A Call To Build A Better World
Imagine a world where every city, town, and village were capable of inspiring joy, love, and wonder. A world full of places that are worth of dreaming about.
We don’t have to imagine what they might look like, as theres’s no shortage of inspiration to draw on. From Paris, London, Rome, Amsterdam, Kyoto, Venice, Havana, Marrakesh, Edinburgh, Lisbon, Copenhagen, etc., to many smaller places, like Dubrovnik, Colmar, Bruges, Rothenburg, Lijiang, Bergen, Siena, San Miguel De Allende, St. Malo, Zanzibar, Quebec City, and Bath. Thousands more exist. Layer in the great neighborhoods in cities that might not universally be viewed as beautiful, and we realize the world is home to many places of our dreams.
People save up for years, and travel great distances, just to be able to walk the streets of somewhere that they perceive as beautiful, look at its buildings, take in its culture, and bask in its atmosphere. Things that aren’t possible to do—or see—in their own backyards.
But why dream of visiting them, when we can live in them? Would it not be better to experience the places we romanticize about, all the time, adjusted for one’s local context, culture, and traditions? For those who are fortunate enough, why are we satisfied with traveling around the world just to chase a few days in the places we spend the rest of our time dreaming about?
Perhaps it’s price? Very few people, relative to the global population, get to live in these most charming of habitats. But it’s not because more people wouldn’t like to. This is an expensive privilege. When the demand to live in beautiful places is very high, and the relative amount of these places is low, such is the inevitable result.
But price is an effect, not a root cause. If there were more lovable places, it stands to reason, they would be more affordable. Indeed, in Italy, a country with an embarrassment of places that have the characteristics we dream about, entire villages are for sale that would be among the most desirable in North America. Historic homes capable of making one’s heart swell often sell for just a dollar. Of course, these places require extensive renovations. But even the most expensive projects would struggle to cost more than the price of the median home in America, at $440,000. Even new developments of exceptional quality in North America can be built relatively inexpensively, when land costs are factored out. Price isn’t the answer.
Perhaps it’s deep-seated cultural differences? This must be why people in Europe and Asia get to live in great communities, while North Americans (& Oceanians, if we’re to extend the argument) are forced to live in insufferable sprawl. But that’s not quite right, either. North America isn’t the only place where bad architecture & poor planning prevail. Moreover, it’d be wrong to assume we don’t have our own fair share of magnificent places. If culture dictates that we can’t have great cities, how would one explain the existence of Charleston, Savannah, Philadelphia, Santa Barbara, Brooklyn, DC, Chicago, Boston, New Orleans, or Quebec City, to name just a few? It’s not like these are particularly cheap places to live, either, which indicates high desirability. Culture doesn’t explain our status quo.
Maybe we simply forgot? Nearly all of our great places are old. Very old. Sure, the thinking goes, we can renovate historic buildings, but we can never replicate the magic of these structures, or the intimacy of organic neighborhoods. They’re vestiges of a bygone era. We should simply accept this and move on.
No. Not only is this fatalism destructive, as it acquiesces to a world with many serious challenges, deficiencies, and high levels of undesirability, but it’s also untrue. There are an extraordinary amount of fantastic places that are being created today. From single family homes, missing middle structures, and larger apartment buildings, all the way up to pocket neighborhoods and entire towns. These aren’t luxury McMansions or Smart Cities that rely heavily on blustery marketing to sell a dream that fails to match reality, but fundamentally good places that do justice to the ways we used to build.