2. PROBABLY 300 YEARS FROM NOW PEOPLE WILL WONDER HOW WE LIVED IN SUCH TERRIBLE CITIES AS WE HAVE TODAY, WHERE CHILDREN GROW IN TERROR OF CARS
3. Quality of Life is a goal in itself. But it is also critical in the “knowledge economy”, for retaining and attracting Highly Qualified and Creative Individuals. Competitiveness and Quality of Life It is very simple to have a city with great quality of life: It only has to be designed for people, much more than for cars.
4. If a city is good for children and old people, by themselves, it will be good for everybody else.
5. WHAT EQUALITY IN POST-COMMUNISM SOCIETY? THE WAY WE BUILD AND ORGANIZE CITIES CAN POWERFULLY CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIAL JUSTICE. PUBLIC GOOD MUST PREVAIL OVER PRIVATE INTEREST
6. WE CANNOT DESIGN AN URBAN TRANSPORT SYSTEM UNLESS WE KNOW WHAT KIND OF A CITY WE WANT. CITY VISION
7. Do we have a clear vision of the city where you would want your children to grow? How far should a child grow from a park, a football field, a pedestrian only street? CITY VISION
8. CITY VISION VS The friendlier to cars a city is, the less humane it becomes.
13. Over the last 80 years we have been making cities much more for cars mobility than for children’s happiness. PUBLIC SPACE
14. When cars appeared we should have started to build a parallel road network: One for cars and the other exclusively pedestrian. URBAN LIFE IN THE PAST
15. Why all streets for motor vehicles? Why not design a city where half the streets be for pedestrians and bicycles only?. PUBLIC SPACE
16. This is one of the streets in an European city that was reclaimed for pedestrians only
19. In Bogotá the Porvenir Promenade, an 18 km pedestrian street was built through many neighborhoods that did not even have pavement in their streets. It was a project for the people, not the motor vehicles. PUBLIC SPACE
27. PUBLIC SPACE Why is public space important in a city with many other problems? It is during leisure times that income differences are felt more acutely. While higher income citizens have access to large houses, clubs, country houses, vacations, lower income citizens only alternative to television is public pedestrian space.
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29. Cars on sidewalks or parking bays where there should be sidewalks suggest that citizens with cars are more important than those who don’t have them. PUBLIC SPACE
32. PUBLIC SPACE Parking is not a constitutional right. Governments should not allow pedestrian spaces to be used for parking and no public funds should be used for parking facilities.
33. PUBLIC SPACE Sidewalks are not simply for getting from one place to another. They are for walking aimlessly, talking, playing, enjoying the city.
34. People like to be and to meet in public spaces. When shopping malls replace public space as a meeting place for citizens, it is an symptom that a city is ill PUBLIC SPACE
40. In our daily life we may be separated by income and hierarchies, but in public space we meet as equals. PUBLIC SPACE
41. No mayor will be much loved or remembered for having built a highway. Instead, he-she who creates a quality pedestrian space is long remembered. PUBLIC SPACE
42. Roads and most things Governments do, are a MEANS to an end. PUBLIC PEDESTRIAN SPACE IS AN END IN ITSELF. It is not a means to eventual better life. It is quality of life in itself, and yields happiness for generations and generations. PUBLIC SPACE
51. Traffic engineers like to build roads next to waterfronts because there are few intersections. But many cities regret deeply having built motor-car roads next to their waterfronts. PUBLIC SPACE: WATERFRONTS