Kiev has been on my radar for, it would be fair to say, something like 45 years. The first stirring of interest in Ukraine came with a good friend in elementary school on the northwest side of Chicago (in a rather heavily Slavic immigrant neighborhood). Myron was the son of Ukrainian immigrants, and every time I went to his house, it was like a border crossing. The style of pretty much everything in that house (including Myron's clothing) was somehow eastern in nature. But most memorable was the exotic and delicious food made by Myron's mother, who from my impressions at the time was a lively and powerful character. The savory, homemade food, often with a lot of garlic, was totally different from the rather bland fare I was used to at home. I loved it!   

Although I made it to the USSR way back in 1984, Kiev and the Ukraine had to wait until this summer. There was a particularly high level of anticipation, as the idea of "Kiev" had always captivated me. I just somehow knew it would be fascinating. I'd read books dealing with Ukraine's rather difficult history, as well as contemporary accounts that weren't particularly complimentary (one describing Ukraine as "the Africa of Europe"). What's more, this is a country in the midst of a civil war. But I'd also read lots of positive travel accounts and few things attract me more than underrated and under-visited cities and countries. 

Arrival brought me into a not totally unfamiliar world. Maybe the closest parallel in my recent experience would be Belgrade, Serbia. Ukraine may be undergoing very hard times but Kiev, at least, is a pleasant place. One simple way of describing my first impression upon arrival here would be: "it's better than I expected." Average income levels might suggest that Kiev would look as poor as cities in Central America or even Africa. On the surface at least, Kiev was nothing like cities in those regions. And although Kiev is familiarly European in character, it is European in the eastern sense. Structurally and atmospherically it's very much as I remember parts of St. Petersburg back in 1984 (when it was still called Leningrad) and Moscow in 1991. The bulk of this city is obviously a product of Soviet urban planning - which in theory is itself not radically different from planning decades ago in northern European cities (especially Helsinki). But from my hotel window on the edge of the city where I stayed the first night, there were also tantalizing glimpses of something else: little houses with gardens on narrow lanes, with a general sense of dereliction, much as can be found in parts of American cities and towns. Maybe that's also part of the familiarity I experienced.  

I will start this glimpse into Kiev where most tourists begin, the showcase center in and adjacent to Maidan Square.  It's an important starting point, not just because of its recent significance as the focal point of the Orange Revolution, but because of its importance in terms of mid-20th century history. This area of monumental, Stalinist architecture (which spreads out along the impressive Khreshchatyk Street and into neighboring streets) was built after the phenomenal destruction of the Second World War. 

I could imagine the important political and ideological statement the redesigned and rebuilt center made. it's a vision of the triumphal Soviet Union, Stalin's vision of Soviet power. This whole area has wide avenues and large buildings built in the style sometimes called "Stalin baroque." The monumental scale is impressive, but it's not particularly inviting. The dozens of little kiosks and cafes that have popped up, however, add a nice human scale and detail to the streetscape, and give good reason to loiter and people watch. .But still, the more cozy streets lie elsewhere, in other, older parts of the city. A thought that struck me was the scarce resources that must have been put into this area at a time when the country was still reeling from the devastation of the war. Living standards at this time were terribly low. As important as it may have been to morale after the war, the diversion of resources to build this showcase center must have held back the building of desperately needed housing. 

The pictures I have give such a poor impression that I recommend going to Google Street View to get a sense of what this and other streets in Kiev are like. Click HERE to take a peek at Khreshchatyk Street. 

Large areas of the center radiating out from Khreshchatyk Street are filled with a lovely mix of buildings from  the early post-war and pre-war periods. This is the Kiev I find really enchanting. The streets are energetic and complex, and full of restaurants, cafes, shops and even monasteries and churches. There are plenty of diversions for leisurely strolls.

Besarabsky Square (Street View and picture above), at the end of Khreshchatyk Street, give a perfect example of how richly beautiful this city can be.  The old Besarabsky Market, built around 1910 (the building at the back left of the photo), is itself is a lively center for fresh foods, and also lots of little restaurants, including Vietnamese and Vegan. I don't know how much damage this area suffered during the war, but somehow it seems to be basically intact (or rebuilt). 

Below is a sampling of pre-war architecture that dominates much of the center. 

You know you are in the east of Europe when you see the golden domes of churches, and Kiev has a lot of these. To the right you see St. Sophia's cathedral, completed around 1050AD, and still containing some original mosaics and frescos. This is one of Kiev's "World Heritage Sites". The square in front of the church is surrounded by a real hodgepodge of architecture from several eras, including some recently built ghastly faux baroque buildings (made primarily of glass and steel - and not visible in this photo), which are an insult to such a historic place. I imagine they arose due to some combination of chaos and bribes.

There are many historic areas with monasteries and churches, mostly along the high west bank of the Dnieper. This river, by the way, is a defining feature of Kiev. It divides the city in two, and from the hills on the west bank, there are scenic views over the river as it winds through the city. Along the edges are promenades with cafes, the historic Podil district, and in the middle of the river, Hydropark, an island with beaches. It fascinated me to learn that the Dnieper has a system of locks that allow rather large ships to come to Kiev from the Black Sea and beyond.  It is a real port city, despite being more than 800km from the sea. 

What struck me repeatedly is that Kiev looks better on the surface and has a higher level of civility than cities in other countries at this same, very low economic level. I found people to be generally polite, decently dressed, and clean. Although run down in many areas, I didn't find the city generally dirty. Shops and restaurants are basically clean, as were the apartments I rented. ​

According to the IMF, Ukraine's average income (adjusted for purchasing power) is between that of El Salvador and Belize, and near that of Honduras. Once again, as I've noticed so often, countries with low GINI coefficients (and low inequality) look much better than those with high GINI coefficients, even those with far higher incomes. I always look at this imperfect measure as I visit new countries because it often helps explain what I'm seeing on the ground. Ukraine has one of the lowest GINI coefficients on the planet, and this can go a long way to explaining how orderly and decent Kiev is compared to other cities in countries at a similar GDP level. But there is something else at work here in Kiev, as well. Maybe it's the legacy of being part of an industrialized world power with intellectual capital and the resources to build things like a metro system, a well-planned urban structure, and the institutions we associate with a developed country. But then again, that may be a kind of "Kiev mirage": the superficial appearance of a high level of development, even if things are very rough around the edges. Maybe if you scratch below the surface, things are really as bad as the numbers indicate. I found signs of this when I visited crumbling hospitals and the dilapidated Kiev Zoo.

But on the whole, Kiev is somehow not really the developing world, in the sense that many African or Latin American cities are. To me, it's just a rather rundown version of Europe. Poverty certainly exists here on a wide scale, but it takes a different form in it's spatial and structural expression. A fine example of this would be the generous allocation of green space throughout the city. This is not something you find in most poor cities. 

A reliable feature of the streets in Kiev, and a delight for me, are coffee kiosks, which are  really everywhere. This is, it seems, a coffee culture. I was surprised at the variety of these places, and the quality of the coffee many of them offered at a reasonable price. There are also fancier sit down cafes with mouth watering desserts. 

The kiosk phenomenon is widespread, and there are kiosks selling all sorts of foods, and pretty much anything....from hardware to clothing. Along with the coffee kiosks, most streets have food kiosks as well, selling savory and sweet pastries. The most vibrant and busy areas are around metro stops. Here there is always a buzz of activity, with all sorts of kiosks and vendors. The underground passageways of the metro entrances are also lined with all sorts of stores. I seemed to notice a lot of flower shops and clothing vendors. Urban planners complain about all these kiosks, many of which have risen illegally or with bribes, but I found them a lively addition to what might otherwise be rather lifeless streets. 

Below, a sampling of coffee kiosks, including one named after Obama. 

Public transportation is certainly the best in the world at this income level. 

* 

I went to Leningrad (as St. Petersburg was called for decades) in 1984 while a student at the University of Oslo. Because of reasonably friendly ties with the Nordic world, the Soviet Union allowed students from Norway to travel through the communist student organization, Sputnik. This meant an extremely low cost. My friends and I paid around US$100 for an all-inclusive week there, traveling by a Soviet passenger train (which I recall having coal fired heaters)  from Helsinki.  
Arriving in the Soviet Union as an American was an unusual thing, and the experience was profoundly different from any I'd had before. The most mundane aspects of daily life were strange to me. I remember the beverage vending machines (example above) where glasses were used and reused without washing (I think you could rinse the glasses); the ice cream vendors selling delicious vanilla ice cream and raspberry sherbet; the very shabby and practically empty food markets. 

There are a couple of interesting books that describe the special products and designs of Soviet life: Made in Russia: Unsung Icons of Soviet Life and Designed in the USSR: 1950-1989

As we were on a Sputnik tour, all aspects of the trip were controlled, and the overarching theme of every day was 'war memorials'. It wasn't hard to imagine why this was so important to people in the Soviet Union (I had a remote inkling of what they'd gone through), but after a few days of getting on tour buses and seeing yet another beautiful but for me boring park commemorating some aspect of the war, I was ready for escape. My buddy and I decided to bail out, and we claimed to be sick one morning, and then headed out on our own. That's when the real adventure began and glimpses of real Soviet life began. I'll save those stories for another time and place.

Kiev, like St. Petersburg, is filled to this day with many memorials of the "Great War". I'm not much of a fan of these things, but some of them in Kiev are really impressive, such as the Motherland Monument (see picture below), and the war museum itself was very engaging and really almost an emotional experience.  

The elegant, if monumental, look of much of the center of Kiev, gradually fades away to a rather dull uniformity. Most residents of the city live in standardized apartment blocks of various eras, most in need of renovation..

Housing in Kiev is dominated by
Panelny Dom buildings, panel-construction buildings, which were the Soviet Union's answer to an acute housing shortage. This was a huge experiment in industrialized housing construction, and on some measures it was a success. These buildings, also called Khrushyovka buildings (as mass construction began during the Kruschev era), appear in large numbers in every ex-Soviet city I've visited. For many people it was their first experience of having a private home, with their own kitchen and bathroom. 

While the exteriors and even public hallways look derelict and dilapidated, the inside of apartments can be quite cozy and well maintained. Investment in maintaining public spaces, it seems, is a low priority. The same applies to the yards of buildings. As I wrote above, poverty in Kiev is not evident as it would be in Latin America, where poor neighborhoods take on a radically different structural form. It's evident, instead, perhaps in the level of maintenance. And even here, I'm not sure this is a clear measure, as I've pointed out that apartments in these run down buildings can be quite nice. I really wonder about the condition of things like water pipes, electricity supplies, and heating. The three apartments I stayed in in Kiev varied in quality, but all had good water pressure and no electrical problems.  Maybe more revealing, however, is what often lurks behind these apartment blocks. I noticed sadly derelict green spaces,  rotting garbage piled high in dumpsters. old cars, and crumbling asphalt. 

I was fascinated by vestiges of the Soviet period, such as the elevators in one of the buildings I stayed in (pictured below), still running decades after being installed. I wondered how safe it was, but it sure did work fine. The green paint of the stairwells also was somehow reminiscent of the Soviet past. Why would anyone choose such a color?There is a whole genre of Soviet films that focuses on these sorts of buildings. 

What's striking to me is that the physical structure of the streets and green spaces is much like it would be in northern Europe...not so different from developments built in Helsinki in the 1960s and 70s, in fact. The difference is maintenance and upkeep (and no doubt original construction quality). In Kiev, there is only the occasional tended flower bed (emphasis on occasional). The fact that stores (things like little supermarkets and pharmacies) are integrated into the street fronts, and that the streets in these areas are often lined with informal vegetable and fruit stands, brings life to these areas. This is totally different from what you find in lifeless Nordic developments of a similar type, as spotlessly clean as they might be. 

A unexpected feature of Kiev's cityscape was the massive murals, I think generally of mosaic, on the sides of buildings and mosaics of varying sizes inside metros and public buildings. 

Mosaics from the Soviet period, I've read, often depict an idealized, futuristic vision of Soviet life. My extraordinarily poor camera skills really don't capture how beautiful these things are (I took many pictures but they just don't come through clearly here), so I share examples from two photographers, who have given me permission. The picture above is of row of apartment blocks with large mosaics along Peremohy Prospekt, I passed this place every day while I stayed in an apartment near the derelict Kiev Zoo.  

The first picture below is from the Central Bus Station in Kiev, which has a lot of other mosaics. The following site curates pictures of Soviet mosaics in Ukraine: https://sovietmosaicsinukraine.org/en/mosaic/63

The second picture is from the Shevchenko Cinema in Kiev. Read about it here: https://www.wired.com/story/soviet-murals-ukraine/ and check out Yevgen Nikiforov's book "Decommunized: Ukrainian Soviet Mosaics". 

One of the biggest pleasures for me upon arrival in a new country or city is to visit supermarkets to see what's on offer and what the locals are buying. Kiev's supermarkets, as much else in this country, are much better than this country's economic ranking indicate. The stores are tidy and clean, and filled with locally-made products. There are all sorts of bottled vegetables, pickles, and beans. I DID feel the selection of fresh vegetables and fruits could have been better, but the outdoor markets, at least during the time I was there in July and August, provided pretty good stuff. 

The one in the picture here, the ATB-Market next to one of the buildings I stayed in, is the largest chain in Kiev

In a city where English is rarely spoken, and the Cyrillic alphabet dominates, eating out can seem a challenge outside the main tourist areas (and who wants to eat in the tourist areas?). But with a little research, I discovered a few places where eating was easy and very economical. 

There's a chain of cafeteria-style restaurants called Puzata Hata where you have a tray and then just point or grab (if you don't speak Ukrainian or Russian) at whatever it is that looks good as you pass the various counters. The first picture below is of a meal from Puzata Hata, including breaded chicken and a salad, that probably cost about $4, including the drink. 

The second picture is from Varenychna Katyusha, another chain which specializes in traditional Ukrainina cuisine. It's also rather inexpensive and good for at least one try. It also has menus with pictures. In the second picture below I have kasha, peas, and some kind of cold soup...I think it was cucumber. 

In a big city like Kiev, this is just the tip of the iceberg of inexpensive but generally tasty food. There are countless stands selling all sorts of things from pizza to savory pastries. There are also many mid-range and expensive restaurants, generally with foreign cuisine. I even went to a Turkish restaurants one night.

But as I was staying in rented apartments, I often went shopping and cooked at home to get a feel for that experience, as well. 

On my first night in Kiev I stayed in the outskirts, in a hotel, figuring it would be too complicated to find my airbnb apartment in the evening on my first trip to Kiev. I chose a place  on Kharkivs'ke Highway (really just a big street) not too far from the airport, but very near a metro stop, Borispilska, so I could easily hop on the train and get to my apartment  in the morning. 

The picture you see to the left is the view from my hotel window. It was a really nice introduction to Kiev, and I must say this neighborhood (which I later discovered was quite typical of the outskirts of the city) was very attractive its own way. The often ramshackle small houses and poorly paved lanes have a real charm and coziness, as they are all rather unique and generally surrounded by flower and vegetable gardens. Pictures of some of these lanes below. 

This was a taste of what will come on my next trips to Ukraine...to get to the small towns and countryside that show a totally different side of this country. 

Guadalajara, a city that I've known for over 30 years, surprised me on my latest visit. Back in 2013, I wrote on my blog that it was a city full of promise but lacking leadership and competent management. This puzzled me because Guadalajara has attributes that many cities would envy. These include an almost ideal climate, a vibrant and young population, a strong cultural life, and a nice collection of historic buildings. But for years, Guadalajara just wasn't approaching its potential. Money and people were leaving the central areas, leaving it looking forlorn, rundown, and unsafe. 

I'm very happy to report that things are changing. Guadalajara is becoming a more pleasant destination - a place in which I could imagine living and thriving. What has brought about this change? 

Evidence of the change comes in many forms, but fundamentally it stems from obvious investment in the core of the city. It's a signal that the city is committed to creating a better urban environment for its residents. This is welcoming a variety of people back into the city center and I imagine brings a sense of optimism that will have (or is already having) a snowball effect with other investment following. 

A prime example is the new bike-share system, mibici, and the new bike lanes that have been added to many streets. I used mibici for three days and found it really transformed my time in the city. I could move quickly between neighborhoods and felt the central areas had become tied together. I no longer had to face a very long walk from the center to Chapultepec, for example, or from the area of my favorite hotel to really anywhere of interest in the city. The system is very affordable and I noticed a large number of people using it. I even noted capacity constraints in certain areas. It's clearly a popular addition to the urban scene. 

One of the telltale signs of Mexican city life is the ramshackle private buses that constitute a central part of  'public' transportation systems. These buses tend to be old and unattractive, and spew out huge amounts of pollution. 

Guadalajara is investing in new, city run public transportation projects. One of the most delightful is the new electric trolley buses that have replaced the derelict old electric buses from years past. These buses are beautiful, clean and a pleasure to ride (pictured here). I rode this bus several times and felt it was really up to typical European standards of public transport.. 

Guadalajara has other nice public transport options: its very clean light rail system, Tren ligero de Guadalajara (which is currently building a new line) and a bus-rapid transit line, Macrobus. 

