Designing Urban Places that Don't Suck (a sense of place)

Have you ever walked through a great city and thought, wow I love this place? What is it that makes some places great and others ... not? One key factor is what urban planners call a “sense of place.”

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Café Biard, Paris
By Mbzt - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,

Amsterdam wil 'fastfoodrestaurant' Five Guys niet

Writing and research by Nicole Conlan and Jason Slaughter

This video contains footage from Getty Images

[lucadelnegro]

After watching this video, it is very easy to understand why everyone but especially North Americans love Disneyland and theme parks in general

[panguin]

I've been walking for mental health recently. Have to cross a highway to get away from my home, and the pedestrian light turns green at the same time as the car turning lane at the intersection I walk. Some lady in one of those giant trucks yelled 'Nice one' at me for walking when my light turned green because she was turning. I often feel hated for being foot traffic, and clearly this is a sentiment shared by many.

[EnishLord]

I think another factor in the "Every place is the same" feeling is that in the US almost every shop is some sort of chain. With all the branding and box construction that comes with putting up a building the cheapest they can. Every big box store brand has the look that they want for their building to maintain their "brand", and that goes for all the chain restaurants. All the places feel the same because they are all built to look the same, because corporate America feels that the identity of their businesses is more important then the identity of the town or city that they are built in.

[ts]

I live in Canada but I am originally from Eastern Europe. It absolutely strikes me whenever I ask for directions in Eastern Europe and people tell me “okay, so walk up to 5th elementary school, head right until you see 3rd polyclinic and then as soon as you see the statue of X historical figure you’ll know you’re there”. Your mind space is occupied by places, not streets :)

[lb]

THIS! The first time I went to north america, I had such an overwhelming feeling that I had no words for. A friend explained the concept of places to me, and that the US is mostly made up of non-places. The only places for the most part are peoples homes and the insides of buildings. But moving between these feels like putting on a space suit and moving in a rover through the inhospitable landscape of another planet. It's not made for people.

[ImSomethingSpecial]

Interesting fact: Eisenhower actually hated how the Interstate Highway System turned out because it was nothing how he envisioned. He never intended for Highways to cut through cities or even for normal people to mass use them. He envisioned it mostly for military use and economic use, so things like truckers. He more or less wanted the Autobahn copy and pasted into the U.S.

[Kleavers]

Imagine how soul crushing it must be if your entire nation looks like an open air shopping mall for cars.

[Peny]

It was wild when you mentionned Old Québec and then described street/road vs place when describing a trip through a city. It made me realize that when I give direction to my place, I offer highways and roads and bridges as reference, and when I describe Old Québec, a place made for pedestrians, the directions are places. The old church, the public square, the huge park... In the came city and yet everything is changed as soon as directions are given!
Incredible video, you always give me hope with every new one.

[Dumparino]

My husband and I are closing on a house soon. This channel made a HUGE difference in where we chose to look for houses. We live in the USA and work from home, so we hunted for a town that prioritizes human-scale design, has a thriving downtown, and has lots of small business. Once we found that, we looked for a home within cycling distance of the town since homes near downtown were really expensive. I'm stupidly excited that we found exactly that. We'll be able to bike to Aldi and other box stores along low speed frontage streets, as well as to the downtown of the town on cycling trails - all of it under 10 miles distance. It was even within our budget, which was capped at 300k. I'm so glad I was orange pilled before looking for a house. Our experience proves that with some research and time you can still find places to live in the US that values humans over cars.

[Yavin]

The whole point of Northern American urban design strategies is to put people in one of three places, their house, their car, and their job. That's it. You're in one of these three places over 95% of your life. You're rarely outside. Rarely around other people in a social setting. You're rarely around beauty which is purposeful to communicating to people that beauty has to be purchased in the form of a car or a house.

[askuri_]

This explains the memorability of places to a great extent.
The center / shopping street of my 30k people town in Germany fulfils the criteria of width to height, which makes it memorable to some degree. But because the street going through it has car traffic at 50 km/h, as a pedestrian, you're more focused on finding the next crossing and not getting hit by a car. Sitting in the cafés and bars is a noisy and polluted endeavour.
So our town is remembered more easily, but not really in a good way.

