cities

Get Your City to Experiment With Joy

- Adam Clare Leave a comment

Table of contents of the Joy Experiments book

A new book wants you to make your city a better place by brining joy into the equation. In The Joy Experiments the authors who work in real estate and architecture argue that we need to have more fun and levity in our cities. In this easy to read book they explore ways they and others have improved their cities through seemingly simple interventions. What’s more – they break down their book into useful chapters (see image above) that you can jump around and read as you like, just like a well-designed city.

Our divided society is quicky reaching crisis level.

We are no longer able to sustain social and economic prosperity nor ensure democracy. Fuelling this crisis is a growing sense of social isolation caused by the divisive nature of social media and the decline of infrastructure that used to bring communities together.

But there is hope for rebuilding our collaborative society, and it is found in our mid-sized urban areas. These towns and cities offer a scale that can tangibly change the quality of our lives and an intimacy that allows us to influence what our communities can become.

Changing cities can change the world!

In The JOY Experiments, real estate developer Scott Higgins and creative mind Paul Kalbfleisch use their own mid-sized city-building experiences to present a new way for citizens to engage with their city and an urban planning strategy that prioritizes infrastructure for the human spirit.

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Cool Cities Have Botanical Gardens

- Adam Clare Leave a comment

If you live near a park you know that even a small amount of nature can cool the local environment, and you know that the bigger the park the more cool it is. In terms of a land-to-cooling-effect ratio certain types of parks are more efficient than others with the clear winner being a botanical garden. A simple playground with some trees can cool the local area by 2.9 degrees, a green roof can cool areas by 4.1 degrees, botanical gardens reduce outdoor temperature by 4.9 degrees! Any natural spaces can cool your neighbourhood so this summer get out there, plant some plants, and make your city a cooler place.

From a pool of more than 27,000 research papers, the researchers selected 202 for meta-analysis based on a number of urban green-blue-grey infrastructure categories – including parks, engineered greening projects, wetlands, green walls, parks and botanical gardens.

Trees and plants, for example, help reduce heat by reducing the amount of direct sunlight reaching the ground, while also releasing moisture into the air. Water bodies cool the surrounding environment via “evapotranspiration, shading, the albedo effect, groundwater recharge and temperature buffering” and could also serve as heatsinks, cooling during daylight hours and offering warming potential at night. Green roofs and walls not only help insulate buildings, but also reduce heat absorption, and vegetation can serve as windbreaks for natural ventilation.

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Rural and Urban Areas Have Less Depression

- Adam Clare

Where you live matters in almost every way imaginable, and there’s now more evidence that your location impacts your mental health. We now know that what has been colloquially known is now provably true: rates of depression are higher in suburban communities than elsewhere. Of course, you’re probably thinking that the rural lifestyle is that one that provides the best mental health, but what you probably don’t realize that urban living is also really good for you. So if you’re living in an in between sub-urban and sub-rural area and not feeling great than maybe you should move out the country or in to the city.

We think the relative higher risks of depression found in sprawling, low-rise suburbs may be partly down to long car commutes, less public open space and not high enough resident density to enable many local commercial places where people can gather together, such as shops, cafes and restaurants. But of course, there may be many other factors, too.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t potential benefits to living in the suburbs. Some people may in fact prefer privacy, silence and having their own garden. 

We hope that this study can be used as a basis for urban planning. The study provides no support for the continued expansion of car-dependent, suburban single-family housing areas if planners want to mitigate mental health issues and climate change.

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13 Year Long Study Confirms Bike Lanes Make Streets Safer for Everyone

- Adam Clare
Good Street from Streetmix

Bike lanes not only protect cyclists from negligent drivers, they protect drivers and pedestrians too. A longitudinal study reveals that it’s not the cyclists which make the streets safer, rather it’s the infrastructure that separates cyclists from giant metal slabs that matter. Bike lane only made of paint did nothing to change the dangers of driving; rather, physical barricades protecting people from cars are what make the difference.

It’s simple: protected bike lanes = a safer city.

After analyzing traffic crash data over a 13-year period in areas with separated bike lanes on city streets, researches estimated that having a protected bike facility in a city would result in 44 percent fewer deaths and 50 percent fewer serous injuries than an average city.

In Portland, where the population of bike commuters increased from 1.2 to 7 percent between 1990 and 2015, fatality rates fell 75 percent in the same period. Fatal crash rates dropped 60.6 percent in Seattle, 49.3 percent in San Francisco, 40.3 percent in Denver, and 38.2 percent in Chicago over the same period as cities added more protected and separated lanes as part of their Vision Zero plans.

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UN: After the Pandemic Sustainable Cities will Succeed

- Adam Clare
Montreal

Like the rest of the world, the United Nations is looking forward to the end of the COVID-19 pandemic and they’re projecting what our future may hold. The UN sees a consistent theme of ecological thinking as a way for cities to succeed in all the sustainable development goals. Most people live in cities, and in those urban settings people can see the clear interaction between societal forces like governments, commerce, the built environment, and so on. As a result, if we focus on making our cities sustainable and a wonderful place to live then the whole world can benefit.

The report explores how well-planned cities combining residential and commercial with public spaces, along with affordable housing, can improve public health, the local economy and the environment.

It calls for cities to be at the forefront of moves towards a Social Contract between governments, the public, civil society and private sector.

The new social contract should “explore the role of the state and cities to finance universal basic income, universal health insurance, universal housing”, said Sharif.

For one real-world example, Claudia Lopez Hernandez, Mayor of Bogota, explained how in the Colombian capital, their new social contract prioritises women and children.

It is a “social contract that includes women, that provides them with time, with time to take care of themselves, with time to educate themselves, and with time and education skills to come back to the labour market”.

“To have self-sustainable women is to have self-sustainable societies”, Hernandez explained.

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