These five cities are taking bold steps to rein in sprawl
Climate, health, and sanity all suffer when sprawl rips the fabric of cities. Here are five that are trying to stitch things back together.
When people talk about cities of the future, they’re often picturing something like the old Jetsons cartoons, with lots of robots and flying cars. Robots and flying cars are coming alright. But the key thing, if we want to have cities we love, is to remember who we’re designing them for: People.
In the 20th century, we lost sight of that. Back then a different technological revolution was upon us—automobiles. We fell so hard for them that we redesigned our cities around them. Especially in the United States, we created a sprawl of highways and parking lots, strip malls and cul-de-sacs, a landscape that is accessible only by car.
It’s a landscape that, as Atlanta urban designer Ryan Gravel put it
