About six years ago, I came across this excellent TEDTalk by architect Jan Gehl on urban planning for people, and recapturing the human scale. A fascinating and informative 20 minutes that I thought worth sharing once again.
One of his key themes is that planning needs to start with the people, and then the spaces they use, and only then concern yourself with buildings. The City at eye-level, the street, the square, should be the most interesting and most important criteria.
He uses Copenhagen as an example of good planning. In fact, Copenhagen’s policy is to become The Best City In The World For People. We can compare that with Vancouver’s mantra of making Vancouver the most expensive (oops, I meant “Greenest”) city in the world.
Jak's View of Vancouver v.3 