Notes

1. NOT TOO CHAOTIC, NOT TOO ORDERED:
- most cities are a mess, it seems like no one´s in charge; everything´s jumbled up
- however, excessive order can be just as much of a problem, too much regularity can be too destroying
- ideal: variety and order
what people adore: being perfectly in the middle between chaos and boringness
what we crave: an organised complexity
2. VISIBLE LIFE:
- having live streets, where there is always plenty going on, where you can see everything, streets full of life: the work is on show, the people are proud of what they´re doing,
- in modern cities, we have hidden life away
3. COMPACT:
- building good squares, being surrounded by other people
- there is an art to a good square: should be neither too big, nor too small
- anything over 30 meters in diameter starts to become too large: you should be able to see the person across the square, it must offer a feeling of containment, but not claustrophobia
4. ORIENTATION AND MYSTERY:
- they have lots of little back streets and small lanes where one can feel cozy and get a bit lost
- the fact that everyone is little bit on display a lot of the time tends to make people nicer: they don´t shout at each other quite so much, they put flowers on the table much more often, but we forget about it and we don´t know how to ask for it
5. SCALE:
- Joseph Campbell: "If you really wanna see what a society really believes in, look at what the biggest buildings on the horizon are dedicated to."
- they tell us about the actual, rather than the admitted priorities of a society
- we have allowed our cities to be hijacked by commercial interests: pizza corporations and hedge funds
- big mistake: we focus on who owns the land, but we do not focus on who owns the space
- we suggest that the ideal height for any city block is five stories high, no more
- towers have to be worthy of their prominence, they must be aligned to our best ambitions and long-term needs
6. MAKE IT LOCAL:
- we do not want the buildings to look the same everywhere
- we all love a bit of variation for it´s own sake, the sameness of a city is a problem
- cities need to have strong characters, connected to the use of tbe distinctive local materials and forms
- don´t make your city from buildings that could be just anywhere, find a style of architecture that reflects what makes your location specific
- WE FACE TWO MAIN PROBLEMS: 1. an intellectual confusion around beauty: we think no one has the right to say what it beautiful and what is ugly, we think beauty is subjective, so no one should say anything about it: it is horribly useful to greedy property developers, THERE IS SUCH A THING AS A BEAUTY: the proof lies in the tourist statistics:

2. lack of political will:
- we have abandoned the design of cities to the greedy rich, we have given up believing in democracy, the battle between the public good and the commercial opportunism, we CAN SAY NO
- beautiful cities have only ever been created when governments impose strict and ambitious regulations to keep the greedy, private guys in check
- establishing clear rules to developers: precise legislation detailing, heights of buildings, quality of finish, the width of pavements, character of the skyline,
- not to leave it to the free market, otherwise people start to hate buildings, we become collectively despondent
- governments can only create beauty if they have enough public backing, it is about what we are asking for, about awaking us to our power as citizens to help legislate for beautiful cities in the future

NOW IT´S TIME TO FIGHT TO PUT THEM IN ACTION!