Another sign of change is the spate of new high-rise construction projects west of the city center in the area near Chapultepec. The style of these buildings reminds me of buildings in nicer neighborhoods of Bogota, Colombia, a far denser city. The increase in density (and higher-income residents) will bolster local businesses such as restaurants and cafes and increase security. It's the beginning of a virtuous cycle of positive developments which I feel has finally come to this city. 

In contrast with Bogota, I should say that Guadalajara has a more laid-back and less-frenetic atmosphere, aided by the warm and sunny (but not too warm) climate that has got to be one of the best in the world. ​

The days I spent in Guadalajara were filled with a sense of adventure and enjoyment. There are many lively and delightful neighborhoods away from the typical tourist areas, such as the district around Calle Andrés Terán, that overflow with energy and tasty surprises, such as my favorite spot for tortas ahogadas, Mr. Paco´s.

A friend of mine from New York came for a visit, and she agreed that Guadalajara really would be a nice place to live. We enjoyed leisurely walks, delicious food, beautiful cafes, and the typically friendly Mexican people everywhere we went. Adding to the pleasure is the remarkably low cost of living here. Delicious meals can cost less than US$5, and the cinema less than US$3. Guadalajara, incidentally, has an outstanding independent film house, Cineforo, where I recently saw an excellent Iranian film, The Salesman. For those interested, Guadalajara is not a bad place to retire. A large apartment in a nice area near the center can run for less than US$500/month. 

As I wrote several years ago, Guadalajara has a lot of very attractive architecture and cultural attractions that need to be brought together into a cohesive whole to make this city really outstanding.

Although progress is being made, more pedestrianization of streets in the center - especially those that reach out to landmarks such as the Expiatorio (pictured at right) and the Chapultepec area - would help more fully tie things together.

A couple of good candidates would be Calle Priscilana Sànchez and/or Calle Manuel López Cotilla. At present these streets have narrow sidewalks and are traversed by polluting private buses of the old sort making them uninviting corridors for pedestrians. Their unwelcoming nature reinforces the sense of distance between the historical center and other beautiful areas of the city.

How difficult would it be to close one of these streets to traffic and just let pedestrians and businesses take over? It puzzles me how controversial rather simple solutions like this can be, especially in light of all the evidence from around the world showing how pedestrianization can bring connective streets like these to life, increasing quality of life and increasing economic activity significantly.

One of the joys of arrival in a foreign city is picking up a local newspaper, heading to a cafe and just absorbing the scene while perusing the news. In Guadalajara, I get the Latin American edition of El Pais (one of the best newspapers in the world, I believe), and with that stroll over to a sunny sidewalk cafe or restaurant and get settled in for a couple of hours. The simple pleasures of life are really hard to beat. Add to that the smiles of the ever-charming Mexicans, and I am a happy man here in Guadalajara. I will be back to spend more time in this lovely city.

The phenomenon of modern China is unquestionably a lively topic among journalists and writers around the world. There are dozens and dozens of books and countless articles coming out on this subject every year. Having lived in Shanghai off and on for the last 2 years (and with many visits to this country over more than 30 years), I often reflect on how my perceptions of this city, and China at large, have changed over time. Certainly my views have become more nuanced and complex.

I'm afraid that when many people in the West today think of China they conjure negative images from the past that might feature gray, dystopian industrial cities and faceless workers toiling in sweat shops. This simplistic sort of view misses out not only on the reality of the life of most people here, but it also loses sight of the incredible social and economic transformation taking place in China. Shanghai, a wealthy and sophisticated city of 24 million people, may not be typical of much of China, but its varied complexity serves as a microcosm that contains a lot of what modern China is all about.

As is usual in my postings, I write here primarily about the physical characteristics of this city and how it measures up, really, to other cities around the world. It's one way to get a fix on modern China. 

I enter the fray here with caution. Because of its enormity, Shanghai is not a place succinctly described. It's a city of towering skyscrapers, broad, tree-lined avenues, and colossal infrastructure projects, with many areas clearly a part of the wealthy, developed world.  It's also a city still containing dense and often rather untidy older neighborhoods that might be more typical of the China of the past, and of less wealthy cities of central and western China. A unique aspect of Shanghai, and really its incredible treasure, is its extensive areas of European architecture dating from Shanghai’s period as an international trade and finance hub in the first half of the last century. Walking through the streets of the the former French Concession can lead one to nostalgia for cities in France or Germany. Nowhere else in East Asia has anything like it. ​​

For those familiar with East Asia and its development over the last half century, Shanghai  fits rather well into the familiar pattern of stunning growth and transformation of East Asia’s megacities. Following in the footsteps of trailblazer Tokyo (the first Asian capital to join the rich world), and the subsequent  rise of Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul and Taipei, Shanghai is very rapidly approaching the status of wealthy, developed world city. Its income per head is higher than several European Union countries, and life expectancy of its residents is as high as in Switzerland. In fact, no large US city can match Shanghai’s life expectancy. Its public education system is also one of the best in the world and Shanghai students score at the top of international PISA tests. Finally, Shanghai feels like a very safe city. Violent crime is rare. This is not something to be scoffed at in a country that just 30 years ago was deeply impoverished. The Chinese are clearly doing something right. 

Taking off my rose-tinted glasses for a moment, there are certainly challenges here. Pollution levels are too high (although generally much better than in Beijing), housing is very costly, there’s still a roughness around the edges in many parts of the city, and government control over the internet and media is highly frustrating. The air pollution requires checking pollution levels before deciding to go out and get some exercise (today it's not too bad). The high cost of housing diminishes living standards for many people. The great China firewall makes accessing any Google product, Facebook, and some western media (including the New York Times) impossible without a VPN, and even with one, shaky and slow. The positives of life in Shanghai, however, well outweigh the negatives, and I try to stay focused on those.

​I spend the bulk of my time in the older historic center, Here you can find delightful islands of civility, style and elegance – areas that would look at home in Singapore, Hong Kong or even Tokyo.  This is where many expatriates and the wealthiest Chinese live in luxury high rises, surrounded by glamorous retail stores and malls, and always near wonderful old structures from the last century. You find smartly paved sidewalks, cozy cafes and streets filled with imported cars. In fact, I’ve never seen so many Bentleys, Rolls Royces and Maseratis in any other city.

Every evening I take a bike ride to explore new areas of the center, and rarely come away without a new discovery, be it an interesting old building that seems like it's been transplanted from Europe, or a masterfully landscaped park tucked in between tall buildings. I should add here that Shanghai, although very densely populated, has many parks, and the city lavishes a lot of attention on them. They are beautifully maintained and use the highest quality materials. It can be an inspiration to any urban designer. 

The charm and elegance of this area, centered on the former French Concession, has received so much attention that I will limit myself to sharing just a few pictures below, not of famous buildings, but just typical run of the mill buildings so common to the streets here. 

The best way to get a glimpse of modern China (and to see where China is quickly heading as a country) is to move to the new areas of Shanghai that have been built in the last 10 or 15 years, and to those that are being newly built now. It's easy to see that the older, shoddier areas of the city are rapidly being demolished and replaced. I imagine that a visitor to Shanghai in 2030 will be hard pressed to find any of these unattractive places remaining.

This 'new' China is a very different world from both the historical center of Shanghai and the poor and disheveled neighborhoods of the past. Modern urban China, although often rather gray and characterless, is highly organized and generally tidy. The vast scale of development communicates both an urgency to get as many people as possible decently housed and physically connected as well as a phenomenal capacity for construction. Vast banks of tall residential buildings, sprawling centers of offices and governmental and cultural buildings, go on as far as the eye can see.

The very vastness and density of the city, which necessitates massively broad road systems, deprives much of the new city of human scale. This leaves many residential developments as islands unto themselves, with their own stores and restaurants. But whatever they may lack in charm, it is certainly hard to be unimpressed by the obvious rapidity of development and what that must mean to the average Chinese person. China is creating a new, much more livable and comfortable world for a huge portion of its population. In some ways, I think the metaphor of ‘taming the wilderness” is apt. China before the era of reforms and high economic growth was a vast territory of rather bleak poverty and maybe even hopelessness. This ‘wilderness’ is well on the way to being tamed, as first-world infrastructure, including modern housing, is taking over the landscape.  

Some more typical residential areas are pictured below.

​
A cornerstone of quality of life in any city is mobility. If people can't move smoothly and quickly from one part of a city to another, the daily commute becomes a wearying struggle and often the poor can't even reach jobs in business or wealthier areas. This is something I see often in the United States and Latin American countries, such as Mexico. I know of people in Mexico who require two hours each way via a combination of multiple buses to reach their jobs...this adds up to an expensive 4 hour daily commute. In America, the poor generally have to rely on totally substandard public transportation or on older cars that are prone to breakdown and repairs they can't afford. Research has shown that this is one of the key drivers of urban poverty. The toll poor transit options takes on people and families is heavy.

Shanghai is a case study of a city that has prioritized and excelled at world-class public transportation. It continues to expand the longest metro system in the world, and has shiny clean stations. For those off the metro grid, there are very decent and inexpensive buses that link to the metro. It's easy to get most anywhere in Shanghai by public transportation, although to use the buses it's very helpful to be able to read at least some Chinese characters.
 
For those relying on private cars or taxis, Shanghai's wide roads help minimize the worst sorts of traffic jams. As unappealing as these big streets are in terms of the pedestrian experience, they act like highways in the middle of cities and keep traffic moving..

As in every place I live, I tend to get around Shanghai by bicycle whenever the weather (and air quality) allows for this. Like most Chinese cities, Shanghai is well suited to bicyclists. Most major roads have specialized, very wide bicycle lanes, and even smaller streets are so heavily frequented by bicycles that drivers are accustomed to giving them space. That's not to say that bicycling, or driving for that matter, is for the faint of heart. To the uninitiated, Shanghai's streets are rather chaotic and little heed is paid to pedestrian crossing signals. Motorists seem to be willing to run down pedestrians, drive on the wrong side of the road without warning, or to just stop in the middle of the road to take time to think. Bicyclists follow similar rules and routinely run red lights and dart between cars (who rarely slow down for them) in a really crazy race to get somewhere fast. I'm honestly surprised at the very few accidents I see here.  

A pleasant thing about biking (and walking) in Shanghai is that you are almost always covered by a lovely canopy of trees. In the hot summer this makes city life so much more pleasant. The Chinese are tree crazy and I have to commend them on the huge number of trees they are caring for and constantly planting. Despite the incredible population density here, Shanghai is in many ways a green city.  
​
Below are some pictures of bicycle lanes

​Probably the most surprising discovery for me in Shanghai is the leafy suburban neighborhoods that seem to have come straight out of Los Angeles or Atlanta (or even Beverly Hills).  Here you will find winding, tree-lined streets, well-manicured, grassy lawns, quiet cul-de-sacs, and community centers with swimming pools. My business partner and her family live in a development like this, next to the Shanghai American School. When you enter this place, Rancho Santa Fe, it’s hard to imagine you’re still in urban China. Children play on green lawns, ride their bicycles along very quiet and shaded streets, and the smell of neighborhood barbecues fill the air. One such development, a short walk from Rancho Santa Fe, is Forest Manor, a kind of Chinese Beverly Hills from what I can tell. Forest Manor was built to impress. There are imposing gates at the entrances, huge mansions lining broad, tree-lined streets, swimming pools, and tennis courts.  It’s an ostentatious show of wealth. This is something I haven't seen in other Asian capitals. It certainly doesn’t exist in Tokyo to the best of my knowledge.

​There is always a mystery to life in a radically foreign society where so much is so easy to misunderstand – and in the case of China, where the written language is generally incomprehensible to foreigners. Sometimes I like to think about how my perceptions of this country would change if suddenly all the signs were in German, English or Japanese. It would certainly make things more familiar and easier to understand - and it would probably shift my perceptions in a positive direction, as I associate those languages with high levels of development. Inundation in Chinese script and even the spoken language colors perceptions of strangeness and inaccessibility. This can be a major barrier to a full and independent life for foreigners here.

This barrier is a shame because it masks so many magical things just waiting for discovery. This includes the countless tasty dishes on menus of restaurants, the signs advertising services like acupuncture (what a difference that has made to me), and of course all the animated conversations taking place in this very talkative country. But being hidden also brings a sense of adventure in trying to understand and get below the surface. This makes for an exciting urban experience if you are open to it. 

My latest city living experiment was in the capital of Spain's Catalonia region: Barcelona. It's easily one of the most pleasant cities in which I've stayed due to its physical charm, friendly people, relatively low cost of living and excellent local food. For a nomad like myself, it's one of the few places in the world where I could imagine myself living contentedly for the long term. In this posting I want to explain why Barcelona checks all the boxes for a hard-to-please urbanist like me.

Let me start by pointing out the obvious. Barcelona is a popular place. Not only is it a major tourist destination (it's the 10th most visited city in the world) but it's also a mecca for people from all over the world who settle here to enjoy an enviable quality of life. I met immigrants from every corner of the earth (my closest group of friends came from France, Poland, Belgium, Japan, the United States, China, Syria, Pakistan and Georgia (the country), all rather exceedingly pleased with their choice. I know the typical complaints of foreigners in cities all over the world. I must say that the complaints are more muted in the expat community of Barcelona. People realize how good they've got it.

As usual in my wanderings in cities around the world, I discovered that many of Barcelona's charms emerge outside the congested tourist center. Here the streets are less crowded and, in fact, this is where the majority of Barcelona's residents live - the place where a typical Barcelona life unfolds. I focus on the common, everyday aspects of life in this posting.

From an urbanist's perspective, Barcelona is a fine example of a city with streets designed for people. In the picture above you can see a typically narrow street, planted with trees along one side, with no space for car parking. Note the metal posts along the edge of the sidewalk that ensure that cars don't illegally park and that give pedestrians an added sense of safety. What a simple model of livable streets this can be for many developing world cities with similarly narrow streets. Often I hear urban planners making excuses that there simply isn't room for tree planting on narrow streets. Once you get rid of space for cars, however, possibilities blossom.

Like most other Spanish cities, Barcelona is built around car-free plazas and many of its streets are pedestrianized. I lived on such a street. The fewer cars there are, the more welcoming and alive streets and plazas tend to be. They become public spaces in which people stroll, do their shopping, sit on benches, and most typically, enjoy a coffee at one of the countless cafes that spill out into the safe and unpolluted car-free space. The diversity of street life is endlessly fascinating. Sitting at a cafe watching it all go by is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

Barcelona has its share of traffic clogged streets, however. Above is an example of an elegant, but pedestrian and bicyclist-unfriendly, street that is typical of this city. The architecture is beautiful here, but the street lacks the spiritedness and complexity of car-free spaces. 

Below you can see some lively, but very typical, plaza and street scenes near where I lived in Barcelona.

Sunshine is another attraction of this Mediterranean city, and the generally mild climate and blue skies make for a life oriented towards the streets and the city's open spaces. The good weather also makes it very practical to get around the city by bicycle, and this was my main mode of transport.

Barcelona has a well-developed system of separated bike lanes that makes it very easy to move around this city quickly. Although not as comprehensive as bicycle networks in cities such as Amsterdam or Copenhagen (where virtually every street has a bike lane), the layout of the path network connects all areas of the city. It just takes a bit of time to learn on which streets the bicycle paths lie.

Barcelona also has an excellent bike share system called Bicing. Many of my friends used this system on a daily basis and didn't have bicycles of their own. You can see a typical 'station' in the picture on the left, along with a bicycle lane that is fully separated (if a bit narrow) from automobile traffic.

On rainy days or when going long distances, I used the city's first-rate public transportation system. There is a dense network of metro lines that serve most neighborhoods, as well as excellent bus and commuter train service. Barcelona has one of the best public transit systems in the world, in my opinion. It's inexpensive, clean, efficient and generally a pleasure to use.

A visit to the hills above the city is one of the highlights of time spent in Barcelona. From high above the city you get a breathtaking view of the urban area and the endless, blue Mediterranean Sea.

Over time, I became especially attracted to these heights. This is where some of the city's most lovely neighborhoods lie and where you can find nature and tranquility. These neighborhoods, often wealthy, are dotted with beautiful and often idiosyncratic houses and buildings. I've been told that old Catalan families tend to live higher up in this city. I also found that, as in the rest of the city, people from all over the world have settled here.

My good friend Valentine, from France, has a house high above the city near Peu del Funicular. I spent a lot of time up at her lovely place above the city, enjoying meals or a nice cup of tea on her terrace (often while studying together for our Spanish class). I usually went to Valentine's by bicycle, walking my bicycle for the last very steep kilometer or so. My rides home, gliding through beautiful neighborhoods with the panorama of the city and sea in front of me, make for some of my most cherished memories of life in Barcelona.

As in other cities in which I've lived, what ultimately makes the experience worthwhile and deeply meaningful are the fascinating people I meet. Barcelona was an especially rewarding place in this regard. I was fortunate to make some dear friends.

With a backdrop of this elegant city, I spent countless hours enjoying  wine, freshly-made food, and engaging conversation in the beautiful Spanish language.
I include here a few pictures of some of my new friends.

