Social Cities – Welcome to My New Blog

Hi,

Welcome to my new blog — Social Cities — on Halifax Bloggers.

I’m a professional urban planner. Day in and day out, I work with zoning by-laws and municipal plans. I write reports for councils and committees. I comment on rezonings, variances and plan amendments. I calculate parking requirements and review traffic studies. Lots get re-zoned, subdivisions get approved, permits are issued, etc.

This is your bread and butter professional planning. It’s not a bad living for a planning nerd like myself. Most days I enjoy it, but I don’t think municipal planning is something most people think about on a regular basis. Unless something ‘bad’ is proposed nearby, people tend to ignore the process. I think that’s pretty reasonable — why invest time and energy in things that don’t affect you personally?

What does interest people about planning? It seems clear that by-laws aren’t it. What do people care deeply about? I think everyone, regardless of background, age or politics cares deeply about the safety of themselves and the people they love. They care about being able to get to jobs, to school and to shops and services. They care about having meaningful work and a decent roof over their heads. Often, people care very deeply about less tangible things like community, prosperity, justice, spirituality, culture, art and beauty.

Zoning by-laws and long-term plans — the main approach to planning for decades — don’t deal with these big issues. The social and economic side of cities was overlooked, and the physical design of cities was mostly left to traffic engineers and private developers. Meanwhile in academia, planners carefully studied the social, environmental and economic aspects of cities. Professional planners mostly ignored or misunderstood this work.

Ignoring the social side of cities has been an enormous mistake. The main reason people move to cities is to be close to other people: people that can get you jobs; people that share your views and passions; people that can educate you; people who can entertain you; people you can date. Even people that don’t like dense urban living often want to live near cities, in suburbs and small towns. All of the advantages of cities — the stores, the theaters, the schools, the jobs, the restaurants — only exist because many, many people’s talents are at work in a city.

Jane Jacobs, the great urban thinker, put it best in The Death and Life of Great American Cities:

The diversity, of whatever kind, that is generated by cities rests on the fact that in cities so many people are so close together, and among them contain so many different tastes, skills, needs, supplies, and bees in their bonnets.

Jacobs felt that nurturing diversity and enabling social connections were the foundation of any great city. Indeed, she believed the wealth and creativity in cities was built upon countless small, everyday connections where people shared ideas and built trust.

This is the heart of building great cities – creating connections between diverse people, with diverse talents and ideas. I might meander through many topics – urban design, demographics, sociology, economics, transportation – but the central ideas will be about creating vibrant, diverse and engaging cities – social cities.

I hope you enjoy my posts.

About the author

Sean Gillis

Sean is a professional urban planner. He's interested in how cities work to connect people and ideas. Sean's passionate about transportation, design and public spaces. He works for Halifax Regional Municipality. The opinions in his posts are his own.