The Image of the City

25 March

This week’s class answered a question I have been struggling with for two years now. The answer was so simple too, don’t you just hate when that happens?!

During the time I spent working at the City of Edmonton I felt like I was banging my head against a wall. Every planner/designer employed at the City all knew that Edmonton was not a sustainable city and they tried everyday in their job to help Edmonton change its ways. New fancy plans came out to manage growth, and make the city more compact but as always, the fancy plans turned into more hot air by the time council was finished reviewing the plans. And so, Edmonton continues to spread out farther and farther across the prairie, and I joked if you drove to the far south of the city you’d be in Calgary! Haha. (For those who aren’t familiar with Alberta’s geography, Calgary is another large city approximately 300 kilometers south of Edmonton.)

So why can’t we change council’s mind? After all City officials only advise council on planning issues, council has the final say. The public elects council; if you have a council who supports suburban development, the majority of the city’s residents who support suburban development voted them in. So how do you change the public’s mind, change their behavior? If they demand more suburban homes than high-rise apartment homes then the market will move to accommodate them (in theory). How do you make people want something else? How do you make them want to live in a high-rise apartment and take the train to work instead of their own car?

Originally, I thought the answer was a major marketing campaign to educate the public on what sustainable living really meant. No city could afford that, and how effective would that really be? People are bombarded my advertising everywhere, all day long. People may not even get the message, or they may even refuse it!

…That’s where I’ve been stuck in my internal debate. “How can you inform the public and change their minds?” I even considered changing directions and going into advertising for this reason alone… That idea didn’t last long.

My prof, Michael Neuman, answered my big question in three words: “Change the image.” Change the image of the city and make it so visually engaging that people want to live there! The answer lies in the planning department, not in the fancy world of Mad Men style advertising! Good urban design can change the image of a city; urban design is the key to changing people’s behaviors! It was one of those light bulb moments. Now I’m onto something here! I want to explore this more.

Funny enough as I was wandering through the UNSW Library shelves in search of the last remaining Jane Jacobs book I stumbled onto The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch. This book addresses urban design and provides strategies of understanding and designing urban space piece by piece. Even better, this is exactly what I was looking for! Don’t worry Mrs. Jacobs I’ll get to you shortly!

Books mentioned:

Jacobs, J. (2000). The death and life of great American cities. London: Pimlico.

Lynch, K. (1960). The image of the city. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.