5 Definitive Ways to Create Better Cities

Making Cities More Accessible

The second chapter posits that cities should encourage diversity, inclusion, and equality among their residents. That means ensuring that everyone has equal access to urban amenities, health care, education, employment, culture, leisure, sport, nature, and—perhaps most important—affordable housing. The authors note that 1.5 million people move into urban areas around the world every day, but many cannot afford to live close to urban opportunities and end up pushed to the fringes.

“I stumbled upon this statistic recently that in the urban areas of America it takes the median-income person 27 years on average to save up the 20% down payment to be able to buy a median-priced-owner apartment or condo in a city,” Ingels said. “So that means that hard-working, well-educated, by all standards successful and contributing citizens actually have a hard time getting access to owning a home, which of course is not the only way to have a life, but it’s been a good way to be anchored in a community, have a sense of ownership and belonging, to make a community less transient and therefore more sustainable, and to eventually make possibilities for later generations, so I think there’s something to be looked at in this entire value chain that provides the spaces we live in and that we call home that could need a 21st century upgrade.”

As featured in this chapter, the Starter Home project by the Office of Jonathan Tate seeks to make entry-level homes appealing and affordable by building on overlooked sites in established neighborhoods, like New Orleans’s Irish Channel neighborhood. By creating tailor-made dwellings in challenging sites, architects can encourage economic diversity in rapidly gentrifying areas.

Sharing Space and Resources

With co-working spaces and rideshare companies becoming ubiquitous in cities around the world, there’s much talk about the sharing economy. This chapter goes even further, arguing that “the ideal city shares a lot more than just spaces. It also shares services, skills, finances, transportation, and energy, and it uses models of ownership and access that are geared toward the public good.”

One particularly beautiful project featured is the Microlibrary Warak Kayu in Semarang, Indonesia by SHAU Indonesia. Raised on wooden columns with latticework made from local wood, the library provides access to knowledge through books, movies, and community events to residents of Indonesia’s poorest communities. The architects incorporated playful elements, such as netted hammock-style flooring, to make the space appealing to kids and encourage families to use this shared space for learning.