Almost everything in a modern city is under direct human control. The streets, the buildings, the rules of conduct, the rhythms of the day, even the trees and the birdsong. There is no force of nature pressing in on us, no scarcity dictating our choices. And yet, after several thousand years of practice, this most deliberate of human creations still produces loneliness, disempowerment, and a quiet daily friction that we have largely stopped noticing because we no longer believe an alternative is possible.
The city is a triumph. It is also a broken promise. Both can be true, and both should be examined.
Taming Human Nature
Humans have long been nomads, spending most of their time hunting, exploring, creating, and building social relationships. With the cultural shift required by the depletion of the great hunting grounds, priorities turned toward agricultural needs. This involved giving up long-distance travel and instead attempting to tame a small piece of land — first for survival, later for wealth. Ensuring continued and reliable food production required techniques such as irrigation, crop rotation, and animal husbandry. Over time, these techniques became more sophisticated, leading to increases in food production and population growth.
Nature, however, was not the only target of this taming process. Humans had to find ways to build reliable shelter from the elements and from each other. Compared to a nomadic lifestyle, this stagnant and high-density living arrangement required new social structures and rules to overcome tribal instincts and inevitable conflicts. One of the most consequential new rules was the emergence of private real estate, as people started to inherit their accommodations. Rules were refined and codified over time, eventually becoming the laws of society. The intuitive concepts of companionship, compassion, and cooperation were formalized, and eventually morphed into marriage laws, institutional charity, and business contracts.
With our base needs and instincts under control, the foundations were laid for the spread of human civilization. To facilitate this expansion, cities were designed around transport and productivity, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of physical growth. Standardization of construction materials eventually ensured that cities could not only grow, but replicate themselves elsewhere.
The success of this urban model has been celebrated in many ways — from the grandeur of the Colosseum to the modern marvels of the Golden Gate Bridge. Contemporary cities are both the product and the source of human ingenuity, creativity, and collective action. In a city, the annoyances of natural life — protection from wind and rain, trash disposal, physical distances — are handled behind the scenes, freeing up millions of minds to care about more complex tasks. Cities are also centers of innovation, where people from diverse backgrounds can collaborate and push the boundaries of what is possible. They are places of culture and learning, where people can both experience and create all flavors of art, music, theater, and literature. In this way, cities represent one of the greatest achievements of human civilization, providing a space for people to thrive and fulfill their potential.
Broken Promises
While cities have been a great success in terms of population growth and economic development, their utopian promise of a better life for everyone is much more questionable. The design priorities on growth and expansion have systematically neglected more intangible human needs. Street grids partition cities into tiny blocks, thoroughly disrupting social cohesion and making cities feel anonymous and lonely. The anonymity of the city also leads to a lack of accountability. Noise and pollution, for example, are easily produced, but the anonymous cultural setup makes it hard to trace down culpability.
The combination of capitalist ownership rules and financial expansion has also led to income segregation, social stratification, and class conflict. Areas with high property values become inaccessible to poor workers, depriving them of access to high-status social circles and personal opportunities. As a result of budget decisions, poor areas are often neglected by city planners, creating even more distance from the original utopian promise.
City structures are almost never built with long-term durability in mind: instead, the cheapest possible materials are used in order to minimize any given budget. This lack of focus on durability means that both infrastructure and living structures automatically become unusable over time, unless continuous effort is exerted. The requirement for maintenance makes the urban environment not just a facilitator for convenient living, but also a burden. It adds an invisible layer of taxation, as citizens are forced to pay for services that they do not directly benefit from. Over time, these seemingly cheap decisions end up exacting a dual toll: in maintenance, and in a lack of functionality. After all, the cheapest option is always a compromise.
Looking beyond income inequality, another issue arises from the combination of building regulations, behavioral legislation, and heavy ownership rules: urban citizens are not allowed to create improvements or individualization. In most cities it is illegal to build a garden in front of one’s house, or even to paint the facade in any color other than those prescribed by local legislation. The hundreds of minor inconveniences — like having to wait at a completely useless traffic light — are utterly outside the control of the people who have to endure them. Not only is the path toward getting that traffic light changed opaque, convoluted, and time-consuming, but in most cases the very idea of improvement is heavily discouraged. The implicit position of local governments seems to be that experts know better and have more agency than the people living in the area — even though this agency is funded almost entirely by taxpayer money from those very citizens.
