What does the phrase vibrant city mean to you? What types of mental images pop up when you think of a vibrant city? When you think of a vibrant urban place, the images that most often come to mind are the public spaces in our cities. Lively avenues and streetscapes full of pedestrians, shops, and cafes. Public plazas filled with people from all walks of life. These are the types of public places every city needs yet most cities are sorely lacking, according to out-spoken urban planning critic and author James Howard Kunstler. Watch the TED Talk below for Kunstler’s take on our public places in the United States.
What do you think?
John Karras believes that all communities have the potential to become more vibrant. John’s professional passions are aligned at the three-way intersection of urban planning, economic development and transportation policy. John founded urbanSCALE.com to empower urban planning and economic development professionals with the knowledge and tools needed to make their communities more vibrant. John is also the creator of the urbanSCALE Rating System, the first comprehensive measure of how urban a city is on a scale of 1 to 10.
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