Walking along the beautifully pedestrianized Madero Street in the heart of Mexico City, I was struck with nostalgia for Istiklal Street in Istanbul. Istiklal is the famous pedestrian street, lined with elegant buildings, stores and restaurants, that runs southwest from Taksim Square in the old European heart of Istanbul (see image below and my previous posting on Istanbul here). 

Comparing a street in Mexico City to a world-famous street in Istanbul might seem a provocation - and that it is. I want to lure readers into the mental exercise of repositioning Mexico City into a different category of place. 

Shedding some preconceptions opens the mind to a revealing comparison that extends beyond two lively pedestrian streets. These cities have a range of things in common and, in fact, if I had to choose a city that Mexico City most reminds me of, it just might be Istanbul.

Mexico City and Istanbul are very old cities, built upon layers of earlier civilizations, with huge populations (well over 10 million inhabitants each). They are filled with a vast array of historical and architectural treasures and have teeming streets, vast markets, elegant neighborhoods, and share an exhilarating vibrance. Incidentally, both cities were built on water, although in Mexico City's case the water has almost entirely disappeared. Comparing these cities also makes sense from an economic perspective: Mexico and Turkey have roughly equivalent incomes per head. It's illuminating to see the contrasts between cities of similar resources and size managing the challenges of creating an attractive and healthy urban environment.  

But while Istanbul is a mecca for tourists from all over the world, Mexico City remains a relative tourist backwater in comparison. It hasn't yet gained the recognition it deserves for the positive changes it's experienced over the last years and for its wealth of attractions and the impressive ambience it has in so any areas. 

Below is another image of Madero Street in Mexico City (left), and a picture of Istiklal Street in Istanbul (right).

Up front let me say that my verdict on Mexico City is in: you don't have to fly across the Atlantic or Pacific to visit a dynamic, exotic and captivating global city. 

Mexico City has pretty much everything any tourist, adventurous or not, could ask for. It has countless museums, shopping for all tastes, regional and international food, and overall a breathtaking level of urban vitality. 

There are only two cities in North America that offer this kind of dense city experience: New York and Mexico City. In Mexico City, however, you can immerse yourself in the urban scene for a small fraction of what it would cost in New York. I think Mexico City qualifies as one of the best kept secrets of North American travel. 

What I imagine to be Mexico City's unglamorous reputation is mostly a relic from the past that will fade as this city continues to improve and gains the attention it deserves. 

One of the things that makes Mexico City such an engaging and fascinating city is that it is over-endowed with a lot of friction. Friction, in this sense, is the the density of details on streets, details that make you want to stop and take a look, buy something, or have a seat and get something to eat or drink. You can see this in most of the pictures I've included in this posting. Mexico City just overwhelms your senses with the array of things on offer. A walk along the streets here is rarely uneventful.

An obvious starting point of a visit to Mexico City is the historical center. This area exudes character and, with the slightest help from the imagination, elegance. It is arguably the most extensive area of historic architecture in the Western Hemisphere. Few cities I've visited in North or South America can compare, although Buenos Aires gives Mexico City some serious, if more recent, architectural competition. Thanks to a concerted effort at restoration and revitalization, it now rivals even great European cities in terms of its attractiveness and beats most of them hands down when it comes to verve and dynamism. 

Below are images of some of the vibrant (often pedestrianized) streets of the historical center. 

Although tourists might imagine spending the bulk of their time in the historic center, this is just the beginning of what's on offer in this complex city. There are several extensive areas with rather dramatically different personalities. 

West of the center is Zona Rosa, which reminds me of modern areas of European cities, such as Barcelona or Madrid. Zona Rosa was once the wealthiest area of the city, but went into decline after the 1920s. It has since reinvented itself as a major center for shopping and entertainment. I think most tourists probably stay in this area because of its convenience, wealth of hotels and restaurants, and general attractiveness. Maybe it's the least exotic part of the city and most accessible for visitors. 

South of the Zona Rosa lie the Bohemian neighborhoods of Condesa and Roma. These areas, like Zona Rosa, have a history of being wealthy neighborhoods that went into decline as wealthy populations moved further west. They are built on a smaller, more intimate scale than Zona Rosa, and from what I observed, are gentrifying rapidly. This is the place to go to find trendy cafes and restaurants set in generally quiet and green streets. 

Further west of the Zona Rosa you will find the very exclusive and newer centers of wealth in neighborhoods such as Polanco and Lomas de Chapultepec. These areas, like clusters of the super wealthy in most large cities around the world, impress you with the extraordinary riches on display including high-end restaurants, stores and hotels.  

This is just a quick summary of some of the neighborhoods I've visited in this city.  A week or two here would barely scratch the surface of what's on offer. 

Below are views of streets in Condesa and Zona Rosa.

My case for parallels between Mexico City and Istanbul weakens critically, however, when you wander beyond the nicer sorts of neighborhoods I've described a bit above. The differences do not generally speak in Mexico City's favor.

The divergence is immediately evident in the differing attention to the details of infrastructure such as streets, sidewalks and other public spaces. It's plain to see in the obviously far more inequal society that Mexico is. And in all neighborhoods, rich and poor, the difference is there in the far poorer (if somewhat improved) air quality. These issues are important to raise because together they conspire to significantly drag down Mexico City's quality of life. Without addressing them effectively, Mexico City will never be as great a city as Istanbul.  

Ramshackle infrastructure is one of the characteristic features of Mexico's cities. It's apparent almost everwhere you go, with some exceptions, notably the infrastructure used by the upper classes, such as international airports.  The state of most streetscapes is stunningly apocalyptic. There is a haphazard look to construction, a seeming lack of any master plan, scraggly trees where they exist, and vast expanses of roughly poured concrete, with garbage strewn everywhere. This raggedness, combined with unattractive buildings spread out in a kind of low-density sprawl, makes for a uniquely unpleasant city experience in a large part of Mexico City's area. What I've written above about the delightful neighborhoods is true, but they make up a just one part of the city. Mexico City is so big that even if only 30% of its area is pleasant, that provides a huge area for tourists - and the wealthy - to enjoy. But it is truly a different world when you get away from the nicer areas.

Istanbul, in contrast, is a proud European city. It obviously takes pride in its general tidiness and sense of order in all of its neighborhoods, even the poorest. Istanbul, also a city of great contrasts, has much smaller areas of despair, and these are being renovated at a feverish pace (often to the dismay of those fighting for the rights of the poor). One reason for the less striking contrasts is the lower level of inequality in Istanbul. The poor are poor, but seemingly not as desperately poor as in Mexico City. 

The pictures below contrast the streets of Mexico City (top 3 pics) with those of Istanbul (bottom 3). Although I may have chosen nice examples from Istanbul, these are the norm, not the exception. I don't think I saw one street in Mexico City as nicely laid out and constructed as most common newer streets in Istanbul. Istanbul is another world, a city exhibiting a high level of urban organizational competence. 

An area where Mexico City compares favorably to Istanbul is in its extensive metro system. The system covers wide parts of the city and compared to cities in the United States and Europe, is very inexpensive (about 35 US cents for a ride anywhere the system goes).

During rush hours the metro is extremely crowded and not pleasant to use, but otherwise it's a great way to get around the city. I was impressed with the general level of cleanliness (easily cleaner and better maintained than the New York subway) and the polished stone floors. It's also an ideal place to see a wide spectrum of people and to witness the never-ending drama of vendors, musicians and others passing through the cars. 

The metro does not, however, cover all of the city. In fact, considering Mexico City's population, the system is smaller than it should be. Far too large a share of public transport takes place on terribly crowded buses (often privately run) that are not integrated with the metro system. If a low-wage Mexican worker has to take a couple of buses, or a bus and then the metro, to get to work, this can add up to a huge amount of time and significant cost. There are plans afoot to modestly expand the metro system in the next few years.

Below are couple of pictures of the artwork in one station and the unusual rubber-tired trains (as in Paris) which make for surprisingly quiet and smooth operation. 

There is one additional feature of Mexico City that truly stands out. I've never been to a city with such a proliferation of public washrooms. They are literally everywhere and cost less then 40 US cents to use. Just look for a WC sign. See shots below.

I think it's fitting to end with a picture of a congested highway in the middle of the city (left) because autos are both a symptom and a cause of so many of Mexico City's problems. 

Because the upper and middle classes generally don't use public transport, cars dominate the streetscapes of this city. And because this influential constituency doesn't use the trains or buses, they don't demand improved public transport. The problem perpetuates itself. With ever larger numbers of cars on the crowded streets, bus transport becomes slower and slower and air pollution stays at levels that are totally unacceptable. 

Despite being a place very well worth a visit, without addressing its serious societal inequalities, including the stark divide in mobility, Mexico City will be condemned to an average quality of life well below its peers around the world. For tourists on a one or two week visit it's rather easy to ignore most of these quality-of-life issues. I believe most visitors will come away positively surprised and charmed. I know I will be back.

On a sunny summer day, under a Nordic blue sky, the vast web of Helsinki's forests, fields, beaches, and other green spaces conjure an urban wonder: a city thoroughly interwoven with nature. After four months of living in the capital of Finland, I'm of a mind to say that life here is very good. 

The good life that Helsinki offers may not be immediately apparent to the short-term visitor. This Baltic city is not a cosmopolitan center brimming with dazzling shopping, a vibrant food scene, or a pulsating nightlife. Instead it's a rather homogeneous, predictable place where the everyday is given priority over the spectacle. In fact, tourists here have often told me that they find the city boring, and boring it may be if you are looking for big-city life of the sort on offer in Paris, London or New York. 

The beauty of Helsinki is found in the ordinary, in its steady attention to the banal underpinnings of a secure, pleasant and healthy urban environment.  My time here convinced me that it delivers an exceptional quality of life, across many measures, for the majority of its inhabitants. It's not surprising that Helsinki typically ranks among the top ten cities in the world for quality of life. This quality of life is based upon factors such as safety, state of its infrastructure, access to nature, and quality of education and health care. It results from a high level of what I call urban organizational competence (the level and sophistication of a city's ability, through a variety of agencies, entities and experts, to organize and run itself) - a concept I will be writing more about in the future.

Finland has one of the most melodious national songs I've ever heard, Finlandia, by the Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius. 

An American composer used the melody in a hymn called This Is My Song (click and take a moment to listen), which I like because it makes clear, in such a beautiful way, the relativity of love of one's country: a recognition that although I may think my country is the most beautiful place in the world, people in other countries believe the same about their own countries. 

The following segment of the lyrics brought me to another place:

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

Although the sentiments of the song appeal to me, a worrisome realization comes to me that maybe, in fact, skies are bluer in some places than others, at least figuratively.

Before coming to Helsinki, I spent over three months in the United States, with long stays in Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, and shorter stays in Chicago, Columbus, Ohio, and New York. Arrival in Helsinki (like arrival in most northern European cities after time in the United States) presents a sharp, uncomplimentary contrast. Americans are often immersed in stunningly shabby physical surroundings, with urban planning and design (not to mention maintenance) decades or more behind other countries at a similar level of economic development.  Not only is their physical environment bluntly inferior, but they must contend with systemically ignored, but intense and simmering, social problems which impact security and much else. Because of inadequate investment, public institutions such as schools and government offices are also often poorly run and shabby. This is not an exaggeration. If you have experience between the two worlds, you know what I'm talking about. 

If Helsinki and Columbus (cities of very similar size and income level) were two types of cars, Helsinki would be a newish BMW 3-series (the European sort, nothing particularly fancy) and Columbus a 15 or 20 year-old Chevrolet Cavalier. The contrast is truly that profound. The aged condition of the old Cavalier represents the physical infrastructure of American cities. The technology in the car represents the sophistication of its public institutions, and the safety features, the city's crime situation. You might plug some new expensive equipment into the Cavalier - maybe a fancy new stereo or navigation system (which might correspond to a great university or fancy office building in a city) - but you still have the hugely outdated, run-down automobile (and city). The same goes for most other American cities in comparison with cities in the northern areas of Europe, Australia, and the wealthier countries of East Asia. Portland, Oregon may be one of the notable exceptions, but is itself still far behind. It's a national embarrassment for the USA, readily apparent to visitors from other wealthy countries who often are polite enough to say nothing about their surprise to rather patriotic and proud Americans.  

This posting on Helsinki will shed some light on what makes for really blue urban skies, and maybe help Americans understand their perennial overcast condition. Please note that I don't revel in my role as an annoying gadfly raising uncomfortable questions about urban life in the USA.  How happy I would be if America, instead, were an inspiration to the rest of the world that was leading the way in quality of urban life. 

Where's the cement?
An American arriving in Helsinki might experience a certain unease, a sense that something essential is missing. It's that comforting frosting of absolutely featureless, cheap cement covering all surfaces. Its absence will be noted because cement by the square yard is one of those things that makes American cities, well...American. 

In Helsinki, a needy cement junkie will have trouble tracking down any reassuringly vast expanses of the substance. It is used commonly in things like highway overpasses (and even here with much more finesse than is the norm in North America), but not in pedestrian areas or generally on streets. 

Why is there such a striking difference? A simplified answer that pops into my head is that the appearance of US cities is simply a reflection of American society and its values. Fundamentally, Americans don't care much about how their cities look. Design has given way to expediency. Low cost is the driving force in urban design and maintenance decisions. Americans are happy to accept  an unattractive physical environment, with a kind of rough functionality, if that saves them money and allows them to consume more of other things (including fighter jets and missiles). Besides, as they drive rather than walk or bicycle, why worry about the details? In a car-centered society, it's easy for streets to simply become high-speed corridors for driving, with little or no reason to stop and take a stroll.

Another more disturbing possibility is that most Americans simply don't know the difference between good urban design and bad. As they've rarely seen examples of beautifully constructed and managed cityscapes they believe that their streets and pedestrian areas are actually quite nice and as good as (or better than) streetscapes anywhere else. This seems to be confirmed by the boosterism and pride I encounter in American cities. What's most surprising is that many Americans have visited cities abroad with world-class design and infrastructure yet still don't expect or demand such standards at home. This could confirm the notion that they simply aren't able to see the differences and are aesthetically neutered. 

A disturbing consequence of America allowing its cities to sink to such a low level is that the skills and craftmanship required to orchestrate and build beautiful streets may have become a lost art in the United States. Even if we wanted to catch up, we would need to import talent to do it right. 

Below are some pictures of the beautiful, high quality, and carefully maintained street and sidewalk surfaces in central Helsinki. 

Wherever you go in Helsinki, you are faced with first-rate infrastructure. It seems that the Finns don't bother building it if they aren't going to do it well, and subsequently maintain it rather impeccably. I've found the same to be true in other Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Austria (not to mention Australia and wealthier East Asian countries). These are the countries that do public infrastructure best. These are also the countries with incomes most similar to those of the US. They are therefore ideal to use for comparison purposes. 

I mentioned above that the car-centered nature of American society might account for the lack of detailed design and attractiveness in its urban streets. But this would hardly explain the parlous state of much of the USA's highway infrastructure. In Finland, highways are smoothly paved and streets do not have potholes. I really don't think I ever saw a pothole on a Helsinki street, and this in a climate that can be brutally cold in the winter. What explanation, I wonder, do American cities give? It certainly isn't that their residents, on average, are poorer than those in their northern European counterparts. Average incomes are rather similar. It may however, be related to the massive inequalities in income which don't show up in typical averages. I will come back to this question later.

The quality Finnish infrastructure extends to bridges, public buildings, sports facilities and even the water pipes that I've seen replaced during construction projects. Below are some scenes of cutting edge infrastructure and architecture that surrounds you in Helsinki. 

The most outstanding physical feature of Helsinki is it's wealth of green and natural spaces. Helsinki is a wooded, rocky peninsula jutting out into the sea that at times seems to just incidentally have human settlements interspersed throughout.. 

From where I lived in the north of Helsinki, in the Paloheinä neighborhood, I could ride my bicycle almost all the way to the center of the city (a 45-minute ride) without ever crossing an intersection and without seeing any cars. This is because Helsinki is designed in such a way that wooded and natural corridors (as well as protected seaside areas) extend like a circulation system throughout and around the city. They give residents quick access not only to peaceful, natural areas but also to safe routes for bicycle commuting . Even Oslo, another city with a wealth of green, doesn't have this same connected system of green spaces and corridors penetrating so deeply into all sections of the city.  

My typical ride took me through what is called Helsinki's Central Park, and along the way, I was ceaselessly amazed at the range of uses I found for the open spaces that dominate the city. The pictures below show some of the natural spaces, all without the artificial feeling that over-engineered green spaces often have in cities.  They include clean rivers, farmland, vast areas of garden allotments, seashore, and most commonly, forests that go on and on. This despite the fact that the population density in Helsinki is higher than in comparable American cities such as Columbus or Portland. 

A highlight of life for me in Helsinki was the ease of movement around most of the city by bicycle. In all but the center of the city, Helsinki has an uncommonly good system of paths for bicycles..

Bicycle infrastructure in Helsinki seems to be divided into three main types: 
1) shared sidewalks (pavements) along streets; 
2) shared paths through green areas, and less commonly; 
3) dedicated bicycle lanes.

