Today I attended an event about public space for public life. It focused on what it means to have a city be planned for its people, and how to maximize public spaces so that people actually use them.

City staff (Acting Chief Planner Gregg Lintern and Parks & Rec Manager Janie Romoff) emphasized that planning such spaces constantly requires an immense amount of forward thinking. Gregg provided an example of the lower deck built into the Bloor Viaduct when constructed in 1913, despite a subway not being built for another 40 years. The lower deck was constructed in anticipation of a mass transit rail line, but had substantial push back by constituents and politicians due to the enormous cost and no immediate gratification. Janie then followed by providing more recent examples of parks that begun being thought about decades ago – Berczy Park, Grange Park, and the coming of College Park, Dr. Lillian McGregor Park and Mouth of the Creek Park. I immediately thought of the Waterfront Renewal and wondered how the plan will incorporate the Toronto of 2070 and beyond.

The idea of parks and streets being seamless was also reinforced. There should be no edge or distinction between what exists for leisure and what exists for practical use. I love this idea. Public spaces should not be segregated. I always try to include a route through a park during my commutes. Planning done right, I think, is the type that blurs the lines for me so that I can’t distinguish if this part of the route is a park or regular street, since it’s all so pleasant.

Finally, the star of the show was Jan Gehl – an architect and urban designer that I often heard about but never really studied. Jan described that the problems with old planning paradigms was their focus on cars, objects, and the ‘modern man’. Buildings aren’t going to interact with each other, and we sure as hell don’t want cars interacting with the buildings. The breath of cities is made of people, not objects, so why are we focusing on how pretty a birds-eye view of a neighbourhood is instead of walking through it and observing its human interactions?

Jan talked about the baby boomer effect – how Copenhagen appears to have an overwhelming amount of kids, while the reality is that the city (unlike many others) is built to encourage kids being outside. He joked that Moscow’s baby boom was a result of the well-planned public spaces that facilitate romantic dates and looking at girls.

Shortly put, Jan advocated for planning cities with a human scale. If you build freeways, you’ll have to erect large ads that can be read at 60km/hr and additional hospitals for the sick who sit all the time. If you build bike lanes for cyclists and street furniture for pedestrians, people will never go back to their house – the city’s entire public landscape becomes a place to call home.