Future Here Now: The New Human-less Urbanism

Local Learnings

Sometimes the act of someone else missing the point is more illustrative than any treatise I could write.

On the Reddit thread r/urbanism, this showed up:

The remainder of the comments in the thread below the screen shot mocked “The Fight Against Anti-Car” for its unbelievable stupidity. Emphasis on mocked and unbelievable stupidity. Reddit threads aren’t known for their nicety, but these sounded like lifts from the script of Mean Girls.

When I looked at this picture (on my phone, so yes, smaller than you might be seeing), I didn’t even see the one person sitting there. I saw a whole lot of tables and trees, and very little sign of humans.

So despite my AICP, I saw the point of the zombie apocalypse question. Which was apparently lost on the commenters ready to tear it apart.

In the urban design world, there’s an almost religious belief in if you build it, they will come. As though the mere act of putting out tables and chairs and trees will draw people, like the cantaloupe rind so…