The combination of all of these negative factors has a very real effect on people’s lives. The inability to create one’s own environment, or even to make minor improvements, leaves citizens feeling like powerless spectators in their own lives. This lack of agency causes stress, anxiety, and depression. And, of course, both the deprivation of agency and stifled social mobility are the antithesis of the freedom that cities are implicitly promising.
The failure of these utopian ideas is perhaps best exemplified by the rise of “cities without souls” like Dubai and Shanghai: corporate-controlled places, designed to look attractive in a video presentation. With their disregard for emotional needs, these places never gain a sense of community or individual identity, leaving them destined to a future of crime and despair.
Where Did It All Go Wrong?
The limitations of cities highlighted above are not merely the result of poor design decisions. They reflect fundamental limits of the human mind. The depression, stress, lack of agency, and social isolation experienced by many urban residents are indirectly, but exclusively, caused by the decisions made by city planners, architects, and other designers. Despite the fact that we have full control over our living space, no external pressure, and essentially unlimited resources to shape this environment, the vast majority of urban citizens still live in a dystopia.
There are three root causes of this problem.
The first is the compartmentalization of problems. When faced with a challenge, such as the need for transport or housing, city planners tend to focus on a single solution — for example, cars or bigger houses — rather than considering the wider social and environmental impacts of their decisions. This narrow focus leads predictably to unintended consequences, such as increased pollution or social isolation, that are then handed to a different department to solve.
The second is that legislation tends to be overly compartmentalized, and heavy ownership rules disempower local residents. Local laws may prohibit residents from making improvements to their homes or neighborhoods — changing the design of street signs, adding gardens, planting trees in the parking strip. This lack of agency leads to feelings of frustration and disconnection from the very environment one is supposed to call home.
The third root cause is institutional. City planners — including architects, developers, and policymakers — are often segregated from each other, with each group working in isolation to solve their own specific problems. A parks department may work on improving the city’s green spaces, while a commerce department focuses on attracting new businesses. This segregation leads to a lack of awareness of other departments’ activities, and a failure to identify opportunities for collaboration and synergy.
This institutional blindness is exacerbated by the formal regulation and bureaucratic processes that govern city planning. Regulations tend to be highly prescriptive, dictating specific standards and processes that must be followed, often without regard for the wider social and environmental impacts of a particular decision. This approach can stifle creativity and innovation, and can lead to a lack of flexibility in responding to changing circumstances.
The result of these limitations is that cities often fail to live up to their potential as utopian environments. Instead, they become fragmented and dystopian, with people feeling disconnected and disempowered.
A Way Forward
Despite the limitations of cities, there are many examples of successful urban environments that offer valuable lessons for the future. By learning from past mistakes and embracing new approaches, it may be possible to create more livable, sustainable, and equitable cities.
One example of a failed utopian concept is Brasília, the capital of Brazil. Designed in the 1950s to be a modern, utopian city, Brasília was intended to be a model of urban planning and architecture. However, the city’s rigid grid system and focus on car transportation have led to social isolation and a lack of public spaces. Brasília serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of over-planning and imposing a single vision on an entire city.
On the other hand, there are examples of urban environments that have succeeded almost without regulation. One such example is Christiania, a vibrant anarchy commune in Copenhagen. Established in 1971, Christiania is a self-governing community that has its own laws, currency, and cultural norms. Although the community has faced many challenges over the years, it has thrived as a unique and creative urban environment.
Another lesson worth borrowing is that organically grown environments, like the Brazilian rainforest, have different attributes than our cities. These environments empower their inhabitants, providing agency instead of restricting it. Decisions to change things are made locally and democratically, rather than by a distant government or regulatory body. These organic environments can serve as models for how to build more sustainable and equitable cities, by empowering local communities to take charge of their own surroundings.
Looking to the future, several steps can be taken to create more livable, sustainable, and equitable cities.
The first step is to accept our mental limitations and acknowledge the fundamental limits of human design. This requires us to be more humble and collaborative in our approach to city planning, and to be more open to feedback and criticism — particularly from the people who actually live with the consequences of our decisions.
The second step is to merge institutional boundaries and break down the silos that often exist between different city departments. This requires greater cross-departmental collaboration, and a willingness to share information and resources. By working together, city planners, architects, and policymakers can identify opportunities for synergy that none of them could see alone.
Finally, we must learn from our past mistakes and be willing to experiment with new approaches. This requires a willingness to take risks and embrace uncertainty, and a recognition that not every experiment will be successful. By learning from our mistakes and adapting to changing circumstances, we might eventually move toward more livable, sustainable, and equitable environments — ones that can actually start to fulfill the original promises of the city.