Extreme Urban Makeover

Some days, don’t you just want to level everything and start over? All the hideous dead buildings. The cratered concrete. The rusted, sagging chainlink, the miles of cockeyed telephones poles, the trashy billboards. Every graffitti-ed and decrepit factory, warehouse, and weedy parking lot. The whole wretched, mad scribble of ill-planned, ugly roads and ruined waterways.

All of it — the whole Augean stable — gone. Nothing but trees, meadows, rivers and lakes left behind. It’d be tempting never to build anything at all again where the vile mess used to lie. 

But urban renewal isn’t like lawn replacement. Killing off cities in order to heal them has the unfortunate side effect of destroying people’s homes, neighborhoods and workplaces, which they need no matter how unspeakably awful those places are. (So, historical preservationists, you can put your beta blockers down now.)  

Alas, urban renewal also isn’t usually like landscaping or any other kind of well-planned design.  It happens in odd patches as bits of money become available for isolated efforts that are usually the pet projects of influential people hoping to gain even more power and money or to secure their civic legacy. Few urban communities would want or be able to afford the comprehensive plan — not to mention the political repercussions of totalitarian-level eminent domain - that French emperor Napoleon III commissioned from Baron Haussmann for the redesigning of Paris.   

Yet the fact remains that most cities have grown up with hardly any long-term, big-picture planning at all.  And in spite of that and their varying amounts of human and infrastructural misery, some of them are great places that you’d love to visit or live in.  

What makes the difference? What do the world’s greatest, most enticing and creative cities have in common? Here are a few things:

Physical beauty, including: an arrestingly gorgeous natural setting; flower gardens and parks; striking architecture, often with some intriguing native or period style influencing a lot of it (pagoda roofs, barrel tiles, half-timbering, Gothic arches, Victorian gingerbread…);  at least one unique, amazing structure that has become the city icon: the Eiffel Tower,  the Golden Gate Bridge, the Chrysler Building, the Forbidden City, the Christ the Redeemer statue; and vivid, colorful and/or highly imaginative art everywhere, whether fine or folk

Fascinating history: Great cities have great stories to tell about how they were founded, settled and fought over; how and why they grew; and what colorful people played notable roles; and these stories are told through the unique look, structures, cultures, and activities of these cities, as well as through their languages, beliefs and common knowledge    

Activity:  Economic, of course, as a well-employed city is usually a better-cared-for and happier city, but also interesting occupational activity (shoe design, rickshaw pulling, stone carving, ship-building…) and, especially, outdoor activity: bustling shops and cafes; street vendors and performers; crowds of people going to work, school, religious services and cultural events, playing in the parks; attending festivals and political events. In other words, nonstop evidence of thousands or millions living visibly busy, rich and varied lives

Atmosphere and strong local identity: All the above help create these two things, which are linked but not the same. A great city is like a well-adjusted person — unafraid to be itself, whatever that self is. And though some communities, like some humans, will naturally appeal more to the rest of world than others because of luck in looks or wealth or lifestyle, so no community will rise to the top if lacks confidence in its own instincts and value.

The wishy-washy, the imitative, the fearful are going nowhere. And if your city is one of those – if leveling it sounds easier than living in it anymore – then it’s probably not the kind of place in which normal, small-scale creativity will work much change.

No, your city needs radical creativity. Monumental creativity. Something huge, showy and preferably not at all useful that will shock and delight the world and make it want to come see for itself. Your city’s really creative people – the ones with both ideas and guts –  need to choose  a huge, amazing project and get it done through sheer force of will. 

Turn all the bridges into giant, glowing, winged dragon sculptures? Train climbing roses up every bare wall and fence in town? Connect all the tall buildings with Christmas-lighted working zip lines? Convert a central downtown space to a huge outdoor concert/movie stage with performances 24/7?  Take all the broken concrete and glass and build a fabulous mosaic light-tower at the edge of your lake or river?

With what radical act of creativity would you like to transform your city?