My Personal Manifesto

Urban sprawl is an invited evil. The city is a dying breed slowly trying to be revived by capitalists. We need to go back and rethink how we live, how we interact, how we move. We need to recapture the fading cities, put new life into the old.

1. STOP Urban Sprawl
Urban sprawl need to be captured and killed. No more freeway projects, no more subdivisions, no more McMansions, no more strip malls and office parks. All of our power has to be focused on the redevelopment of cities.

2. Public Transportation
Mass transit was our past, now it’s our future. Before freeways, motorways, highways and expressways, trains, subways and trolleys were our primary mode of transportation. We need to free the city of the constricting freeways that have cut its neighborhoods of from one another. In its place, build trolley lines, root down subways, and create bigger bus systems. This will help the movement of the city run smoothly and create and ease of circulation. The circulation is people moving all over the city. The city is a heart that beats of life

3. Re-development and Re-use of the Old
There are many abandoned buildings in our cities and the stock is varied, but renovating and redesigning these buildings can help the cities. Not tearing down in building new can help the environment and the building will have a low carbon footprint. Keeping the buildings can also help preserve the history of the city. This doesn’t mean there cannot be any new architecture; the new architecture has to work with the existing, which will then create a whole different type of architecture.

4. Affordable for the Worker
Affordable housing is also necessary for life in the city. The workers that make the city run and function need to be able to live close to their workplaces. This also brings a different social class into these new cities, making the economic make-up more diverse. Affordable housing should not be bland; public housing has always had a drab concrete appearance, which is unacceptable. Affordable housing needs not only to meet the affordable component, but the aesthetically pleasing and functional component.

5. Jobs for the Office
Government incentives for corporation big and small to move out of the office/industrial parks and move back in the city, to fill up the readily available empty office space. The corporations generate more jobs that make the city more lucrative for the people. A more responsible architecture in office planning that saves space and is more economical. No ornamental large entry ways that waste space and cost a fortune to heat/cool, more responsible, sustainable designs.

6. Shopping for the People
With the influx of people moving in, this creates a demand for shops, markets, and boutiques. This draw to the city creates more jobs and more incentive to move to these new centres of culture. No big box stores aloud, they undermine and undersell the smaller stores, which is how some cities died in the past. Collective shops surrounded by public squares, pedestrian shopping arcades in city centres, this helps the economy. It also has the aesthetic of a smaller city or town, which can be a draw to people.


7. More Green please!
Public parks and landscaped plazas are always a great way for people to spend nice days outside in the city. Parks are healthy, they promote activity and leisure. This will make the residents of the city happy and healthy and make city living more enjoyable. Along with parks and plazas, the incorporation of private garden for apartment’s buildings and estate blocks also add a “backyard” feel for the residents. Large boulevards and parkways also add an aesthetic to city and break up the masses of the buildings.