How to Build a Great City

Posted by Carol Coletta on November 16, 2008 |

That's the cover headline on a recent issue of Azure.  Inside, reporter Nelda Rodger asks, "Is a great city one that is thrilling to live in, or one where you never have to lock your bike?  Where buildings are tourist attractions, or where everyone rides public transit?  Can a great city be made, or does it make itself? "

A particularly timely article in the package is on Torino, Italy's motor city that is "remaking itself by redeveloping the railway lands bisecting the city and the industrial sites that grew up alongside them."  The city got a "huge kick-start" by landing the 2006 Olympic Winter Games, and this year, the city was named the first World Design Capital.  To celebrate, the city mounted "an impressive program of conferences, festivals, and so on that celebrate the city as a centre of art and architecture, shedding forever its image as a factory town."

Note this observation:  "Every aspect of the built environment does double, even triple duty."  Wouldn't it be nice if every time infrastructure is touted this week as the solution to our growing unemployment crisis, it was coupled with the criteria of doing double or triple duty?

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