A study from Happy Cities found that the lifestyle benefits that come from well-designed density show a strong correlation with happiness.

"Living in walkable neighborhoods, spending less time driving and commuting, and having access to third places like coffee shops and parks are associated with better well-being and social connectedness."

We know that density is necessary to stop sprawl; but if we want people to embrace it, we need to ensure that these benefits come with it. This will likely involve some changes to our zoning and parking requirements. But let's plan for a better future, not continue doing it in a way that perpetuates the problems associated with car dependency.

Also noted is that people are willing to pay more to live in areas like this. I'm not saying that's a good thing, walkability shouldn't be a luxury. But it does show us that people want to live in dense, walkable neighbourhoods.

I was listening to a podcast recording of a panel on alternative modes of travel and one of the speakers brought up an interesting point on transit routes. They shared how transit companies have these goals to have transit stops within a certain proximity to a certain number of homes; however, rather than adding more routes they simply expand existing routes to more stops. The result is that bus routes end up being less direct and more time consuming as they wind through neighbourhoods in order to pass by more homes. This, of course, leaves transit feeling like a far less convenient alternative to car travel.

If we ever want to get serious about our car dependency we need to invest in alternatives in a way that makes them more compelling than driving ourselves. Nothing would boost transit more than sitting in traffic and watching busses move along quickly in their own direct and dedicated, congestion free lanes.

I stumbled across a post on LinkedIn yesterday that was promoting some, admittedly, impressive AI tech that could translate what you were saying and actually change the movement of your lips while you were talking on video. The person sharing it was excitedly proclaiming, "we'll never need to learn another language again!" Unless of course you're not on a video call.

It's a good example of the way tech is increasingly mediating our interactions with each other in ways that have become so normalized that we're not even noticing it anymore. The pandemic threw many of us into a remote work setting. A side effect of this has been accepting video calls as a part of our lives; and with that has come all sorts of innovations to make our video calls even better.

Yet I can't help but think about what we're losing. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for a back to the office pendulum shift. I prefer remote work, it's contributed to a much more fulfilling life rhythm. No, my interest is more around the things that contribute to a meaningful life and the ways tech is slowly eroding that.

One of the books I've been reading lately is all about the way in which our environment can have an impact on our happiness and the author makes some good points around the role that other people play in that. Not just in terms of our close relationships - though those do matter - but on a societal level. By being around other people that we learn to trust, we grow in empathy, and that increases our sense of wellbeing. The author writes,

“Not only does it feel good to experience positive social signs from others — smiles, handshakes, opened doors, bargains kept, and cooperative merging in traffic — but it feels good to reinforce those feelings of trust among both friends and strangers. It works best of all when we do it face-to-face: in the kitchen, over a fence, on the sidewalk, in the agora. Distance and geometry matter.”

This is one of my main concerns with the way tech is creeping into our lives. The digital realm is replacing many of the day-to-day touchpoints we once had with other people. Shopping, interacting with neighbours, learning, even borrowing. And what's important to note is that the tech that now mediates these interactions is made for the primary purpose of extracting profit for someone else. Yes, you can argue that a grocery store is the same; but those micro interactions with real people in the store were not.

This is why truly public spaces will always matter. Parks, libraries, trails, sidewalks/streets, community centres, public schools, etc. These are the places that belong to us all, they don't exist for the sake of profit, and they're where we practice and learn what it is to be human. This is something that online will never be able to replace.

Been reading a bit about Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, who attempted to change the trajectory that the city was on. Throughout the 20th C, Bogotá had become dominated by private vehicles and had privatized much of its public space. Peñalosa believed that cities could inspire happiness if they were planned for people, rather than cars. During his time as mayor he scrapped highway expansions, installed bike paths and public parks, put in a highly ambitious rapid transit system, increased gas taxes, and began to ban cars from the city centre.

Of course not all of these changes were readily accepted by the public and certain demographics pushed back. But he held to a conviction that we don't have to just give in and do things the way they always have been. Cities can be whatever we want them to be.

“A city can be friendly to people or it can be friendly to cars, but it can't be both.” -- Peñalosa

It's amazing how easily we acquiesce in our planning to car centric thinking. We look at busy streets, backed up traffic, drivers making unsafe decisions, and think we can solve this by adding more infrastructure for private vehicles. Give them more lanes, make it so they don't have to wait at lights, make parking more available. The results of this are always the same: if you make streets better for cars, more people will drive on them. We need to fight this impulse. Instead of making things easier for drivers, make them harder. De-prioritize the convenience of private vehicles and invest in helping people get around in other ways.

In every way this makes a city better.

Listening to one of my current favourite podcasts, the Urbanist Agenda, today and they had a really good conversation around the benefits and values of townhouses (or row houses). Its a form of housing that often gets a really bad reputation here in North America but shouldn't be overlooked.

A couple of the clear benefits they mention are:

• Significantly less house maintenance;

• Reduced heating costs (due to shared walls);

• Achieve a remarkable amount of density (which leads to better walkability);

• Can do mixed development properly and add small businesses onto the corners;

• Great cross drafts for cooling;

• Easily sectioned into apartments;

• Residents still get an entire home with multiple floors.

I remember when we lived in Stouffville some of my favourite builds were a street over from me. It was a row of town houses with the garages behind them. This allowed for the entire house to be used for living (no wasted space with a garage) and also created a nice framing in of the backyard. It's a style popular in the cities but should maybe make a stronger comeback in suburbia. It's definitely time to let the detached, single family home dream die and townhouses might just be the best way forward.