How to Make an Attractive City: A Video with 6 Rules

[chutten]

How Beautiful is Waterloo Region? How Beautiful Will it Become?

Noted philosopher and writer Alain de Botton, narrating a video posted by The School of Life, suggests 6 rules for building a beautiful city:

1.  Not too chaotic, not too ordered
2.  Visible life
3.  Compact
4.  Orientation and mystery
5.  Scale
6.  Make it local

How do you think the cities in the Region (and the Region as a whole) rank?

( Perhaps tangentially related to this thread on the Region's Top 10 Buildings )

[BuildingScout]

Good video. Thanks for the link. Some of the ideas are quite topical to discussions here:

• Intensification
  
• Not being afraid to judge buildings aesthetically
  
• Not to fall in the trap that the only way to achieve beauty is restoration
  
• five storey limit (instead of three)
  
• people being sold on the dream of suburbia rather than the reality of suburbia
  

[eizenstriet]

The video was interesting. I found that most of the principles advanced resonated with me, but because they were prescriptive, I did some searching about the foundations and credibility of The School of Life and Mr. de Botton. I would say they are worth listening to.

Thanks for posting. Could provide a useful reference point for many discussions on this site.

[REnerd]

Was skeptical about this video, but I found it very interesting.

Thanks for posting.

[lostaway]

thanks for these rules, I think your ideas can work! http://bigpaperwriter.com/blog/alain-de-...ys-in-love has an essay about Alain de Botton!

[Canard]

Beautiful in who's eyes, though? Everyone has a different idea about what a beautiful city is. (I certainly do!)

[tomh009]

Everyone has a different idea about what a beautiful city is.  (I certainly do!)

Monorails!

[Spokes]

I just found this video elsewhere only to realize it'd already been posted here and I hadn't seen it. Duh.

Anyways, some really cool ideas in it. I found myself thinking, from a Waterloo Region perspective, I'd say we're on the right track, no?

[jeffster]

I just found this video elsewhere only to realize it'd already been posted here and I hadn't seen it.  Duh.

Anyways, some really cool ideas in it.  I found myself thinking, from a Waterloo Region perspective, I'd say we're on the right track, no?

I think Kitchener has learned a lot of lessons from it's past, and has improved on itself over the past couple decades. Reusing buildings, like Kaufmann, the Tannery, etc, and building like Kitchener City Hall are great. Certainly Cambridge (Galt) has done a decent job. I have reservations of what's happening in Waterloo tho, with the student housing, it, well, it looks gross.

I think, though, it will be some time before these cities are "pretty". Parts of the cities are pretty though.

[Spokes]

I have reservations about Waterloo too, but it has more to do with zoning. Northdale was a step in the right direction, but uses still seem to be too separate. Not enough emphasis on mixed use.