As is common in Norway, Sweden and Finland, most sidewalks along bigger streets are wide enough to accomodate both pedestrians and biyclists. Often there is a line demarcating walking and cycling areas. Just like people walking, bicyclists on shared pavements yield to cars at intersections, although they are generally protected by raised crosswalks that dramatically slow traffic down, making bicycling safe along streets even for children. 

The most pleasant, and fastest, way to get around by bike in Helsinki is on the shared paths through green areas, or along the coast. These paths are not specifically for bicycles, and are used by pedestrians, joggers, skateboarders and others (see picture above), and can be covered with asphalt or finely crushed stone. Although they are multi-use, they are almost never crowded and it's very easy to quickly cover large distances, totally isolated from automobile traffic. All streets and roads encountered are either crossed by dedicated bicycle/pedestrian bridges or avoided via underpasses. It's a lovely way to get around as it's safe, you have beautiful scenery all around, and the air is fresh and clean. I used paths like this every day to get into the center of Helsinki. 

Helsinki has a few examples of dedicated bicycle lanes, the most interesting bit being the Baana Bicycle Corridor, built along an old rail line. This is a very cool stretch of urban bicycling. Take a look at the link. 

The three types of bicycle infrastructure, sadly, disappear in many of the older core neighborhoods of Helsinki. In these areas it's necessary to ride on the cobblestone streets with traffic. If this part of Helsinki were all you saw, you would not think Helsinki is an excellent city for bicyclists - which in fact, it really is. 

I wrote a bit above about the ample green space in Helsinki, but I want to focus a bit more on the impressive array of outdoor recreational facilities on offer to the public here. 

Not only are forest areas and green belts within a short walking distance of all inhabitants, but there is a very generous allocation of well-maintained playgrounds, sports fields, swimming pools, beach areas. marinas, and more - among the best I've seen anywhere in the world. 

Although these facilities are well used, because of their abundance they rarely appeared crowded. There seems to be space for all.  I was highly impressed with the quality of materials used and general upkeep.

Below are some pictures of the kinds of generally free, meticulously maintained public facilities that most city-dwelling Americans could only dream of. 

When not riding my bicycle, I used public transport in Helsinki. In comparison to most European cities I've lived in, Helsinki is underserved by metro lines. There is one main line, which runs from west to east, but most of the city is not covered. There are commuter train lines that go to the suburbs, and these serve some parts of the city. The city also has many tram lines in the central area, as well as ferry routes linking the city to its islands. On the whole, however, I imagine most people using public transport in this city rely on buses. 

As I was living in a neighborhood far from train, tram, or metro lines, I used bus to get around. Buses were frequent, very clean and pleasant to ride.  A nice thing about Helsinki's well-organized bus system is that generally you know rather precisely when the next bus will come. Nearly every bus stop has a digital display that tells you how many minutes before a particular bus arrives. See the middle picture below, showing that bus 63, a line I used frequently, would arrive in 2 minutes. This sort of system is not common in the United States, but it's the norm in much of Europe and East Asia. 

Like any city, Helsinki has its relatively low income areas. These tend to be on the eastern side of the city, but there is no clear division between wealthy and poor areas here: the eastern parts of Helsinki have wealthier districts, and the western parts have poorer districts, too. 

Finns are uncomfortable with any suggestion that a class divide exists in this city, but it certainly does. In fact, many of the conurbations outside of center are rather forlorn looking and unattractive. There are signs of social problems such as alcholism and poorly integrated groups of foreigners. What does not exist in Helsinki is a green divide. Even the relatively poor here are blessed with an embarrassment of well-maintained green spaces close at hand. 

What struck me most about the lower-class parts of the city is that people are often living in large, high-rise apartment blocks (such as the buildings in the pictures above and below), rather isolated from other buildings, and often quite a walk from any stores. In the summer, it's somehow bearable because of the profusion of green in all directions. But I imagine that in the winter it would be rather bleak, as there is little activity in the environs. Most of these high-rise developments are like islands in the middle of forest. The developments are often centered on a metro stop, where there is always an adjacent shopping center. These commercial centers themselves can be fairly unattractive. I think urban design of this type is a legacy of bad planning ideas from the 1960s and 70s. Most Finns wouldn't want to live in places like this today. However, from disussions I've had with local people involved in urban planning issues, the shopping center-centric style of development continues in Helsinki, continuing to breed car dependancy and continuing to isolate people and deprive them of lively, interesting streets. Timo Hämäläinen writes an interesting blog, called from Rurban to Urban, discussing the challenges Helsinki faces in creating lively, engaging streets and communities. 

Below are more examples of high-rise apartment blocks in the east of Helsinki.

Even in the expensive center of the city, (especially here, I think) there is a lot that can be done to improve the experience of being a pedestrian or bicyclist - and improve the quality of life for local residents, as well. 

Several things strike me about streets in the center. They are:
* narrow sidewalks
* excessive space allocated to car parking
* a lack of trees and other green elements
* a lack of bicycle lanes, and 
* a general low level of activity (and hence, perhaps, the perception of tourists that this is a boring city).

In terms of street design in its old urban core (a rather small part of the city), Helsinki is behind the times. The streets, although often lined with beautiful buildings (and also many bland ones erected in a misguided period of urban renewal in the 1960s), lack beauty because so much space is devoted to automobiles. The streets are rather lifeless and drab as there is no leftover space for trees, cafe-lined sidewalks, and bicycle lanes. Wandering these streets in the winter could be quite depressing. 

I wonder why so little interesting retail and so few restaurants and cafes line most of these streets. Perhaps there are zoning regulations that keep many business out or maybe high taxes act as a discouragement. It's certainly not that Finland lacks an interesting retail sector. In fact, its shopping centers are full of innovative Nordic chain stores (from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland itself) that would be a hit in the US or other parts of Europe. The outside world only knows about IKEA and H&M, but there is much more.  If only Helsinki could manage to get these stores (and restaurants) out of the shopping centers and back onto its streets - this would no longer be a boring city for foreign visitors. 


Below, some streets that could use a bit more life (the first from Itäkeskus, a major hub in eastern Helsinki). 

I can't end this posting without sharing a bit about my favorite neighborhoods in Helsinki. 

Although I love the elegant central districts, with their Jugenstil architecture, the places I find most charming and most uniquely Finnish are the areas of wooden houses and wooden apartment buildings in neighborhoods such as Käpylä and Vallila. It would be a dream for me to have a house in one of these areas. 

There's something about these neighborhoods that make you want to settle in. The scale is very human, there's a lot of common green space, and fundamentally, it's just beautiful. Below are some views from Käpylä.

Helsinki is a great foil to the American cities I've most recently visited and blogged about. It provides a contrast, and ultimately an excellent model for how pleasurable city life in the USA could be. 

There are many reasons for Helsinki's superiority. One is its outstanding urban organizational competence: Helsinki is a metropolis under professional management and benefits from a highly evolved ecosystem of actors who cooperatively create a great city. 

Another underlying reason for its high rank in urban quality of life is the relatively low social inequality, and very high social mobility, in Finland. Residents of Helsinki have a shared destiny and work together to make their city a wonderful place to live. People here are not condemned to an inferior life if they are born in poorer areas. Social mobility is very high. 

I miss Helsinki. Beyond all the wonderful things about life there, and the lessons it holds for American cities, what I miss the most are the friends I love dearly. I was unfortunate enough to have an accident the day before I was scheduled to leave Helsinki. This led to knee surgery. My friends Pia and Jan took care of me for several weeks while I began my recovery. The silver lining to this situation was that it gave me more time to spend with them, especially with their precious kids, Lilya, Linnea and Linus. Below are pictures of my constant companions, Linnea and Linus. I can't wait to get back to Helsinki for a visit next summer. 

I've spent two weeks on a friend's little farm high in the mountains of central Norway.  Here are a few pics that I hope capture some of the atmosphere of this beautiful place.  

In May, I was back in the city of my birth, Chicago. With a metro area population of 9.5 million people, the third biggest in the USA, Chicago is a real city. It has a large and dense urban core, filled with businesses, residential areas, and all the wonderful things associated with a great city. It's the only other place in the United States, in my opinion, to have a similar big-city feeling as New York City. It's a city that's easy to walk around in, and in the center at least, public transport is quite convenient.  

I hadn't spent any significant amount of time in Chicago since the late 1980s. It was a nostalgic experience to revisit old haunts (my childhood neighborhood is virtually unchanged) and a surprise to see how many areas of the city have positively evolved over the nearly 30 years since I left it.  I found it exhilarating, often beautiful, lively, and on the whole a place in which I imagine it would be interesting to live.
 
With Chicago, I took my usual approach of getting off the beaten path. To me, understanding a city does not come from visiting its museums or famous tourist sites. Instead it's essential to visit a range of neighborhoods, across ethnic and socioeconomic lines. My wanderings revealed a city more complex than the image a casual tourist might bring home.

While in the Chicago area, I was lucky enough to stay with my very kind sister and her husband, who live in the western suburb of Elmhurst. I always rely on public transport, bicycle or walking to get around a city, and from my suburban base, I stuck to my normal procedure. Every day I took a suburban bus to the beginning of Chicago's elevated metro system. Although there are commuter trains from Elmhurst that go to the city center, I took the bus, as that stopped conveniently in front of my sister's house and took me not to the business center, but instead to the edge of the city. This was a perfect starting point for seeing the many faces of Chicago.

Each of my multiple trips into the city focused on in-depth walks through particular neighborhoods. Over two weeks I visited Hyde Park, Washington Park, and Chinatown in the south, Garfield Park, Humboldt Park, Wicker Park and the Near West Side in the west, Norwood Park, North Park, Andersonville and Lincoln Park in the north, and the Near North Side and Loop in the center. These neighborhoods differed greatly from one another structurally, architecturally, ethnically and socioeconomically. I believe they give a representative view of life in the city, skewed somewhat to higher socioeconomic groups. 

A particularly striking thing about my journey into the city every day from Elmhurst, an upper-middle-class older suburb, were the quick transitions I experienced from an almost idealized American suburban scene to poorer suburbs and then the very poor west side of the city of Chicago itself. To get to the beginning of Chicago's metro train system, I took the suburban PACE bus, which passed my sister's home every hour or so, for the nearly 30 minute ride to Oak Park, the last suburb before the city of Chicago begins. My first ride on the bus was an educational experience.  Although my sister's town has an African American population of under one percent, the demographics of Pace bus riders was the complete opposite. I was normally the only person of European descent on the bus, and almost all the other passengers were black Americans. It was an unreal experience to be riding through wealthy, white suburbs and see only black Americans at each bus stop. This reminds me of the buses going through wealthy suburbs of Johannesburg. 

Although the Chicago area appears to have a comprehensive public transport system, in comparison with other wealthy metro areas I've lived in or visited, Chicago's system is a disappointment.  When I investigated the time it takes to get from Elmhurst to parts of Chicago other than the very downtown core, I was astounded. To get from my sister's house in Elmhurst, an inner suburb west of the city, to the neighborhood of North Park, on the north side of Chicago, it takes about 45 minutes by car. To go by bicycle takes about 2 hours. With public transit, if you make the right connections, it would also take two hours. This for a distance that, as the crow flies, can't be much more than 10 miles.  I've never seen anything like it in any major city in the developed world (outside of the United States, that is). I calculated trips of a similar distance in Tokyo and Berlin (from a suburban town on a main train line into the center and then to another neighborhood in the city) and here's what I found: in Tokyo a similar trip would take 40 minutes by car and 38 minutes by public transport.  In Berlin, it would be 34 minutes by car and 42 minutes by public transport. With an inadequate system like this, only the poorest, those without cars, would ever choose to use public transport to go anywhere other than the downtown core in Chicago. With freeways and free or highly subsidized parking in many parts of the city, driving is a no brainer in Chicago. Highways in Tokyo have tolls and in both Berlin and Tokyo, parking can get expensive quickly, so you really have a disincentive to drive and save little or no time by doing it.

Below are some views of the rather antiquated metro system.  

Every day, as I entered Chicago on the elevated train system from Oak Park, I felt immersed in forlorn scenes of urban decay. The far west side of Chicago is bleak. 

This is a very poor area with, I believe, a predominantly black and Hispanic population. Infrastructure has obviously been neglected for years (decades) and housing generally appears often on the point of collapse. I have not found corresponding areas of blight, such as you see in an American city like Chicago, in any other wealthy country.

I imagine that this area was once, maybe over 60 years ago, a working-class neighborhood of European immigrants, Today the once dense and probably lively neighborhoods seem depopulated and abandoned. I tried to imagine what these streets might have been like in their heyday. I wondered what could have gone so wrong to produce a fantastic crash in neighborhood vitality and health. White flight is one part of the explanation, but it's hard to avoid wondering how city government could have let things fall to such a state of degeneration. Did they have no resources?

A key characteristic of these desolate neighborhoods is the huge number of vacant lots where apartment buildings and houses once stood. It puzzled me to think about the incredible waste of what should be valuable land. The areas I visited on the West Side are less than 30 minutes from downtown Chicago by public transport, yet they are really a virtual wasteland. 

The layout of the streets, however, and even the style of the remaining buildings is often very pleasant. The streets are generally tree lined and the old brick buildings could be attractive, even elegant, if rehabilitated. But the empty lots, boarded up windows and shamefully run-down infrastructure - in conjunction with what are almost certainly pretty horrific social circumstances - make for an insurmountable barrier to revitalization. This area will probably remain a kind of no-man's land for decades to come. I should mention that these neighborhoods are generally well served by large parks which, sadly, are also derelict. 

Here are some more street views from the west side of the city. 

Evidence of neglected city infrastructure surrounds you in the poorer neighborhoods of Chicago. This is a common feature, of course, of large areas of many American cities. Sidewalks are cracked and uneven, streets are rough, and maintenance of public spaces, such as parks, is deplorable. It all adds up to a kind of depressing bleakness. I can't help but wonder what impact an urban environment like this has on the psychology, and aesthetic development, of children. There is so little beauty, so few examples of excellence that might raise aspirations. 

The most frustrating part of it, for me, is that the basic elements required for a beautiful city are here. It's not as if these neighborhoods are cursed structurally. There are green medians planted with trees, streets with ample space for bike lanes, expansive parks all around, and even reasonable public rail transport within walking distance. What's missing is security, decent maintenance and, most importantly, quality housing at the density required to bring the streets to life. Could the problem be that the city simply doesn't need more affordable housing and hence can ignore large swathes of its area? 

In many parts of the world, the physical endowments of these blighted neighborhoods would be envied. What wouldn't be envied is the catastrophic social disaster that seems to be taking place here. America's cities are a reflection of its society, and the reflection is a pretty awful one.   

Scenes of decay, below.

I started this posting with what struck me most forcefully upon my return to Chicago: the glaring urban maladies the city faces in many areas. But there is another side of Chicago, one that gradually emerges out of the vast areas of unsightliness, that is vibrant, beautiful and, improving markedly. 

Chicago is a city known for, and blessed with, excellent architecture. Certain areas can have the elegant feeling of nice neighborhoods in European cities, with lovely brick buildings that seem to have been built with high-quality materials and care. I imagine that many of them were, in fact, built by European immigrants around a century ago and they continue to be the domain of the better off in the city, with a high proportion of white residents. It's been very encouraging to see the most beautiful of Chicago's neighborhoods undergoing a revitalization. Many young people are settling in the city and bringing vitality back to once great neighborhoods. 

A surprise to me was that new housing in Chicago is frequently built in the old, beautiful styles of the past (see the far right picture below). Neighborhoods are retaining their original character and because of the beauty and detail of the older style of buildings, the streets are regaining a density of attracive detail that draws in people who come to just to stroll and enjoy the ambience. The streetscapes are an attraction in themselves.

Below are a few shots of the beautiful buildings and streets in Chicago.

Along with the rejuvenation of great residential neighborhoods in Chicago comes a rebirth of commercial streets. 

Better neighborhoods in the city now are full of a wide range of restaurants, stores, and other businesses that put them on par, in terms of commercial life, with streets in a city like Amsterdam. 

Where the streets don't match up to what's on offer in a great city like Amsterdam is in their dispoportionate allocation of space to auto traffic and parking for cars. The streetscapes of Chicago are dominated by cars. There are few dedicated bicycle lanes (I saw almost none), and sidewalks are narrower than they should be. In fact, sidewalks here are unattractively made of poured concrete and offer almost no interesting details to draw pedestrians in. They create few meeting spaces for people (there are few benches and quiet nooks), and they provide very limited space for restaurants and cafes to use for outdoor seating. This makes the streets of the nicer neighborhoods of Chicago, in general, much less lively and attractive than those of Amsterdam and other great cities of Europe. Chicago needs to put pedestrians first to get its streets right. 

In my opinion, a lower density of detail is what often sets American cities apart. It's a function, to a great degree, of the auto dominated landscape. If you're passing through quickly in your car, the small details don't matter. If you're walking, however, the details make all the difference in a street experience. Because of America's car-centric culture, sidewalks and other pedestrian areas have gotten short shrift. We don't invest in them because we don't walk. It seems the emphasis is on quick, cheap, easy-to-maintain pedestrian areas that are devoid of artistry and charm.

