idle gaze 002: Community thrives through bustling neighbourhoods and casual chatter.
Alexi Gunneridlegaze.substack.com
idle gaze 002: Community thrives through bustling neighbourhoods and casual chatter.
The preferred and ubiquitous mode of urban development is hostile to both walking and talking. In walking, people become part of their terrain; they meet others; they become custodians of their neighborhoods. In talking, people get to know one another; they find and create their common interests and realize the collective abilities essential to com
... See moreRay Oldenburg • The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community
A lucky few, larger cities—some of the heroes of this book—have already attracted so many well-off people into their downtowns and close-in neighborhoods that these places are in danger of becoming social monocultures. Despite their wealth, these can also be detrimental to street life, since yuppie overachievers tend to spend less time in the publi
... See moreJeff Speck • Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
The stakes are high. New legal frameworks should make it possible to harness technology and achieve a radical upheaval of the way of life for both adventurous hunters and settling families at every level of the income ladder. If they fail to accommodate both populations, the danger is for every large city to be inhabited only by very rich hunters a
... See moreNicolas Colin • Hedge: A Greater Safety Net for the Entrepreneurial Age
What is that balance? Better to ask: what do humans do? Work, shop, eat, drink, learn, recreate, convene, worship, heal, visit, celebrate, sleep: these are all activities that people should not have to leave downtown to accomplish. While there are exceptions, most large and midsized American downtowns possess a good supply of all of the above excep
... See more