to be an attractive and successful urban location in this compelling animated video:
Based on my travels, his six key things certainly make sense:
- Order and variety. A sensible, human-scale set of guidelines and restrictions, but with room for individuality and expression within the structure. The older parts of Philadelphia have that, the newer downtown parts do not.
- Visible life. Are people walking around, engaged in activities, interacting? New York has maybe too much. Dallas has hardly any.
- Compact. A size you can embrace. San Francisco is compact. Los Angeles is a messy sprawl.
- Orientation and mystery. A mix of big and small streets. Avenues for traveling; little side streets to get lost in. Think Paris.
- Scale. Cities should not be dominated by gigantic towers that overwhelm the human life within them. Most of Milan gets it right.
- Local. Architecture that, through its design and its materials, is specific to its location. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the small city I grew up in, Norristown near Philadelphia, was dominated by brick buildings and, in the older residential areas, brick sidewalks, reflecting the abundant amounts of red clay in southeast Pennsylvania.
As I watched this video, absorbing de Botton’s ideas, I was reminded of a class I took as an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh about a thousand years ago. It was about the history of public architecture and urban design. My buddy Dan McNamara and I took it together, simply because it fulfilled an elective requirement and fit our schedules. It was taught by an odd little man, name long lost to time, who had an affected way of saying “rococo” that Dan imitated the entire semester.
It arguably turned out to be the single most useful college course I ever took, the one I have thought about more than any other during my lifetime, the course that I have applied during my travels around the world.
The primary text was Paul Zucker’s 1959 work Town and Square: From the Agora to the Village Green from MIT Press. I haven’t seen a copy of this book in decades, but what a difference it made to me in my life, as I’ve found myself applying its lessons in person ever since. Walking through Washington Square in Manhattan I could think, “Yeah, the proportions are all wrong,” but walking around Gramercy Park I could understand how that space got it right. I entered Old Town Square in Prague one morning thinking, “This is how you do a large public square.” A couple of years ago I was in Milan and couldn’t have been happier to discover that the office I would be working in that week was on the little square at the juncture of Via Tortona and Via Bergognone, snug with trees, and I knew immediately why I felt so comfortable in that square.
Thinking again about all of this made me realize that I should capture my impressions of cities I visit. Not as travel advice, not as recommendations, not as definitive reviews of how good a city is to visit. Instead, as snapshots, my observations and anecdotes. Like the way we talk about restaurants based on the few dishes we sample and the few staff we interact with.
I’ll also try to incorporate de Botton’s six key needs for cities in my discussion. Not in a regimented way – I imagine I’ll hardly refer to his list explicitly – but as an internal guide on the features I should be aware of and should inform my reactions and observations.
I’m going on vacation soon, I hope to write a few of these snapshots while I’m lounging on the beach – so I might start publishing them soon. No promises on timing, though… you know how vacations can go…
* The Medieval Fantasy City Generator is a very cool and addictive tool that lets you create maps for small, medium and large fictional cities. It’s one of those remarkable things the interwebs were invented for!