Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1540

The NH Deutscher Kaiser Hotel building in Munich looks like this:

It’s a fairly conventional tower on top of a podium.

However, photographer Victor Enrich decided to reimagine what this tower and podium could look like. In fact, he did it 88 times. Here’s the video . And here’s one example:

The realism of each is incredible. It’s also a fascinating—albeit outlandish—study of what could be.

If you’re a city geek looking for a good book to read, head over to Planetizen and check out Brent Toderian’s list of the 100 best books on city-making . Toderian was formerly Chief Planner for the City of Vancouver.

I have a good number of those books on my own bookshelf, but also many that I should really read. I think I’ll start with #1: Cities for People by Jan Gehl .

Here’s the forward for that book by British architect, Richard Rogers :

"Cities are the places where people meet to exchange ideas, trade, or simply relax and enjoy themselves. A city‘s public domain — its streets, squares, and parks — is the stage and the catalyst for these activities. Jan Gehl, the doyen of public-space design, has a deep understanding of how we use the public domain and off ers us the tools we need to improve the design of public spaces and, as a consequence, the quality of our lives in cities.

The compact city — with development grouped around public transport, walking, and cycling — is the only environmentally sustainable form of city. However, for population densities to increase and for walking and cycling to be widespread, a city must increase the quantity and quality of well-planned beautiful public spaces that are human in scale, sustainable, healthy, safe, and lively.

Cities — like books — can be read, and Jan Gehl understands their language. The street, the footpath, the square, and the park are the grammar of the city; they provide the structure that enables cities to come to life, and to encourage and accommodate diverse activities, from the quiet and contemplative to the noisy and busy. A humane city — with carefully designed streets, squares, and parks — creates pleasure for visitors and passers-by, as well as for those who live, work, and play there every day.

Everyone should have the right to easily accessible open spaces, just as they have a right to clean water. Everyone should be able to see a tree from their window, or to sit on a bench close to their home with a play space for children, or to walk to a park within ten minutes. Well-designed neighborhoods inspire the people who live in them, whilst poorly designed cities brutalize their citizens. As Jan says: “We shape cities, and they shape us.”

No one has examined the morphology and use of public space to the extent that Jan Gehl has. Anyone who reads this book will get a valuable insight into his astonishingly perceptive understanding of the relationship between public spaces and civic society, and how the two are inextricably intertwined.”

I came across an interesting op-ed in the New York Times this morning called “ What Tech Hasn’t Learned from Urban Planning. " It basically talks about how, despite the fact that tech companies are increasingly moving from the suburbs to the city, they haven’t yet figured out how to be urban.

"The tech sector’s embrace of urbanist lingua franca and its enthusiasm to engage with urban problems is awesome, and much welcomed. But these folks need to become better urbanists."

The problem—Allison Arieff argues—is that they create sterile and insular environments. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are served to employees so they don’t need to leave the building. And private social spaces are created just for them.

It strikes me as being terribly ironic that these companies—a great number of which are committed to making the world more open and connected—actually suck at doing that in real life.