Below are a couple of fairly pleasing street scenes in Chicago.

In the richest suburbs and wealthier part of American cities, street design can sometimes rise to a high level. The picture to the left is from the business district of Oak Park, an old suburb directly abutting Chicago's West Side. 

The examples of beautiful streetscapes are, however, the exception. What would be the average standard in cities in most of the rest of the rich world are in America the domain of the wealthy. 

Extraordinaly high income and wealth inequality in America, in conjunction with an auto-dominated transport mentality, leads to cities that are largely unattractive and often jarringly ugly. 

I'm thrilled that many areas of Chicago are moving in the direction of complex, detail-rich, pedestrian-oriented streets. But I'm afraid that the beautiful streetscapes I've seen here are going to remain the realm of the the privileged. 

Taking in the view on the balcony of my friends' home in the Castro district of San Francisco (picture, left), it's hard to imagine a better city to be in the world. There are the hills, the fresh air, and the lovingly maintained gardens in the back of most of the neighboring buildings. It's simply beautiful.  

There are few cities where I feel as good and at home as San Francisco.  The city justifiably has important symbolic value throughout the world as a bastion of individual freedom and human dignity, and this is undeniably a desirable feature of life in this area.  The Bay Area, San Francisco's region, is my favorite part of the United States.  I lived in the East Bay (Berkeley) over 10 years ago while in grad school, and I never forgot the unique feel to this area.  The climate is mild, the vegetation is Mediterranean, the people are generally tolerant and open-minded, and there's simply a spontaneity and sense of possibility in the air here. Most residents wouldn't think of living anywhere else. 

From another height, looking out over the city from one of its rocky hilltops, it would be easy to idealize this city and imagine it as one of the most sophisticated and livable in the world. San Francisco, however, is usually experienced at ground level, and the experience here strays from any idealization of that sort. 

This city is no earthly paradise, although it has an incredible charm and many attractive attributes.  But its global reputation and image are bound to disappoint on closer examination, as many foreign visitors have told me.  This extremely expensive city has seriously rough edges that drag down its quality of life in multiple ways. Despite being virtually the wealthiest large city in the United States, it often has a ramshackle, dirty and run-down look to it.  This shabby appearance comes as a surprise to many visitors from abroad who expect more from this legendary city.  In fact, in the face of incredible natural advantages, a highly educated population and wealth, it settles for a second-rate quality of life for the bulk of its inhabitants.  Yes, I did say San Francisco has a second-rate quality of urban life.  In this blog posting I will explain my view.  Brace yourself as I dig further into the pathologies of American cities. 

But first a little glimpse of beauty from this city (it is rich in beauty like this), to highlight the shame of allowing so much of it to be so mediocre.

There are four outstanding things I will focus on, common to American cities, that stand in the way of San Francisco reaching its very high potential. They are poor infrastructure, lack of human scale, autocentric design, and immense social problems.  

The American Society of Civil Engineers, in their 2013 Report Card for America's Infrastructure, gave the United States an overall grade of D+ for its crumbling infrastructure.  This is close to a total failure.    
I am rather astounded at the general public's apathy in the face of our country’s shamefully ill-maintained infrastructure.  I'd expect outrage, really. Perhaps Americans have gotten used to this state of affairs, and don't know what quality public infrastructure looks like in other wealthy countries around the world.

This rough infrastructure is, in fact, one of the things most characteristic of American cities.  San Francisco is no exception, and a walk around this city can be a big surprise to visitors from northern Europe, Japan or Australia. Things are simply not well maintained, or maintained in a manner fitting a poor, developing world city, not one of the wealthiest and potentially most beautiful cities in the world.  Sidewalks and streets are haphazardly patched, public transport is rough, and city parks are often in poor condition.  

The poor infrastructure of this city is highlighted by the liberal use of cement, frosting all surfaces often without leaving any space for trees and vegetation or other features.  Although San Francisco is politically 'green', the city itself is in desperate need of more trees.  SF ranks 17th of the 20 largest cities in the US in terms of its urban forest and in terms of street trees, I'm sure it must be at the absolute bottom.  Many, if not most, streets of San Francisco are uninviting urban deserts, despite enjoying an exceptionally good climate.  Below are a sampling of San Francisco's cement-covered and lifeless streets.  

Streets in San Francisco, like those in most other American cities, are often exceptionally wide.  Their breadth is totally out of proportion to the height of the buildings that run along them, making for unattractive and often very uninviting streetscapes. Streets seem to be simply thought of as corridors for mobility. Other functions of streets, as public space, for example, are just an afterthought.  

For most of the world's urban history, cities and streets were built on a human scale.  Streets in older cities around the world tend to be relatively narrow, and these streets seem in scale with the buildings that line them.  Americans seem to have forgotten what makes for exciting, engaging and beautiful streets.  The key is a profound sense of humanity in design. This is quickly recognizable.  Streets and public spaces designed with humanity attract people, not just passers-through, but people who stay for extended periods of time.

Exacerbating the scale issue in San Francisco is what I call a low density of detail in many areas, making streetscapes unappealing and unengaging. Great streets have many details, complex details, providing many reasons to stop and do something, if it only be to sit on a comfortable bench and admire the fine paving stones and beautiful landscaping.  This density of features can be called 'friction'.  Streets with friction are destinations in and of themselves, places you go to do many things at once (without having to get in your car and go elsewhere) and places that bring people together.  San Francisco has many streets like this (for example, Dolores and Mission Streets), of course, but far too many of its streets are rather lifeless.   This is a shame, as open spaces in cities are opportunities for the common good and streets are generally the most common open spaces citizens have to enjoy.  Streets should be the most important public spaces in a city.

Its easy to see when a street has become a successful public place because it will attract people.  Streets that are unsuccessful have few people and are lifeless.  Naturally, cities need a full range of street types (including quiet residential streets), but San Francisco has vast wasted street spaces that could instead be alive with street life and business opportunities.  

Market Street is emblematic of what's wrong with many of San Francisco's streets.  It is a low density, extremely wide expanse of cement and asphalt, with generally very low friction (except in the heart of downtown and near Castro Street).  I would never want to spend time on most of it.  It is ugly, a haven for San Francisco's homeless and really a showcase of the city's social problems.   

Maybe I should applaud SF for not hiding America's reality of haves and have nots, but still, Market Street is generally not a pleasant place to be, despite its key location running from downtown to the Castro.  It should be San Francisco's most vibrant and attractive street, without excuses.  

A main driver of the scale problem in San Francisco is the autocentric design of its streetscapes.  

In American cities, people on opposite sides of a street are usually separated by wide swathes of fast-moving traffic.  Cars, and space dedicated to cars, eat up the bulk of the open space streets provide, Streets are not primarily thought of as places for people to gather and do things, but instead as spaces to facilitate the rapid movement of automobile traffic.   

In San Francisco, the car-dominated street design spreads over into the design of sidewalks and buildings to an extent that I have not seen in any other densely populated American city.  Despite having decent public transportation within the city (decent, not great), a high proportion of residents of San Francisco have cars and use them to commute, particularly if they work outside of the city.  Regional public transit in the Bay Area is inconvenient and expensive.        

This reliance on auto transport created a problem:  where to park all the cars in this densely packed city. The solution was to build housing with garages on the first floor, in addition to allocating much street space for car parking.  A distinctive feature of San Francisco, therefore, is the garage doors facing the streets throughout much of the city, as you can see in the picture above.  This proliferation of garages along the city's streets drastically distorts the function of the city's streets by creating dead zones along sidewalks.  There is no space for shops or cafes,  The streets are bare of trees and vegetation because cars cannot leave garages if trees are planted along the street.  The result is an abundance of lifeless and treeless streets that are wholly unattractive and serve no social function.        

Allowing car owners to dominate so much of a city's open space is not only detrimental to urban livability, the use of this space by cars costs a city money.  A study from Connecticut shows how much allocating and subsidizing parking spots actually costs a city (in the case of Hartford, it comes to about $1,200/year per parking place).  In San Francisco's case, as sidewalk and street space in front of the endless garages cannot be utilized for anything else, there is a huge hidden subsidy that must be considered beyond the subsidized street parking the city provides.  

Finally, San Francisco shares the American problem of vast, inadequately addressed social problems.  Visitors to San Francisco will quickly note the huge numbers of homeless people on the city's streets.  

Riding public transport is another way to come into contact with large numbers of people with serious problems.  You simply don't see this kind of thing, on this scale, in other wealthy countries. Crime is also higher than it is in most of Europe, Canada, Australia or Japan. 

San Francisco has, it must be said, a very racially and economically diverse population.  The varied groups have different needs and interests, and the national and local governments have not been very skillful at managing the situation, resulting in severe problems such as homelessness.   

What I write about San Francisco may seem harsh and clearly, to some extent, stems from my frustration with the same sorts of problems I see in every American city I visit. The solutions seem so obvious to an outsider, but they are never simple.  San Francisco, in particular, pains me because the city so obviously has many of the ingredients required to make it one of the great cities of the world.  It is surrounded by natural beauty, is a welcoming and accepting place, has a very vibrant city culture by any measure, including a remarkable food scene.

Some tweaks to the system are underway that will make San Francisco a better city. 

For example, an organization called 'Friends of the Urban Forest' (FOF) is helping city residents convert some of that great expanse of concrete in front of their homes into gardens and tree planting spaces. (See picture to right) My friends Buddy and Orie (whose veranda is featured in the first photo of this blog posting) have just participated in a project in their neighborhood with FOF.  The results are wonderful. However, like much of the urban improvements going on in San Francisco, projects like this tend to be driven by the educated and wealthy, and are not benefiting all areas equally.  I rarely saw urban greening projects in the poorer parts of town.  

Another encouraging sign is that the generally rather dreadful Market Street, which I write about above, is undergoing massive development now that will no doubt clean it up and restore some of its traditional role as one of the great streets of San Francisco. New high rises are popping up along several areas of the street, and new shopping and commercial development will follow to bring life back to this area.  

Finally, I've just read that a law involved with major urban planning projects is changing in California to be less car friendly.  This will allow for public transit projects to get approval more easily and speed up developments such as San Francisco's new bus rapid transit line.    

When I look at my pictures from San Francisco, I really miss this city and my good friends there.  I'm hopeful that San Francisco will tackle its quality of life issues and move towards a respectable position in the group of the world's most livable cities.   It has a long way to go.  

I spent the month of March in the lush, green and rather beautiful city of Portland, Oregon. Portland will serve as my entry point into American cities on this trip to the USA.  I chose to visit it because of its almost legendary status among urban planners. 

Soon after arrival I recognized how unique this city is in the United States. Portland capitalizes on its assets in a way that creates a flourishing and very livable city - the best I've seen in any major US city.  It offers a vision of what a medium-sized American city can be with the right policies, planning, and execution.  It's a world apart from the typical American city, both in its well-designed urban environment and its stunning natural surroundings. 

Portland's differences, however, go beyond its great urban design and rich nature. There is a major demographic difference here.

I flew to Portland from San Francisco and upon entering the airplane immediately noted something odd.  As far as I could see, there were only Caucasians on the plane. The impression of a relatively homogeneous population was supported by what I saw in the center of the city.  It certainly seemed to be a very white city. In fact, Portland's population is 74% white, the highest of any major city in the United States. By comparison, only 45% of San Francisco's population is white.  (See core city populations in chart at right.)  

As the cities in the United States with the highest livability rankings all tend to have large white (or in the case of Honolulu, Asian) populations, this is a significant point to grasp when struggling to understand America's urban problems and blight.   It illustrates the continuing damage America's history of slavery, racism, segregation and unwillingness to effectively deal with social problems has wrought in those cities with large non-white populations.  I will write more about this in a subsequent posting.

I came to learn that Portland's relatively few non-white inhabitants (both blacks and Hispanics) have gradually been pushed to the edge of the city, far away from many of the things that make Portland such a livable city, due to gentrification.  I stayed in what had previously been an African American neighborhood in NE Portland (Irvington), but today there are relatively few black Americans living there.  I became friends with one of my neighbors, Susan, and her good friend Ed, a homeless African American who sometimes sleeps on Susan's porch.  They told me about a pervasive, if not overt, racism that exists in this supposedly very progressive town.  Ed's life story was probably not atypical for a black American man.  From the start he had no advantages and faced multiple hardships.  It's amazing to me that he still has an optimistic life view.  

I felt it important to bring Portland's demographics to the fore because they may help explain its unique character.  

It is a strikingly clean city, with innovative street design, excellent public transport, an enviable food scene, and a large population of active bicyclists.  

It is also a city of vibrant and lively local neighborhoods.  I found its many independent coffee shops to be an excellent indicator of an active and vital community. These local coffee shops provide social and work spaces where people can interact, and these interactions extend out into the sidewalks and streets. They are important social hubs that tie neighborhoods and the city together.  

For a city of low diversity, Portland also has an amazing range of ethnic foods and overall a food (and beer) scene considered to be one of the best in the United States.

Typical neighborhoods in Portland are impressive, and really seem almost suburban. Beautiful homes are the norm, with large lush gardens surrounding them. In this respect, living standards appear to be very high in Portland, and would vie with those in the richest countries around the world.  

The vast majority of streets are lined with trees, and there is almost always a planting strip, or green right of way, between the sidewalk and the street that is planted with trees, bushes, flowers and grass.  A planted right of way is rather common in American cities. What is not common is the exuberance of vegetation (this is a moist and temperate climate) and the high number of plant species that are grown around houses.  As you can see in the picture to the right, this typical Portland street does not show large lawns, but instead a variety of vegetation and high species diversity.  This is a city where gardening is taken seriously and front yards are really more like gardens.  

See some typical Portland streets scenes below.  

In terms of public green space, Portland has among the most public park space per person of any major city in the US. In a recent study, it ranked 5th in the US, after cities such as Raleigh, NC and Lincoln, NE.  And even without the public parks, the city's large yards and private green spaces keep you enveloped in green at almost all times. It's hard to get away from it, except in the very core of the city.

Portland also stands apart in its innovative street design in many areas.  Like most American cities, sidewalks here are generally artlessly covered with cement, and streets are often rather roughly covered with asphalt (and are very often in need of repair).   

But there are signs that Portland is trying to do things a bit differently.  To the right you can see a picture of a swale, an area designed to absorb rainwater runoff from the street and keep it from overwhelming sewers.  You find these all over the city, planted with species that like water.  

There are also a variety of curb extensions (often at corners) that make pedestrians more visible to traffic, make street crossing distances shorter, and also slow traffic to improve safety.   

Traffic is also slowed in some neighborhoods with features such as speed bumps and mini-roundabouts (often with very nice plantings within).

Below you can see a few pedestrian surfaces that break with the generally bleak cement pedestrian landscape.  

Wherever I go I rely on public transportation (or bicycle or foot) to get around, and immediately upon arrival in Portland, I experienced the seamless transition from the airport terminal to the region's light-rail system.  I felt as if I were in a northern European city with the well-designed system quickly and quietly taking me to the center of the city, often through beautifully green neighborhoods.   

I continued to use Portland's buses and trains on nearly a daily basis.  For an American city with a relatively low population density, Portland has rather excellent public transportation. It's not at all unpleasant to use and it's often possible to get to even marginal areas of the city with only one transfer.  Buses and trains are clean and well-maintained.  

The city's investment in light rail transport has, according to studies, helped the city retain its core population better than cities that didn't create light rail systems. But contrary to my expectations, and despite the obvious huge investments the city and region have made, the percentage of commuters using public transport in Portland has actually decreased over the last 30 years.  Cars have become more and more dominant. See research here. 

The underlying problem is that driving is still heavily subsidized here as elsewhere in US.  Gasoline taxes do not cover the cost of building and maintaining roads.  Parking, even when there is a charge, is also usually heavily subsidized. There are few disincentives to drive.  This is where Portland and other US cities differ greatly from cities in most other developed nations. American cities make driving far too attractive and hence steer people away from public transport. Some might say that if driving is the preferred form of transport for city dwellers, why not subsidize it?  The problem is that car-centric cities are less attractive and healthy places to live.  Automobile dependence undermines the development of cities built on a human scale, places that are pedestrian friendly, where walking is easy, and where local community life thrives.  It's interesting to note that the most walkable areas of US cities, those areas most similar to older cities in Europe, are generally the most sought after and expensive. What's more, car dependence is unsustainable and is adding to environmental problems, such as air pollution and smog.    

Portland may have one of the highest livability rankings of any American city, but it still clearly exhibits why US cities lag behind their wealthy counterparts in other parts of the world. The problem is inconsistency and unevenness.  The city's fantastic attributes are often not nicely tied together and some areas and some details are jarringly unattractive.  

The problems, as above, often go back to the automobile. The domination of the landscape by automobile infrastructure robs it of human scale, creating many central sectors where pedestrians (and pedestrian associated businesses and features) are rare.  Highways bisect the city and create vast zones along their edges that are cut off from areas on the other side.  These areas are generally undesirable places to live. Motor vehicle infrastructure also deprives vast areas of the center of development.  I saw extensive empty spaces, very centrally located, that could provide land for development.  But I don't imagine anyone would want to develop property beneath or adjacent to a highway overpass.    

