A city stands at a fork in the road

Have you visited the city recently? If you have, you might have seen what I’ve seen and felt what I felt: near empty streets, shuttered stores, and the profound awareness that nothing is going to be the same after this.

“Our cities are paused in front of several alternative futures”, said Dan Hill, strategic designer, earlier this year. It is even more true now.

This synopsis of Dan’s talk outlines his proposal for how to shape cities that create consciously civic and public outcomes. It’s not easy to summarise, but worth a read. (You can read Dan Hill’s own writing here.)

The ‘business as usual’ approach has prevented us from “questioning the nature of society we are creating and the reasons that lead us to design our cities that way.”

Business as usual is over.

So, we now have an opportunity and obligation to ask: what are our cities for? What should they be for? Dan Hill suggests “culture, community, commerce and conviviality”. How can we help those ideas thrive – if, for example, we’re to live in a world of seasonal coronavirus?