The neighbouring town of the same size has a street that also has lots of shops with a street. The key difference for me is that cars here go much slower, maybe 30 km/h and you can cross the street anywhere, though you still have to pay attention. The place is significantly more pleasant, even if there is cars.

So reducing speed can be a quick measure to make a place better for people not inside a car.

[shlubbers]

Cookie cutter suburbs/houses have the same issue. A lot of times they can be really beautiful and functional homes, but their sense of place is overpowered by a sense of normalcy as they are copy and pasted around a sea of asphalt.

[jettbridgerab]

I once decided to take a two hour walk to get to the nearest provincial park. On the way, I found little to no shade, a sidewalk that ended, and then found myself walking on the side of the road where I got flipped off multiple times. The park was beautiful but the journey there was not something I’d ever do again.

[_ddoraemon_]

This is such a well worded video for me. I am from Paraguay, a small country in South America, currently studying Architecture and Urbanism. But it breaks my heart to see us as a developing country people taking "inspiration" from the most famous country a.k.a. the U.S. and steadily going into a car-dependent society with no sense of place. Not only because of the many reasons you already know but also because in this country THE HEAT is such that in a normal winter day we can have +35ºC of heat (in summer you can only imagine and pray). Yet we keep cutting trees to add a new lane. I do not know if studying Urbanism is going to be in ANY way useful because I feel so hopeless, how can I change my city alone... I will try. But hurts.

[tind]

I'm so glad you included examples form Croatia. We have so much great walkable places in Croatia but at the same time Croatia has become a car destination for tourists from all over Europe which really makes it tough to preserve those beautiful places.

[CartoonDrama]

Thanks for mentioning my hometown Zagreb, in my opinion a pretty underrated city by both Croatians and foreigners in comparison to our costal cities

[scpatlnow]

Replacing the local shops with national chains is exactly what is happening in NYC. The rents have become so high that only big national chains can afford it and the local Mom & Pops are priced out and you lose so much of the cities character when you allow that to happen. In NYC they would prefer a place stay empty (and gain tax benefit from that) than to lower the price to allow locals to open unique places. US greed at its finest.

[BaronVonSTFU]

I feel like Japan has great walking neighborhoods. Tokyo is so massive and sprawling, you would think it wouldn't have heart. But there are so many small neighborhoods within the area. Each one has it's own unique feel. I lived there for three years. I would go out every weekend by train to random new places and explore. It was great. Now that I've been back in America, ive lived in multiple cities in multiple states. I rarely feel motivated to leave my house. The sprawl of Delaware feels no different than the sprawl of Missouri. It just has no allure. Japanese cities have so much to offer. Speaking of covered markets, that is also very common in Japan. The Nakano Sun Mall comes to mind, but there are so many examples all over Japan. All these neighborhoods are very small and are only open to foot traffic for the most part.

[Abcflc]

I am from Argentina, grew up in a wealthier suburb with some car dependency but also a robust bus system with some trains- moved to Germany where I met my bf who is American. We recently were visiting his hometown and I was shocked that we needed a car for everything but I also understood how you get into this bubble of comfort where you don’t pay attention to the parking lots or general ugliness because you’re driving not walking. You go to your copy-paste box store than looks the same in every corner of the country and then you go back to the lush green suburban home (if you are lucky) and use your central AC and watch tv. It was so surreal. I get why so many Americans don’t understand this, why they are so afraid and isolated and why they feel they need their guns, they blame minorities and they consume so much: they are disconnected from their communities in systemic ways. The physical spaces we create actually mould societies. I wish more architects, urbanists and developers would understand this and the responsibility they hold.

[Nobody-mdkt]

I moved out from Houston to Virginia. Although not perfect, it is miles better. There's actual town centers, places to bike, stores are close by, and a park with an entire lake that has farmers markets open up every week. My partner and I can actually walk and bike to these places. I have relied less on my cars and opted to try and walk more. It has been a game changer.