The picture above shows the almost completely lifeless (with the exception of auto traffic) east bank area of Portland. There are virtually no shops, no restaurants, and no housing.  There is no reason to come to this place except to pass through by car, although it has some of the best views of downtown Portland.  This barren no-mans-land seals the eastern side of the city off from the river and the promenade that runs along it.  I find it hard to grasp how anyone envisioned or approved such an incredible destruction of potentially highly valuable space right at the city's core.      

You can see more pictures from this area below.  

Another telltale sign of the American city is the ubiquitous parking lots on vacant land in city centers and surrounding shopping centers and other businesses and institutions. Prime downtown areas of most American cities, including Portland, have barren parking lots, even on corners of major intersections as in the picture at the left.  

Everywhere I went in Portland, I was met with parking lots, whether it be on vacant central city lots, in front of unsightly strip malls, or in immense proportions surrounding malls, office towers or institutions such as hospitals. The parking lots are dead zones in the city, and break up the texture of downtown and other areas. They break the flow of pedestrians walking between businesses.  See more examples below.

Portland, I should mention, has made one significant improvement to parking lot blight.  In certain central city areas, these parking lots are surrounded by the city's excellent food carts.  These food carts bring life and vibrancy back to these areas. 

Another thing that catches my attention (and probably anyone coming from Europe or East Asia) would be the extraordinarily broad areas smothered, really, with a coat of asphalt. Streets in Portland are incredibly wide, and vast areas, particularly at intersections, are large enough to house sizable sporting facilities such as tennis or basketball courts. There is a huge amount of not only wasted, but possibly permanently destroyed land, in this city.  Once again, the desire to give a majority of the city's public space to automobiles brings unappealing results.  The vastness of these streets takes away charm from neighborhoods, encourages cars to drive faster, and in hot sunny weather, must create a strong heat-island effect. You can see some examples of Portland's remarkably wide streets below.  

I should also mention here that although sidewalks are not allocated a particularly generous amount of space, they are likewise generally covered rather artlessly with a non-permeable frosting of absolutely unadorned cement.     

Portland is renowned in the United States as a kind of bicyclist's paradise. Having lived in the Netherlands, Germany and Japan, I found the bicycle infrastructure, like much else in the city, not up to the highest international standards. In fact, I believe that riding a bicycle in Portland can often be quite intimidating.  

This will come as a surprise to many bicyclists in Portland, who I think live in a bit of a bubble (without exposure to cities with far better biking infrastructure). 

In this city, bicycles generally share the streets with cars, with no marked bicycle lanes on most streets. I am aware that some people believe this state of affairs is actually better and safer.  But for children, the elderly, and those not particularly comfortable riding bicycles (like new riders), the major streets are intimidating. In the center of the city and along some main thoroughfares there are rather poorly marked bicycle lanes, but they are incomplete and confusing.  

These bike lanes are intimidating for most potential users because they are not well demarcated and not fully separated from traffic. In the downtown area, bicyclists share the crowded city streets with fast-moving traffic.  With the incredibly wide streets this city has, why can't dedicated and separated bike lanes be added at least to major thoroughfares?  Portland prides itself on being a bike-friendly city, but the enthusiasm for biking is not, as far as I can see, based upon excellent biking infrastructure.  There are, certainly, better-than-average bike parking areas and many excellent bike shops. But people here simply love to bike and those who bike a lot are apparently comfortable sharing space with automobiles. 

I normally write about the green divide wherever I go.  Portland is no exception in having a green divide and the divide here is driven by the same factors as it is throughout the country.  

Many of the policies that make Portland so attractive to many young people (and not only the young) are similar to those of upscale suburbs. Portland's urban growth boundaries and other regulations raise land prices and render housing less affordable, just as large lot zoning and expensive building codes do in some wealthy suburbs. 

They both contribute to reducing housing affordability for historically disadvantaged communities, and push these people out of the nicer areas. 

Above you can see an unpaved street in the poor, eastern side of Portland.  Houses here are small, often in poor condition, and the surrounding infrastructure is dramatically different from the center of the city.  There are often no sidewalks, streets are in poor condition even when paved, and there are fewer trees planted along the street.   

I started this posting upon arrival in the United States at the end of February of this year.  As my re-entry to American life continued, I decided to hold off on publishing.  Now I retrospectively add it to my blog.  In total, I’ve spent over 3 months in this country, with month-long stays in Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, and shorter stays in Chicago, Columbus, Ohio and New York.  This posting may surprise some Americans, but that’s great.  I want my postings to be provocative and I would love to stir up a bit of controversy. 

Coming back to the USA and its cities always presents me with a perplexing mix of feelings.   There are certain delights, some incredibly alive and exciting neighborhoods, and abundant areas of promise.  On the whole, however, I am left wondering why American cities seem to be so far behind other wealthy cities around the world in terms of physical infrastructure and the attractiveness and liveliness of their streets.  I’m writing about this because I believe we as Americans can and should do far better.  Somehow we have generally forgotten how to grow and sustain great cities, the kind of cities where streets don’t simply serve as corridors for getting from one place to another, but are engaging destinations in themselves.  I recognize that many cities in the US are enjoying a revival, but they have a long way to go to compete with the most livable cities in the world. 

In light of our long history of economic advantage (the US was the world’s wealthiest society for most of the 20th century), American cities should be vibrant places that lead the world in terms of quality of life and beauty.  We’ve decided to settle for something far less.  The majority of American urban environments don’t engage and delight, they don’t respect their vibrant pasts, and very often they feel lifeless, lonely and forlorn.  More importantly, they are environments that perpetuate divisions and social problems.  

There are many ways to evaluate urban environments, such as the methodologies used in livability rankings by firms such as Mercer and the Economist Intelligence Unit.  In my research I focus on my own subjective experience as a pedestrian, cyclist and public transport user in a broad sampling of a given city’s area.  I never drive a car, although I occasionally become a passenger in one.  I don’t gravitate to tourist attractions (what do they really tell you about a city?), but instead try to see the face of urban life across socioeconomic lines through a kind of random sampling and, honestly, aimless wandering.   I think I’ve developed a good nose for sniffing out interesting and representative areas wherever I go.  I try to put my observations into a more objective context through reference to statistics and other information about a city.  My goal is to get closer to understanding how the ‘whole’ of a city comes together and how smoothly it functions for all its inhabitants, especially those at lower income levels.  In fact, as I’ve written before, I believe you can learn far more about a city and society by observing how the lower socioeconomic classes live than by observing how the wealthy live.    

If I’m pressed to come up with a set of characteristics that typify the backwardness of American cities, I would include a combination of poor space utilization, shoddy building construction, a general roughness and sloppiness in terms of infrastructure (and  even institutions), and gross social inequality and its concomitant social problems.  

You can see the poor land utilization in the unsightly parking lots that line streets and often dominate suburbanized city centers.  You can see the shoddiness in new construction that utilizes low-grade materials that are not designed to last and improve with age.  The roughness is clearly evident in the poorly paved streets and sidewalks.  You can experience the backwardness on the generally outdated, unattractive and inconvenient public transportation systems.   Most jarringly, perhaps, you are faced with the astounding social inequality whenever you leave behind the enclaves of the middle class and wealthy, especially when out of the isolating cocoon of an automobile.   The social problems are not impacting merely an isolated fringe.  Statistics on urban crime, health, homelessness and education put American cities into a league of their own in the developed world.  In fact, it is the huge gap between wealthy areas and the rest, combined with auto-centric transport, that most uniquely identifies American cities.

Improving urban quality of life in the US will depend on grappling with our enormous social problems, returning to a more inclusive, equal society, and shifting away from the auto as a primary means of transportation.   Moving away from the auto will allow us to bring our cities back to a human scale. Human-scaled cities accelerate positive social change.   They provide for stronger local communities and increased safety.  With excellent public transport, cities and their regions become better integrated and urban social connectivity rises.  This increase in social connectivity provides new opportunities for the poor and fosters increased civic participation and pride.  This 'reconnectedness' and revitalization, along with increased investment in infrastructure and improved institutions such as schools, will support healing of the damaged social fabric.

When I ask Americans about the problems facing American cities, I quickly realize how foreign my view of American cities is.  Americans are generally proud of their cities and have few suspicions that they suffer in comparison with cities in Europe or other wealthy countries.  Ask a western European, Canadian, Japanese or Australian for their candid opinions on US cities, however, and an array of negative characterizations arise.   Beyond conversational anecdotes, American cities do rather poorly, as I've pointed out, in the most famous international livability rankings.  When considering America's long history of wealth, it’s rather astounding to realize that no American city makes it to the top 20 cities in the world (Honolulu makes it in one ranking) in terms of quality of life, while almost all of Canada’s and Australia’s major cities do. 

Presented with this information, many Americans are defensive.  They are loathe to consider the relatively poor standing of American cities in comparison with their global peers.  Maybe this is because we grew accustomed to seeing ourselves as number one in the world and are uncomfortable with the reality that our position has slipped rather dramatically by so many measures. 

Americans have come to settle for a kind of rough functionality in their cities without focusing on the finer points of city life.  Maybe Americans tend not to notice the details of their cities because they are generally racing through them in their cars.  If they took more time to walk, ride a bicycle, or use public transportation, their views would probably change.  In fact, one of the reasons automobiles may be so popular in the US is not only that they provide the quickest or only means of getting around, but they also provide a relatively safe isolation from the frequently unattractive urban reality they traverse.  

Cities are a reflection of a society's values.  As the US has its own set of values, I don't expect American cities to be replicas of cities in Europe or elsewhere.  But are our values so different from countries such as Canada and Australia that our cities should present such a different face?   Most cities in the US seem downright rough, unpolished and run-down compared to those in their rich-country peers.  Outside of the wealthier neighborhoods and suburbs, streets, highways and sidewalks are in generally poor condition, there are large areas of urban blight with little street life to speak of, and there is poor public transportation to connect the disadvantaged with opportunities in other areas.  Overall it's an aesthetic embarrassment and livability challenge.  The roughness adds stress to the daily life of city dwellers and degrades their quality of life.  What's more, I believe a society's values are also be formed by the nature of its physical environment.  The roughness of American cities is not only a product of the country's social problems, but actively creates and perpetuates these problems.  
This state of affairs is an unnecessary shame, as American cities still have many positive qualities that could be leveraged to create pleasing urban environments.  These qualities include remarkable friendliness, a lot of green space, cultural diversity and economic dynamism.  

At least superficially, American cities have to be among the most friendly and welcoming in the world.  Outside of big eastern cities such as New York (and even there, really), people are not afraid to smile at, or talk with, perfect strangers. This is an important, but maybe undervalued, element of urban quality of life. America, in my experience, is at or near the top in this hard-to-measure attribute.  I find it addictive.  It seems to happen in all sorts of places: a person you pass will say hello, a fellow customer in line will strike up a conversation, or a fellow passenger on a train or bus will ask you a question.  

American cities also tend to have a lot of green, particularly in their residential neighborhoods.  Green right-of-ways are common in most cities, which often support a healthy canopy of street trees.  In denser cities in Europe, this is often not the case. 

Another hallmark of many American cities is incredible diversity.  There are often large ethnic, racial and cultural minorities.  In most major cities there is no longer a white majority.  This diversity creates a dynamic social atmosphere full of all sorts of surprises including a huge range of authentic ethnic restaurants. I believe it's rather easy to find a niche and feel at home in many American cities.

Finally, it's obvious that the American economic system is overall very productive.  There is a general feeling in wealthier and middle-class districts of incredible material abundance. This wealth, combined with a relatively low population density in most areas, makes for generously proportioned homes surrounded by green.  It's rather stunning to see how well so many people live on a continental scale.  

In my postings that follow on four American cities, I will delve further into these thoughts, try to get to the bottom of what ails America's cities, and look for examples of both troubled and thriving streets and neighborhoods. 

Tokyo is arguably the greatest city in the world.  It is certainly the biggest and is a world leader in things ranging from safety (safer than Zurich) to the number of Michelin 3 star restaurants (more than Paris). 

What makes Tokyo so tantalizing to me is its unrivaled density of alluring features and its profusion of things to do and see.  The very structure of Tokyo is based upon adeptly and intensively utilizing every square meter of available space.  This intensity, flavored with Japanese culture, is the alchemy that creates this city's good life. 

The beauty of Tokyo is not the sort of beauty people associate with cities such as Paris.  Paris and Tokyo do have certain things in common, including incredible food, high culture, and general sophistication.  But Tokyo's beauty is not visible on a grand scale.  Instead it resides in the small details of every street. 

These details are evident on every street you walk along.  But in Tokyo's main shopping and entertainment districts, the density of detail is like nothing you will see anywhere else.  The picture to the right shows a street in Shibuya, with signs advertising fast food, convenience stores, restaurants, karaoke boxes and pachinko parlors among many other businesses.  It's a kind of madness that plays out on multiple levels in all the multi-storied buildings.  It's quite normal to go up 6 floors to visit your favorite bar.  The strangeness to most foreigners of the written Japanese language makes Tokyo appear even madder than it is.  But reading the language is like turning on the lights!  There is so much information. 

The intensity of details and features is not skin deep.  It penetrates into most any business you enter.  You can see it in the tightly-packed 24-hour convenience stores that are everywhere.  They are brimming with products and services often unlike those in any other country, with astounding variety, including prepared Japanese foods, an enormous variety of beverages, and a broad selection of groceries and toiletries.  While living in Japan for 10 years, I was always disappointed to come home and see the relatively barren, often dirty, 7-11 stores in the US.  I wondered how they could afford to utilize their retail space so poorly. 

Drug stores are equally full of density and surprises.  The picture above shows Matsumoto Kiyoshi, one of my favorites, in Yurakucho (near Tokyo Station).  I don't believe you can find intense organization and variety like this in any store outside of Japan.  Shelves and all available spaces, literally, are carefully and artfully filled with seemingly unending products.  This product variety, I believe, is partly due to Japan having a dualistic medical system based on both Western medicine and traditional Japanese medicine (similar to Chinese medicine).  I wonder if product developers from the US and Europe come to Japan for new product ideas.  The stores are full of them!

The retail abundance in convenience and drug stores is not an anomaly.  The remarkable cornucopia extends into many other types of businesses, from bountiful bookstores to exhaustively stocked do-it-yourself stores such as the eight-story-tall Tokyu Hands in Shibuya,. pictured at the right.

In my opinion, it's difficult to find retail rivaling Japan's abroad, at least when it comes to the variety and quality of products offered. 

I'm interested in Japan's hyper-developed retail spaces because, like Japanese cooking (which I wrote about in my last posting), they help provide a kind of framework for understanding the uniqueness of Tokyo and other Japanese cities.  They're a window into Japanese culture that showcase characteristics that permeate and define Tokyo's general physical environment and urban infrastructure.

A striking example of the Japanese approach to urban design is Ohashi Junction in Ikejiri-Ohashi.  This traffic management project includes a new covered highway interchange enmeshed in a complex of apartment buildings, retail outlets, a public library, a soccer field and a 'rooftop' park (including a rice paddy) extending along the cover of the circular junction (see the picture to the right).  This project exemplifies the detail-oriented, space intensive, innovative design that makes Tokyo unique. 

As this massive project was only minutes from where I stayed in Ikejiri-Ohashi, I had plenty of time to explore the details.  As you can see in the pictures below, very little space went to waste and high quality materials were used throughout.  I marveled at the pristine and seemingly perfect cement used throughout the structure.  If a project of this quality, complexity and innovativeness were to arise in New York or London, it would be world famous.  Nowhere else have I seen highway infrastructure so fully and tastefully integrated into the urban fabric that it actually improves a neighborhood. 

I took the elevator up to the Meguro Sky Garden above the interchange and ventured out into the lush landscaping high above the streets of Tokyo.  It was hard to imagine that I was walking on the roof of a highway junction.  The park space was comfortable, with plenty of places to sit and enjoy the view.  It was remarkable and a true green oasis in what would normally be a wasteland used only by vehicles. 

If you want to see what it's like to drive through the interchange and then further along a covered highway emerging in another part of Tokyo, check out this video.

Below are a few pictures I took on my walk around the project. 

Almost directly across the street from the Ohashi Junction project is the entrance to the Meguro Green Promenade, another example of unusual design and evidence of the surprising complexity and diversity of Tokyo.  I was in Ikejiri-Ohashi because the friends I stayed with live here, and I just happened to discover these things within five minutes of their home. 

The Green Promenade runs for several kilometers along the surface of a covered portion of the Meguro River and has been designed as a peaceful oasis in the middle of this hectic city.  It is filled with biodiversity and features a little stream with crystal-clear water which provides a home for small fish, crayfish and water striders. 

The surrounding landscaping is atypical, especially for Tokyo, in that it has a high level of plant, insect and animal biodiversity.  Although I was in the center of the biggest city in the world, I saw many birds, butterflies and other insect life.  This totally artificial creation has become an important refuge for nature.   

