You know those memes about ‘the world if x didn’t exist’? That picture of a futuristic-looking city with flying cars, skyscrapers, and green zones. And while it’s an image that probably comes to a lot of us when we think of a ‘future city,’ the ideal cities might have different guiding principles from what we imagine.
At least, that’s what I learned from scrolling through the content of Planning Peeps. It’s a Facebook group for and about the planners of urban spaces. They advocate for better city infrastructure and better urban planning solutions through humor and memes. Thanks to them, I also learned about missing middle housing. Curious to know more? Scroll away, and don’t forget to upvote your favorite picks!
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I'll admit, I've played my fair share of SimCity. I honestly used to love it, but there was a common problem that I would run into. When my cities got big, I would just give up because it would become too hard to manage, and I'd go play some Rollercoaster Tycoon instead. I had to worry about the city budget and deal with the constant congestion of the streets and the unhappy Sims – it was just all too much.
Only now, when I Google 'How do I get better at SimCity,' I see that it might've been pretty simple. Starting small, planning ahead, and keeping the citizens happy are just some starting points for creating a decent city. Interestingly, the same principles apply to city planning in real life. After all, it's a simulation game, so isn't it supposed to reflect life?
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So, let's go back to missing middle housing and how it’s related to making cities better. When looking through the content on 'Planning Peeps,' one might think that the biggest sin in urban planning is the suburbs and their single-family homes. The term 'missing middle housing' belongs to architect Daniel Parolek. He coined it in 2010, describing the types of houses built in 1940s America.
What types in particular? Row houses (also called terraced houses), two-flats that one can see in Chicago, triple-deckers in Boston, and California's bungalow courts. And why are they middle housing?
"Most people consider single-family homes as small-scale housing and apartment buildings as large scale. I'm saying that what's in between those two extremes is 'missing,'" Parolek explained. "It's missing because we haven't built a lot of them in the last 60 to 70 years, partly because of zoning barriers."
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And why are these the superior types of houses? First, they make neighborhoods walkable and more sustainable. When people live and work in walkable communities, they're lifestyles are automatically more environmentally friendly. Small retail also can flourish in these types of cities. Big-box stores are usually clustered in retail parks, which is a characteristic of the American suburb.
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"Missing middle housing should be part of a compact, walkable neighborhood that has commercial amenities such as restaurants and small businesses," Parolek explained further. "There are huge environmental benefits for this kind of housing, too. We're using less land and reducing greenhouse gas emissions — and we're getting people out of their cars."
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The current auto-centric city planning in America also marks the loss of third places. 'Third places,' as the term's creator, sociologist Ray Oldenberg, explained, refer to places for social gathering aside from the two usual social environments: the home and the workplace. The simplest examples are bars, parks, cafes, bookshops, hair salons, and other places where the community comes to hang out.
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But why are these third places important? Experts say that they're essential to our mental health and wellbeing. Researcher Dr. T. Panova claims that these places should be a matter of public health. "While work and home impose roles and responsibilities on us, like tasks we must do, relationships we need to manage, and stressors we have to handle, the third place is somewhere we can go to unwind without being expected to engage in any specific behavior."
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Experts also say that there's a growing shortage of such third spaces. Just think about the most popular sitcoms of the '90s, Friends and Seinfeld. The characters used to gather in a cafe or a diner just to hang out, not work on their laptops. As Eliza Relman writes for Business Insider, work in the most popular TV shows in the past years – Succession, Superstore, Severance – is all-consuming. Life beyond the workplace is just an afterthought.
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One might argue that the Internet is a place. Can't it operate as a third space as well? Well, as Dr. Alex Danvers told Bored Panda in a previous interview: "Being around people for longer is related to being more satisfied with your life." He says that real-life socializing might be more demanding, but it is more rewarding at the same time. "I'd think of online socializing as sort of the 'lite' version," Danvers said.
"That may be nice to do when you're feeling tired or burnt out, but it's also not going to give you the full experience of connecting with another person. To have really satisfying connections, you do need to put in the effort of navigating the more complicated world of in-person interactions."
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So, how does it all come back to city planning? When and why did we lose our third places? Experts point to the beginning of the 20th century. The suburbs flourished, and the highways started running through neighborhoods. Public transport, walking, or biking became unpopular, and so, bike lanes, sidewalks, and good public transport systems became obsolete.
As city planner Paul Stout explained in a TikTok, "American cities were basically hollowed out throughout the '70s, and any semblance of walkability or public transit was quickly lost."
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That's a whole lot of doom and gloom, you might think. But don't worry, there are efforts to bring walkable cities back. 79% of Americans say that being able to walk to places in their neighborhood is an important factor when choosing a home. And some companies are trying to bring walkable neighborhoods back. Maybe it's not so far off in the future that the people will get what they want.
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