In the final installment of the series on urban design, William Henderson and B. McGraw discuss how physical environments can create a sense of community. They talk about how designs like atriums or parks can help facilitate social interaction between neighbors. Following this, they go over the importance of social capital, and how people of different classes interacting can be good for social mobility in a city.
Then they discuss the housing crisis, and how Tokyo and Vienna’s models show how to make housing affordable. They continue talking about ways to improve cities, to include best practice for transportation, for zoning, and for infrastructure.
Finally, they talk about the pros and cons of urban, rural, and suburban living. They then wrap up with a summary of what makes good city design.
00:27 — Sense of community & public space design
01:42 — Urban form and social inequality
02:36 — Social capital and economic mobility
06:51 — Tokyo’s permissive zoning model
09:41 — Vienna/Singapore public housing model
11:16 — Transit subsidization
14:03 — Grid streets, replacing stroads with arterials, bike lines, dedicated lanes
15:41 — Big-box stores vs. corner stores
18:13 — Elevated & daylighted intersections, roundabouts
19:45 — Zoning: mixed use, densification, industrial separation
20:16 — How to fix bad zoning in a city you love
21:19 — Interest rates and development
21:57 — Modularized construction, utilities right-sizing, greenery
23:20 — Atlanta highway-cap park project
24:25 — Encouraging retrofittable buildings
24:54 — Example cities: Barcelona
26:22 — When do suburbs make sense
29:32 — Urban/rural political divide
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