In the video below, you can walk with me along the Promenade. I need to improve my video-taking technique, but it's a glimpse into another part of Tokyo few visitors see. 

One day I went to visit my old central-Tokyo neighborhood of Bunkyo Ward (where I lived for 10 years), and was pleased to see the evidence of citizen involvement in maintaining the urban environment. 

The sign to the right is from a local non-profit in the Hongo neighborhood. The organization works to keep the streets clean and green.  This NPO (non-profit organization) is called something like "Towning Hongo" if translated into English.  This sign illustrates the flexibility and acquisitiveness of the Japanese language.  Japanese unabashedly appropriates words, acronyms and even grammatical phrases from foreign languages with no fear of diluting itself.  The Japanese may at times be a bit xenophobic, but their language isn't.  The top line of the sign reads "NPO Corporation 'Machi-ing' Hongo.

New citizen-based movements are taking to the streets as a reaction to poor economic conditions, lower government resources and a shift away from small, private businesses to chain stores and restaurants.  The locally owned stores were apparently better neighborhood stewards. 

Finally, a word on transport.  Tokyo has by far the most comprehensive and complex public transportation network in the world.   It is as dense and complex as everything else in this city but makes getting around very easy and stress-free (except, perhaps, during rush hour).  Tokyoites tend to take public transport, walk or ride their bicycles instead of driving cars. 

This city is also connected with all other major cities in Japan by the world-famous bullet train system (picture at left).  The stations and trains are spotless and trains are almost always perfectly on time. 

Below is a map of the full Tokyo metropolitan commuter rail network, including subways and the many other private rail lines Tokyoites use to get around their metro area.  There are over 1000 stations.  No system anywhere else comes close in scale. 

The miracles of the Japanese kitchen, particularly in the home of a highly skilled cook, begin in a place like you see in the picture to the left.  The kitchen is a densely packed space, assembled with function, not aesthetics, in mind.  There are dozens of tools and utensils that would puzzle most anyone from outside this East Asian island.  But somehow the complex orchestration of cooking items becomes a thing of beauty - particularly when you understand the nuanced delicacies that emerge from this space.  This is the kitchen of my dear friend, the extraordinarily talented cook, Sachiko Onishi.  Sachiko was surprised that I wanted to take pictures of her kitchen.  It's a place I had become very used to over the many years I lived in Tokyo.

It may be odd that I'm writing about a Japanese kitchen in a blog focused on urban design, but I was struck with the parallels between this Japanese kitchen and the lively and engaging urban spaces in Tokyo.  And furthering the culinary link, while in China and Japan on this trip, I spent a lot of time thinking about food, and how good food and good urban spaces have certain key things in common.  More on this later.

First a look at a kitchen drawer to the right, with a collection of rice bowls, bowls for miso soup, and small tea cups. Note that the high-quality bowls and cups are not matching, as would be common in the US or Europe.  Instead each is unique, providing additional variety and aesthetic pleasure to a meal. 

In the pictures below you get a peek into four cupboards in Sachiko's kitchen.  Here are arrayed the widely varied set of dishes required for Japanese cuisine.  The Japanese do not generally eat meals on one large plate.  Instead, each individual food item (and in a typical Japanese meal there are many items) has its own, often small, dish. 

You can see that even the western-style coffee and tea cups hanging in one cabinet are different and not matching.  It's an extra pleasure to have a different, beautiful cup with your coffee every morning. The visual and tactile dimension of dishes is very important to the Japanese. 

Let me add that while staying with Sachiko's family for 10 days, the morning coffee was meticulously and artfully prepared by Sachiko's husband, my good friend Nozomu. 

Good food in Japan is an obsession.  It's a very popular conversation topic and the Japanese seem to always be in search of great new culinary treats. 

One of the keys to good Japanese cooking is a fine balancing of quality, fresh ingredients in complex combinations of subtle flavors, smells and satisfying textures.

The picture above is a very simple example of the unexpected combinations that Sachiko puts together that taste simply amazing.  This is probably not a dish that Sachiko would like me to post, because it was something she just threw together quickly, but it shows her sophisticated understanding of food and how flavors, smells and textures complement each other.  There is a bowl of miso soup at the top right, cucumbers with miso paste top left, and a plate of Japanese-style fried rice featuring natto (a strong-smelling, sticky form of fermented soy beans) and chirimen jako (chewy, dried baby sardines).  It was bliss.

A visit to any local Japanese supermarket illustrates how blessed the Japanese are with thousands of sophisticated ingredients.  There is an extraordinary range of picture-perfect vegetables, mushrooms and fruits.  There is a huge selection of very fresh seafood.  And then there are the many aisles filled with all sorts of other ingredients, ranging from sauces and condiments to dozens of types of dried seaweed and kelp.

A typical American faced with a basket filled with a normal day's food shopping in Japan would be at a loss.  I don't imagine they would find anything edible or have any clue how to put together a meal using the ingredients.  I smiled while recently standing in line and peering into the shopping baskets of those around me.  It was marvelous to see so many people with an intimate connection to cooking and what I imagined to be an ability to prepare an excellent meal using all sorts of fresh seafood and vegetables. 

Below is a sampling of the types of delicious food Sachiko prepares at home on a daily basis.

So back to my thoughts on the Japanese kitchen, cooking and urban design.  When I experience a neighborhood that feels great, like Sachiko's kitchen it's not some austerely designed sanitary creation of an architect or urban planner.  Instead it's a messy combination of elements that have evolved together and whose sum is greater than its parts. 

A great neighborhood has a variety of shops, businesses, restaurants and residential buildings, and lots of people of all sorts walking, shopping, riding their bicycles and even passing by in buses and cars.  No single element (like a huge road with speeding cars) should dominate the scene.  It may not always be pretty, but it will be comfortable, convenient and engaging.  People will be drawn to a good neighborhood.  In Tokyo there are so many neighborhoods of this kind, tightly packed with attractive and enticing features, and with a constant stream of people engaged in many different activities.  Neighborhoods such as this are exciting and make you feel like you're in the midst of something wonderful. 

The elements and features that make up a wonderful neighborhood are much like the ingredients found in great food. Quality ingredients skillfully combined, and served in beautiful dishes, create excellent cuisine.  Likewise, the quality and complexity of elements, naturally fused over years, create wonderful neighborhoods.  In my next posting on Tokyo, I will go into the details of the 'recipe' for a good neighborhood. 

To close,  I share a picture of Sachiko and her family.  They are my good friends of nearly 20 years and were kind enough to host me while I stayed in Tokyo this last time. 

In the picture to the right, we are just about to enjoy a dinner of oden, one of my favorite winter foods in Japan.

Nozomu (the family intellectual) sits on the left. Sachiko (the gifted chef and one of the highest energy people I have ever met) on the right.  And Rui (their very kind, smart and hospitable son) in front.  Life is good with friends like these. 

I've got my biases. One of them is that urban greening and infrastructure design is way ahead in the rich world, particularly in northern Europe and countries like Singapore and Australia. 

Travel, however, melts away prejudices.  My recent three-week stay in China certainly altered my elitist views associating beautiful city infrastructure and urban greening with the so-called rich world.

China is on many peoples' minds.  I believe it's a generally poorly understood country that, due to its growing economic and political power, tends to give rise to fears in other countries.  In this sense, China is a bigger version of the demonized Japan of the 1970s and 80s.  While I think fears of China are misplaced - China's rise offers more benefits than disadvantages to the rest of the world - I can see how its rapid move into the future could be unnerving to some.  Some of the nasty side effects of its massive industrialization are alarming, particularly the air and water pollution.  But on the whole, I would say its advances are positively breathtaking.  Based on decades of living and traveling in East Asia, I believe China's future is quite bright and shows clear parallels to the rapid economic rise of countries such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, albeit on an enormous scale. 

In my recent three-week stay in China, I visited Hangzhou and Shanghai.  It would be odd to classify either of these two cities as 'poor' and typical of the developing world.  Although China is ranked at the same per capita income level as countries such as Colombia and Thailand, in terms of physical infrastructure Chinese cities have more in common with those in far wealthier countries.  As a matter of fact, I believe statistics on China (at least regarding the coastal areas) are misleading.  This country is far ahead of where most people think it is. 

In this posting I will focus in particular on Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province in eastern China.  It's a city I knew little about and which I had never before visited.   Hangzhou came as a surprise. It enchanted me with its beauty, exuberance of green and sense of order and well-being. 

Hangzhou is a mid-sized Chinese city of 6 million people but, according to the Chinese government, it has a metropolitan area population of 21 million.  Yes, 21 million. Population numbers in China are mind-boggling.  Nearby Shanghai (only an hour away) has a metro population of 23 million.  Ningbo, Suzhou and Nanjing, also within roughly an hour of Hangzhou, each has a metro area population at or near 10 million.  These cities, like Hangzhou, have populations in the range of a Paris or London, but remain virtually unknown to much of the outside world.  They deserve (and will get) more attention.

The history of Hangzhou stretches back over 2000 years of Chinese history.  Marco Polo claimed to have visited Hangzhou when it was the capital of China, saying that it was 'greater than any city in the world'. It lies at the southern end of the famous "Grand Canal" (see map above), the largest artificial waterway in the world (built in the 6th and 7th centuries A.D.), which wends its way over 1700 kilometers from Hangzhou to Beijing. 

This ancient city must be one of the most pleasant in China.  I arrived from steamy Hong Kong in an ideal season.  The autumn weather was not too warm and the blooming sweet osmanthus filled the air with a captivating scent - so good I wanted to taste it (and in fact there are sweets based on osmanthus flowers here).  It was a magical experience.  

I quickly came to the conclusion that Hangzhou is, in many respects, a nicer place to live than very rich Hong Kong.  There is a sense of open space here and an incredible proliferation of green wherever you look. 

Hangzhou has also protected many  historical areas and structures, especially around the beautiful West Lake.  Further away from the lake, however, it's less likely to find much of anything old.  Rapid growth has meant the redevelopment of much of the city.  The upwardly mobile Chinese prefer new, modern streets that are as clean as those you would find in Japan.  And I must say these streetscapes are well-designed and well-built (see picture above). But the loss of the older neighborhoods is sad in that the streets and alleyways in these areas are especially vibrant.  They are abuzz with life and activity, and there seems to be more leeway in these places to stretch out and relax, whether it be people sitting on a curbside or restaurants extending their tables and chairs out onto the pavement.  Somehow these older streets are the 'authentic' China to me. 

Below you can see a couple of scenes from back streets and alleys, the places I would typically go to find a fresh bowl of steaming noodles or dumplings.  Although these are really remnants of the past in Hangzhou, they are alive with energy.  And it's interesting to note that like all streets in Hangzhou, they are tree-lined.  The Chinese have been at the street-tree planting thing for a long while.

City planners in Hangzhou  are the most determined group of tree enthusiasts I've ever come across.  The evidence surrounds you.  Rarely have I visited a city, anywhere in the world, that has lavished so much attention and care on the planting and maintenance of trees, both in parks and along streets and roads. 

Tree planting is not done haphazardly.  Instead planting areas for trees are large and well-designed.  The Chinese seem to be well-versed in the latest research on urban tree planting and landscape architecture.  Trees here won't suffer from lack of space as they grow.  The landscaping along the edges of streets was also impressive, and brought back memories of super-organized Singapore. 

You would be hard pressed to find a large American city that lavishes as much care on its trees and landscaping,  and universally uses such a high quality of materials in the construction of its streetscapes.

Below are some pictures of tree-lined streets in Hangzhou.

As I mention above, the city of Hangzhou pays close attention to the choice of materials it uses on new sidewalks and pedestrian streets.  Instead of poured concrete or asphalt, sidewalks and other pedestrian surfaces tend to be paved with carefully laid, high-quality paving stones.  The streets and landscaped areas are also edged with stone curbs.  It gives the city a classy feeling and a sense that it is being built for the long term.  Things may move fast in China, but that does not necessarily mean that things are done shoddily.  See some paving examples below. 

I noticed many urban greening innovations while in Hangzhou.  The city is doing its best to green areas that normally are barren and lifeless. 

At the right is an example of planters placed on top of the barrier along the edge of a highway bridge.  These planters are filled with flowering bushes, and include an irrigation system. 

Another typical eyesore that the Chinese manage to green are multi-level parking garages.  I saw planters placed along the edge of all levels of parking garages, where the cascade of plants and bushes camouflages the structure.  These parking garages were transformed from urban blight to vertical gardens that can be green centerpieces of their neighborhoods.  For years I've wondered why unsightly parking garages have to mar our cities.  There is a solution. 

When considering urban quality of life, it's impossible to leave out ease of mobility in and between cities.  China provides an excellent example of how good transport is planned and developed.  This country is investing heavily in public transportation, ranging from new subways to high-speed intercity trains.  It is arguably developing one of the world's most sophisticated transport systems, on par with countries such as Japan and Germany.   

Shanghai already has a very extensive (and still growing) modern subway system.  Hangzhou has built its first hyper-modern subway line, and has 6 more lines under construction or planned.  You can see an entrance to the metro and a shiny subway station platform in the two pictures below.     

In terms of intercity mobility, China has built the world's most extensive, and most heavily traveled, high-speed train network.  This has all come in only the last seven years.  There are now over 12,000 kilometers of these elevated train lines, and the network is expected to grow 50% by 2015.  I took a high-speed train from Hangzhou to Shanghai, leaving from the shiny, new Hangzhou East Train Station, pictured above.  The experience was not very different from taking a shinkansen (bullet train) in Japan, although the Chinese have still not cultivated polite queuing behavior.  This is one of the interesting contrasts you find in China - strikingly modern infrastructure but a civic culture still catching up. 

An unpleasant reality of life in Chinese cities, Hangzhou being no exception, is very bad air quality.  Heavy industry and coal-fired power plants make the air hazy and unhealthy to breathe.  I didn't really notice the bad air in Hangzhou or Shanghai, but I was aghast at the haze I saw when I left Hangzhou by train.  A heavy smog hangs over the countryside.  Some of this may have simply been water vapor evaporating from rice paddies, but it's obvious that the country has an air-quality crisis on its hands. 

The rapidly growing numbers of automobiles on Chinese roads (more cars are sold in China than in any other country) is exacerbating this air pollution problem.  Some cities are trying to limit car ownership through license plate lotteries, and Hangzhou is considering this, as well.  But as the city is a center for auto manufacturing, strong limits are unlikely. 

A bright spot is the universal system of bike lanes on all major roads in Hangzhou.  Biking in this city is a pleasure as you are totally separated from automobile traffic on wide, well-paved bicycle lanes surrounded by lush green landscaping.  These lanes are at least double if not triple the width you would find in a city like Amsterdam.  There are separate traffic lights for bicycles and even covered shelters at intersections for bicyclists waiting in the rain or strong sun. 

Hangzhou also has the world's largest bicycle sharing system, with (as of January of last year) over 66,000 bicycles available at 2,700 stations.  The Citi Bike system in New York, by contrast, has about 6,000 bicycles. Hangzhou plans to extend the system to 175,000 bicycles by 2020.  You can see a bike-sharing station in the picture above. 

The most famous tourist attraction in Hangzhou is West Lake.  It's been a source of inspiration to Chinese artists and writers throughout China's history and historically an inspiration to gardeners even in Japan and Korea.  It's now a UNESCO World Heritage Site,

The temples, pagodas and gardens around West Lake make up a rare, ethereally enchanting place.  For me, the closest parallel to the otherworldly beauty of this area is the fringe of temples along the edges of Kyoto in Japan.

The rather vast area of picturesque landscape and mountains surrounding the lake (more than 8,000 acres) give Hangzhou a green heart and I think may be the inspiration for the well-tended greenery throughout the city. 

A special characteristic of Hangzhou, and a showcase of its horticultural genius, is the well-tended parks along its many canals.  These canal-hugging parks run all over the city and go on for kilometer after kilometer, offering a very quiet refuge from the noise and commotion of the city. 

I was amazed at how carefully designed and constructed these parks are. One day I rode my rented bicycle for hours following canal after canal.  I filmed a video of my ride along one canal, and you can see this below. 

Please note a few things about the video before taking the plunge.  It was taken while riding a bicycle and is rather shaky.  This can make for a nausea-inducing experience (maybe best not to watch it in full-screen mode).  The bicycle I rented had extremely squeaky brakes, and you can hear these throughout the recording.  Finally, I was suffering from a nasty sore throat and am clearing my throat often while I speak.  In its defense, the video gives you a great picture of a part of Hangzhou that most tourists never see.

As usual, I end with a glimpse of a few of the tasty meals I had in Hangzhou.  China is a country with a serious food culture.  Hangzhou is filled with restaurants of all kinds and levels and I must say the food is absolutely delicious.  Somehow I hadn't expected the food here to be so good.  But it was mouthwateringly tasty.

On the left, a local restaurant with scrumptuous food and a convivial atmosphere.  The men at the left really wanted to talk, although they could speak very little English.  We enjoyed a few beers together.  My friend Ting, who guided me through the culinary scene in Hangzhou, is a bit camera shy but joined me for many of my most memorable meals.  I want to extend my thanks here to Ting and the many other Chinese people who welcomed me and spoke with me about urban greening in Hangzhou.


