Cities as Rx: Is Urban Living Actually Good For What Ails You? (Spoiler: Maybe.)

Challenging the Suburban Health Ideal

Ah, the exurbs. Picture it: sprawling lawns, hushed cul-de-sacs, the gentle hum of… lawnmowers. For decades, this has been sold to us as the holy grail of healthy living, the idyllic landscape for raising families, escaping the "stress" of the city, and generally achieving peak wellness. Fresh air! Green space! The sweet, sweet sound of… nothing much happening! But let’s pause for a moment and ask: is this exurban ideal actually… healthy? Or is it just really good at marketing itself as such? Because when you actually drill down, peel back the layers of carefully manicured lawns and perform a good old-fashioned health check, a rather surprising picture emerges. Could it be… dare we whisper it… that cities, those dens of iniquity and… walkability, might actually be good for what ails you? Could urban living, with all its hustle and bustle, offer a surprisingly potent prescription for modern maladies like social isolation, sedentary lifestyles, and the creeping existential dread of beige-ness? Let’s dive in, scalpel in hand (metaphorically, of course, unless you’re into urban surgery blogs), and see if cities are truly the health elixir we’ve been overlooking.

The Bike Lane: Separate and Unequal – A Painted Path to Second-Class Citizenship

The Illusion of Progress

Oh, bike lanes! Hark, a victory for urban cyclists! Behold, the painted path to freedom! For decades, we poor, vulnerable cyclists were forced to bravely mingle with the roaring metal beasts of automobiledom, forced to "share the road" (as if we had a choice!). But then, a glorious dawn! Bike lanes arrived in our fair cities, lauded as a monumental leap forward, a dedicated space just for us! Finally, we had our own special little stripe of asphalt! Except… if you’ve actually dared to pedal down one of these much-celebrated “bike lanes,” the rosy picture starts to… well, deflate faster than a cheap tire on a pothole. Because the uncomfortable truth is, these much-hailed bike lanes are often less a pathway to cycling paradise and more a painted path to second-class citizenship, a separate and unequal space that highlights just how deeply entrenched car-centric thinking remains in our urban planning. Let’s peel back the glossy veneer of bike lane boosterism and examine the reality: are bike lanes really helping cyclists, or are they just a feel-good gesture that distracts from the fundamental changes truly needed to make our streets safe and equitable for everyone?

Won't Someone Think of the Children? Rethinking the City as the Ideal Place to Raise a Family

Challenging Conventional Wisdom

"Think of the children!" It’s a phrase that has echoed through debates about urban development, often wielded to justify the sprawling growth of suburbs and the prioritization of car-centric living. Conventional wisdom suggests that if you want to raise children "right," you move to the exurbs. Big yards, quiet streets, good schools—it's painted as the idyllic childhood environment. But is this conventional wisdom really...wise? Do exurbs truly offer the best environment for kids to grow and thrive? I've started to question this assumption. When you unpack the supposed benefits of exurbia and contrast them with city life, an entirely different picture emerges. In fact, cities, even mid-sized ones in America, provide a richer, more stimulating, and ultimately more beneficial environment for raising children than their distant exurban counterparts. Let’s explore why by looking at four key areas: nature, museums and education, culture, and transportation. Prepare to have your suburban assumptions challenged.

Planned Anarchy: Can Urban Planning Foster a Voluntary Society?

Beyond Coercion, Toward Voluntary Action

"Planned Anarchy." The term itself is deliberately provocative, a seeming paradox. Anarchy, in the common understanding, conjures images of chaos and disorder. Yet, in its original 19th-century political philosophy, anarchism envisioned something quite different: a voluntary society. A society where individuals are so empowered and self-reliant that they cooperate voluntarily to achieve shared goals, without the need for coercion or hierarchical structures.

Now, fast forward to urban planning, a field often associated with top-down regulation and government-led initiatives. Can these two seemingly disparate concepts—“planned” and “anarchy”—actually be reconciled? Can urban planning, paradoxically, become a tool for fostering a voluntary society? Let’s explore this intriguing possibility, delving into practical steps planners can take to encourage citizen-led cooperation, empower communities, and cultivate a sense of shared ownership in shaping the urban environment.

Beyond Money: A Systems View of Economics for Urban Planners (and Everyone Else)

Economics as Resource Transformation, Not Just Money

Economics. The mere mention often brings to mind images of stock tickers, interest rates, and a whirlwind of figures revolving around dollars and cents. But what if we redefined economics not as being solely about money, but rather about the transformation of resources? At its core, economics is about how societies convert resources—natural, human, intellectual—into wealth. Wealth, in its broadest sense, extends beyond financial accumulation. It encompasses the value derived from economic activity and the transformation process itself, which meets societal needs and creates value from available resources.

Adopting a systems dynamics approach reveals the economy as a web of interconnected chains, where the end products of one activity become the starting resources for another. Ideally, these chains are circular, efficient, and sustainable, though every economic transformation requires resources and results in some waste. The essence of this approach is that economic activity, by creating societal wealth, enhances conditions over time. Let’s explore how this systems-based perspective on economics can inform urban planning and decision-making.

The Planner's Oath: Toward a Moral Compass for Urban Development

Beyond Technical Expertise, Toward Ethical Purpose

Urban planning is often presented as a technical discipline, a matter of zoning codes, infrastructure investments, and data-driven decision-making. While technical expertise and multidisciplinary knowledge are undeniably crucial, at its heart, urban planning is a deeply moral and ethical endeavor. We are shaping the environments in which people live, work, and interact, making decisions that have profound and lasting impacts on their well-being, their opportunities, and their very lives. This inherent ethical weight demands a clear moral compass, a set of guiding principles to anchor our decisions and ensure that our actions serve the greater good. The idea of a “Hippocratic Oath” for planners is a good starting point, but let’s push further. Let’s postulate a more comprehensive Planner’s Oath, a set of foundational principles upon which we can build a truly ethical practice of urban planning. As a starting point, let’s consider a few core principles that I believe should be at the heart of any such oath.

Town, City, Metro, Megalopolis: Lost in the Urban Lexicon (and Why It Matters)

A Personal Quest for Urban Definition

Do you live in a town or a city? A metropolis or a megalopolis? Are you downtown, in the urban core, a suburb, or perhaps an exurb? First ring or periphery? Is that your neighborhood or your district? And just how big is your city anyway? Mid-sized, mega-city, or something in between? Hamlet, village, mill town, farming community – the list of ways we categorize and describe urban areas seems endless, almost intentionally designed to create maximum confusion. It’s enough to make you feel utterly lost in the urban lexicon. Because when we try to talk about cities – about urban planning, urban problems, urban solutions – we often stumble right out of the gate, tripped up by the very words we use. Are we even talking about the same thing when we say “city”? Do your definitions match mine? And does any of this even matter? Well, yes, it does. Because this terminological messiness hinders clear communication, muddies policy discussions, and makes it harder to have any meaningful conversation about the urban world we inhabit. While we might not be able to entirely clear up this urban vocabulary soup, let’s at least take a nod to the difficulty, acknowledge the confusion, and try to offer a few working definitions to improve, even just a little, our shared understanding.