To and Fro

While driving to Publix in Spartanburg, my husband and I passed a townhome community, pictured above (which actually looks much worse in real life). He said something along the lines of “what kind of depressing prison doom is this?” After a brief discussion on what not to do when designing, he came to the conclusion that a city’s aesthetic has a major impact on its inhabitants’ mental health and wellbeing. Seems like he attended our history class.

The focus of architects seems to be mostly on one monumental, excellent space at a time. In reality, and as Margaret Crawford says, people experience normal, everyday life much more often than just one special park or building at a time. From commuting from home to work to the grocery store, people experience the city in ways we often glance over. Properly planned urbanism for the common man’s daily way of life has the potential to be much more meaningful and impactful than only planning for special occasions. In an ideal world, people would be able to carry on with their most mundane tasks while enjoying their surroundings, not being surrounded by run-down strip mall after strip mall.