Below are pictures of a few simple dishes, all very inexpensive, but very delicious. 

India is a notoriously chaotic place.  That chaos hit me head on upon arrival on my latest trip to the country.  

I arrived in Mumbai on a flight from Bahrain and soon discovered that my luggage had not arrived with me.  There was no information from the airline (Jet Airways) nor agents to help.  Large numbers of angry passengers, seemingly resigned to this sort of thing in India, stood in a long line near customs waiting to provide their details and sign a rather comically complicated, needlessly long form.  I was finally told that I would have my bags delivered the following morning.  In fact, it took seven days to be reunited with my things and I was promised (but never received) the whopping equivalent of US$20 in compensation.  

Adding to the stress of not having any of my things for a week, the place I'd arranged to stay for a month in Bandra (an inner suburb of Mumbai) rather suddenly informed me I would have to vacate.  There had been a change of plans (another tenant was moving in) and I was to leave.  No effort was made to help me find new lodging.  I was basically out on the street in Mumbai with no clothing.  Compounding the discomfort was a serious Dengue fever outbreak, along with the normal endemic malaria.

My anarchic entry into India somehow provides a fitting segue into a description of the upscale Mumbai district of Bandra.

Nowhere else on earth but India will you find such astounding contrasts: vertigo inspiring heights of wealth surrounded by harrowing depths of poverty, restaurants brimming with mouth-watering delicacies and starving children begging for crumbs, tree-lined avenues with luxury apartment high rises and crammed, steamy slums amid piles of garbage, with no water and almost no room to lie down. 

This is urban India.  It's an often startlingly ugly urban reality that many in the upper classes willfully ignore.   But an area such as Bandra is also a thrillingly lively place where the classes mix and where there is a sense of possibility infused into the complex urban jumble. 

Bandra is a wealthy area in Mumbai, part of the city's so-called Suburban District to the north of the city center (see maps below).  In many parts, it's a trendy residential zone that is also a center of upscale shops, fancy restaurants, cheaper markets and a lot more.  It includes many Christian churches and schools originating in the time that it was a Christian settlement.  Along the sea, it has a rather ramshackle, but popular, promenade (which is sadly marred by the refuse and human excrement deposited openly along its edges).  All in all, Bandra is an eye-opening amalgam that is always busy with life, but that somehow becomes most attractive at night. 

A surprising, and refreshing thing really, about Bandra is that although the classes are clearly segregated by neighborhood and the types of buildings in which they live, there is a rather comprehensive mix of people and businesses of all social strata here.  Unlike most wealthy areas in the world (some African cities being an exception), luxury apartment blocks will often be cheek-by jowl with crumbling wooden shacks that serve as all sorts of small businesses.  Bandra also has its share of older, decaying apartment buildings that although rather unpleasant to look at, must by the standards of slum dwellers look heavenly. 

A thought that plagued me throughout my stay was, how is it that the millions of forgotten poor continue to go along with a system that offers them so very little?  I can't escape the thought that a city like Mumbai is a powder keg that could explode at any time, particularly if there is a serious economic shock.  

There is no doubt that the difficult circumstances I faced impacted my experience this time around in India.  I want to make clear that in so many ways this is an unusually fascinating and exciting place.  There is a hum of energy in the air, a complexity to the streets that make them worthy of hours of exploration, a food culture on display that is one of the best in the world and, most importantly, many wonderfully welcoming and kind people. 

In my rather short stay of 9 days, I met academics, city planners and volunteers all involved in making Mumbai a better place to live.  I'm grateful for the time they gave me. 

While living in Berlin last summer I conceived of a research project that would take me across Asia, a continent that I spent a good part of my life in, but about which I have never written.  This was a large gap in my research about the 'green divide' and I decided to revisit some representative cities in the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia. 

Istanbul struck me as an ideal starting point from Berlin.  It's a city that straddles both Europe and Asia, combines both European and non-European characteristics, and is a global megacity where I was sure I could learn a lot.  It turned out to be an unexpectedly good choice that changed my thinking about developing world cities on many fronts. 

As with most every other city I've been to, Istanbul is a place that tourist attractions do not define or explain.  My previous short visit to the city followed the typical tourist itinerary of a few days in the old city, visiting the Egyptian Bazaar and nearby mosques, drinking tea and smoking the hookah.  This time around I rented an apartment for a month in the centrally located Beyoglu neighborhood, the historically European (ethnically and culturally) enclave of Istanbul.  It made an ideal base for exploring the far reaches of the city as this area, including Taksim Square, is the major hub of much of the city's transit.   My goal for the month was to meet as many people involved in urban studies and planning (academics, activists, government officials), and visit as many neighborhoods and parts of the city, as I could in a month.  Very quickly a new identity emerged from the mists of the tourist fog and I realized that I'd been hostage to an image of the country and city quite at odds with reality

Istanbul is a a huge, modern Mediterranean city that has more in common with Rome than with Cairo or other Middle Eastern cities.  It is an elegant, hilly city surrounded by the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus and the Black Sea.  Water is rarely far away.  Maybe most surprisingly, it is enveloped in expansive green forests like you might expect to see around some cities in Central Europe.  Few cities in the world have as much forest within their borders as Istanbul (although this forest is shrinking).  I would never have imagined it. 

Below on the left is a map of the Balkans, including the region around Istanbul.  Istanbul really is a European city.  On the right: a closer view of the Istanbul region.  The city is perched along the Bosporus, which connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara.  It's easy to see its strategic historical position with control of movement between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and between Europe and Asia.

In addition to it's surprisingly green environs, Istanbul also surprised me with a higher level of organization and quality of infrastructure, including parks, than most other cities at this income level.  Mexico City or Sao Paolo (cities with a similar GDP per head), are far behind, both in terms of the quality of their streets and other public infrastructure.  Istanbul just looks far more developed and livable than cities in many of Turkey's economic peers.  As I talked with people about this, an explanation emerged:  the city has an ancient urban culture and has been a part of European history for thousands of years.  Istanbulites take pride in the central city and the city invests to keep it livable and attractive.  I believe another part of the explanation for the feeling of organization and well-being lies in the relatively low income inequality in Turkey.  Istanbul is certainly a city of contrasts.  Impressively wealthy areas line the waterfront contrasting with areas of poverty further inland.  But with a GINI coefficient quite a bit lower than Mexico's or Brazil's, the contrasts are not as extreme and there seem to be relatively few parts of the population totally left behind by Turkey's strong economic growth. 

As delighted as I was with Istanbul, any city of this size has problems, and Istanbul has most problems typical of large urban areas.  Two things in particular, however, conspire to diminish the quality of life here:  the city's high population density and its growing dependence on the automobile. 

Istanbul's population density is readily apparent, as much of its large population is squeezed into neighborhoods along the coastline.  City neighborhoods tend to have multistory apartment blocks lining narrow streets.  And with a rapidly growing number of cars, these streets are overtaxed and bogged down with traffic for much of the day. 

The city is complicit in this expansion of automobile transport.  Its investments in bigger roads encourages more car usage, and comes at the expense of open spaces and forests. The automobile-traffic clogged streets hinder movement in buses, by far the most common form of public transport in Istanbul.  While there is one bus rapid transit line in the city (with dedicated lanes not shared with cars), it is not well integrated with the rest of the city's transport infrastructure and is itself overcrowded. 

The rapid growth of the city over the last decades, encouraged by expanded automobile infrastructure, has led to a massive loss in green cover over the last 35 years.  The pictures below, courtesy of an academic researcher in Istanbul, show how the city's (and region's) forest cover has dramatically shrunk since 1977.

The reliance on the automobile in this densely populated city has not only led to a dramatic decline in forest cover, but has distorted the structure of neighborhoods.  In a city where streets and sidewalks make up a large percentage of available public space (there are not many parks in central areas), city sidewalks are often almost comically marginalized to make space for cars and car parking.  The images below show some typically vestigial sidewalks in Istanbul providing practically no room for pedestrians to walk.  This situation is often aggravated with the most confounding design and placement of bus stop shelters which totally block the sidewalk and force pedestrians to enter the busy street to pass. 

But as I write above, Istanbul strikes me as a highly organized, efficiently managed city.  Everywhere I looked I noted impressive infrastructure improvements, ranging from new subways and bridges to expansive new parklands along the waterfront.  The streetscapes themselves are being renewed with better sidewalks and newly laid brick streets.  .  There is a certain amount of dissatisfaction among many groups with the ruling party's conservative policies in Turkey, but it's hard to deny this government's success in making massive improvements to the physical structure of Istanbul.  In a city growing and evolving as rapidly as Istanbul, mistakes are naturally being made.  I will go into some of these further below.  But first, I share some pictures below of newly redesigned streets with protected sidewalks and carefully laid pavement bricks and stones.  These new streets are not the exception in Istanbul, but are becoming the rule. 

The city is also managing to plant trees in the sorts of narrow streets that typically remain treeless elsewhere.  In cities around the world urban planners tell me that there is no place to plant trees in narrow streets like those found in many poor districts (particularly informal neighborhoods).  But Istanbul provides a great model for what can be done. The pictures below come from several different neighborhoods in the city.  . 

Trees on streets provide many benefits, but they don't transform streets into areas where children can play safely and where people can spend leisurely afternoons away from the crowds and noise of the city.  Accessible parks are an essential part of the good life in any city, and this is an area where Istanbul has traditionally lagged.  The current administration recognized this shortcoming of the city and has embarked on an ambitious park-building program the scale of which I've seen nowhere other than China.  Vast areas of the city's shoreline, areas along highways, and significant portions of any new development are now being devoted to parkland and green spaces.  Even crowded, poor neighborhoods are getting new small parks.  I'm not exaggerating to say the developments are remarkable and impressive.  Detractors may say that these parks are cosmetic cover ups or used to direct attention away from land grabs elsewhere. But from what I could see, no matter the government's intentions, these are real parks used by large numbers of people.  Below are some images of Istanbul's well-tended parks and green spaces.

Where the city may be failing in its modernization and upgrading efforts is in the poorest parts of the city, informal settlements known as gecekondu ('geh-jay-kondoo'). This terms means something like 'built overnight' in Turkish.


Gecekondu are found throughout and all around Istanbul.  I visited several, but in this section will write about the gecekondu I encountered in the Tuzla district. 

A position I had rigidly maintained for years was that the 'Green Divide' (the unequal distribution of urban trees and green space in favor of the wealthy) uniformly exists across cities around the world.  Before coming to Istanbul, as I discussed my upcoming research with academics here, I was typically confronted with disagreement on this thesis.  I assumed that there was some communication problem, as many Turkish academics are not accustomed to using English.  How could it be that the poor would have street trees and green spaces while those of higher economic classes didn't?  This went against everything I had witnessed in urban Latin America, Africa and even the United States.  But in Istanbul the poorest really DO have more green, as you can see in the pictures below. 

Sadly, the somehow charming, green gecekondu settlements are under threat and are being dismantled, often replaced with soulless high-rise apartment blocks totally set apart from nature and dislocated from the pre-existing social fabric.  It's as if the Turks had learned nothing from decades of misguided urban redevelopment in Europe and North America. 

In Tuzla I saw widespread destruction of homes, especially along major streets.  I wondered what had become of the families who had built their Istanbul lives here.  There was no indication of what would follow this demolition, but with the rapid growth of this city, I imagine that cleared areas along wide thoroughfares would be converted to a mix of high-rise commercial and residential use. 

As a gecekondu neighborhood develops, population density increases and the settlements gradually take on the dense character of much of the rest of the city.  Trees and small garden plots disappear, and the buildings become taller and taller.  In some cases, gecekondu are destroyed to make way for highrise developments like those pictured below.  They seem like human warehouses to me.    You can see a couple of examples in Tuzla below. 

A feature of Istanbul that sets it apart from many other cities is its countless beautiful staircases, which connect neighborhoods and bring people up into the hills of the city, or down to the sea. 

The most wonderful thing about the staircases is that there are, of course, no cars.  They are in fact a model for what the streets of Istanbul could be like if they were pedestrianized. 

Staircases provide much needed, car-free public space in the city, and I would always see people sitting on these city staircases, especially in the evenings.  Often large groups gather here, enjoying a beer and sometimes even a barbecue while taking in the view..  

Below are a few shots of some staircases I climbed. 

People make all the difference.  My productive time in Istanbul was made possible by the dozens of extremely kind and generous Turks I met.  I don't believe I've ever met such a universally giving and hospitable group of people in all my travels.  `

A small sampling of the wonderful people who helped me in my research and who often became friends. 

And as usually, I include some pictures of the wonderful Turkish food I enjoyed. 

As I've written earlier, Berlin is a uniquely green city - without a doubt one of the greenest large cities in the world.  This green reality has arisen through a long history of enlightened city planning, high level urban ecological understanding and, rather perversely, the incredible destruction of the Second World War and the city's subsequent political division.  In this posting I will write about a particularly German notion of urban green space, one that is occupying a more and more central role in the green identity of Berlin and that has arisen from Berlin's unique attributes and history.  I will start with a bit of a history. 

At the end of World War II Berlin found itself in an odd situation.  It was a divided city, ultimately between an East German controlled East and a West German controlled West.  This division separated the city not only politically, but also in terms of ecological study and practice.  The universities and practitioners in the western part of the city gradually became more and more detached from those in the eastern part, especially after the wall went up.  What's more, with the erection of the wall and strict travel restrictions, ecologists in the West were deprived of access to Berlin's green hinterland, the countryside surrounding Berlin, their traditional area of research.  This left ecologists and natural scientists with a greatly restricted area for research and ultimately redirected a group of them to the variety of open spaces within the city itself that supported nature.  Berlin had a large number of new habitats for these researchers to examine:  large tracts of empty land left over from destroyed buildings (rubble fields, really) and abandoned industrial infrastructure which were gradually being recolonized by vegetation and wildlife.

To learn about this 'new' object of ecological study, I paid a visit to Dr. Ingo Kowarik, a warm and welcoming ecology professor at Berlin's venerable Technical University, TU. I visited him at his office in the Ecological Institute of the university in the upper-class Berlin district of Steglitz.  The physical appearance of the Institute, I must say, embodies much of the charm that characterizes Berlin itself today.  It is not a shiny, meticulously maintained facility, but instead a lovely old, somewhat timeworn former villa.  The gardens around the villa also reflect the condition of much of Berlin's green space.  There are no manicured gardens, but simply an un-fussily managed yard with lawns, bushes, trees and a few flowers.  It seems to benefit from a kind of benign neglect that gives it a cozy and welcoming feeling,  Berliners today seem to have a view of urban nature not as something pristine and manicured but instead a bit more messy and accessible, I think.

Dr. Kowarik acquainted me with the details of the early history of the novel urban ecosystems that have arisen on rubble fields and old industrial sites, calling them collectively 'Nature of the Fourth Kind.'  This term positions these ecosystems in a conceptual framework devised by Dr. Kowarik.  The framework contains four types of urban ecosystems and ranges from "Nature of the First Type' to 'Nature of the Fourth Type' as outlined in the chart above.  The lower the classification number, the more 'wild' and similar an ecosystem is to the region's original, pre-human ecosystem.

An excellent example of 'Nature of the Fourth Type' and its integration into Berlin's green infrastructure is the Natur-Park Südegelände.  This park has been developed on the site of a huge abandoned railyard, previously the largest in the city.  After the war and the division of the Berlin, the yard fell into disuse.  Over time vegetation grew on what had once been a very inhospitable surface of gravel, cement, and rail ties.  A whole ecosystem, including grasslands and groves of trees, evolved and was discovered by local environmentalist who lobbied for the site to be protected.  They won their battle, and today this popular park, full of biodiversity, is one of a handful of 4th Nature protected areas in the city.  More parks of this type are now planned, including one on the area of what used to be the Nordbahnhof, the North Train Station. Some may see a similarity between 4th Nature parks and the High Line Park in Manhattan.  The difference is that the vegetation in 4th Nature parks sprung up naturally, without direct human involvement.  It evolved on its own, creating an ecosystem over decades.   

Below are some pictures from the Natur-Park Südegelände.

A key lesson from my ongoing research project in many cities around the world is the incredible difference helpful local contacts make in understanding complex phenomenon, such as the urban environment.  A fine example is the ecologist Dr. Gottfried Wiedenmann who works at the Natur-Park Südegelände (see picture at left).  Dr. Wiedenmann generously gave me time and shared his deep knowledge of the history of Berlin's ecology and its 4th Nature sites.  It transformed my thinking about this topic.  It also reinforced my belief in the underlying strength and depth of Berlin's network of urban greening specialists.  

The lessons of 4th Nature parks for rust-belt cities in the US, and other declining industrial cities, are great.  Berlin makes me think a lot about Detroit (which in some ways resembles Berlin after the war), and I imagine there must be a huge potential for 4th Nature parks in that city. 

More sharing of best practices like this are required throughout the world, but especially in the developing world where cities have limited space and resources.  4th Nature parks use abandoned land that is often unsuited for other types of development and are relatively inexpensive to develop and maintain.  This is just one great innovation that I've learned about in Germany.