World Urbanism Day!

Guanajuato, Mexico

Today is World Urbanism Day, and a chance to reflect upon how we are planning and building our cities. With over half of humanity currently living in cities, there is a huge potential to positively impact their ability to live well, sustainably, just by consciously planning the communities these citizens live in.

Our built environment plays a huge role in how our lifestyles develop. It is also one thing that is so easy to take for granted, because its almost too close to see. But these cityscapes were and are still being planned. And we are living with the consequences. 

I was interested to learn what a Food Desert (wikiFoodDesert) was, and then amazed by how many times I have been travelling through suburban Canada, gotten hungry and only found junk food to eat. City planners can increase the health and food security of their residents by planning for food co-ops, farmers markets, community gardens and urban farms.

Vancouver

 I'm also always a little in awe when I travel back to my hometown (Calgary) and see just how unbelievably inconvenient it is to live in that city without a car. Calgary is a new city and it was literally built for the automobile, the distances between places there are unimaginable to residents in larger, more cramped up places, as is the abundance of free street parking.

New York

New York has been a world leader of urban development for many generations, and lately they have been taking drastic measures to reduce vehicular traffic into the downtown core, by implementing bike lanes, improving transit and taking previous streets away and turning them into pedestrian boulevards, streets like the high profile Broadway stretch through Time Square, visit http://www.streetfilms.org/ to watch videos on other exciting projects world wide.

Vancouver City Hall

It must be an exciting time o be a city planner,  I know that Vancouver's city hall was up until midnight one night debating whether to implement a separated bike lanes downtown or not. They voted to do it!

I am so thrilled and grateful for the extra support this gives to us residents to live a simpler, healthier more sustainable lifestyle, by getting more people out of the loud, expensive, anonymous, poluting, speed machines and into the face to face community of pedestrian and cyclist traffic.

I should note, cars are great for intercity travel, its the within city travel that I feel annoys everyone, drivers included.