Love Affair with Cities

Posted by Andree Iffrig Sep 3, 2008

It’s hard to love a city experiencing it from a car. I’ve been rereading Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities and her stories of life on Hudson Street. The Jacobs family lived above a candy store in Greenwich Village, and Jacobs used her experience of street life there to inform her perspectives on urban planning.

People who only travel by automobile in the city miss a bunch, and those who plan and design from a bird’s eye view can be insensitive to street life.

Mark Lewis is a Canadian filmmaker and artist living in London. Travel writer Victor Dwyer interviewed Lewis for the August 23, 2008 edition of The Globe and Mail. Asked how a tourist should approach London, Lewis suggested cycling in the city. He discovers film locations and vibrant street life by cycling regularly through certain districts.

The best way to explore a city is to cultivate an intimate relationship with its streetscapes. Travelling and working in Indonesia, I learned to appreciate the vitality of street life in urban neighbourhoods called kampung. Residents gathered on street corners and at each other’s door stoops to chat in a daily ritual called jalan jalan: just ambling.

These neighbourhoods wouldn’t rate inclusion in a design periodical, and urban planners could easily dismiss them as rundown, but they were safe, vibrant communities.

My neighbourhood isn’t going to win any design awards, but it’s walkable. The trees form glorious canopies along the street which is a major bus route. A walk in the adjacent green space is the surest, fastest way to brighten my outlook.

Let’s hope all those urban planners, developers and architects are walking and cycling in the communities they design, otherwise they’ll never learn to love city life. It will show in their planning and design efforts.