How to Make an Attractive City

[TekindusT 3,809]

Hi all,

Just found this little video in YouTube, I think it can be of the interest of you folks. Quite an eye-opener to these things we don't really have an explanation for and also, some bullet points everyone can apply when doing some city simulation.

 

[Odainsaker 2,133]

I always liked this lecture by Andrés Duany, given in his younger years as a traveling manifesto of his "New Urbanism":

"San Antonio By Design" Seminar, 1991:

The same video can be watched here in several parts, with much more interesting viewer posted commentary.

I first watched this lecture on San Antonio public access television back in the mid 1990s, and it was one of the most eye-opening programs I had even seen on public access cable.  A paradigm shift in the theory of urban planning was then underway, and I was fortunate to later attended in person a more elaborately hosted version of this same lecture given in Austin.  Sadly, 30-years later, American urban planning continues to further choke on its own runaway sprawl, and there is much to be said on where and why New Urbanism has seemingly not lived up to its potential promise.

Admittedly, I do actually try to apply what I learned in this lecture to my simcities, even if the program doesn't necessarily give us the tools to do it.  If automobile traffic isn't congested in my grandiosely idealistic simcities, then I'm doing something wrong.