Future of Mobility #24: Jane & Jan – Two of a Kind to Build Cities for People.

I intensely seek happy faces to cheer me up. I look for joyful glances as a plea for appeasement. I don’t want to be grandiloquent, but I don’t find anything more powerful than a genuine smile shining from inside with the potential to return to darkness the shamelessness and obscenity of our disenchanted times.

This is the reason why I am so glad to kick off this article with the resplendent pictures from two of the most famous urban planners of the last few decades, who coincidentally shared the same first name. On one side there is Jane Jacobs who published “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” in 1961 which still remains a very popular book within the planners’ community today. On the other side is Jan Gehl, a Danish urban designer, whose most famous publication, “Cities for People”, was edited in 2010, fifty-years after the one from his namesake relative. These two authors wrote in quite a different style. Jane adopted a critical and protesting tone all throughout her narrative, while Jan applied a more practical and contributive approach, which makes both pieces of work entertaining and complementary to read. Through this review, I will emphasize three aspects of this common concept of “Cities for People” that they promoted with passion: mobility as the starting point; diversity with liveliness as the path to follow; and finally, happiness as the goal to reach.

1. Mobility as the Starting Point

Mobility for people and merchandises proves to be an essential part of urban planning. Jan states it from the very beginning of his book: “The natural starting point for the work of designing cities for people is human mobility and the human senses because they provide the biological basis for activities, behavior and communication in city space.” Jane shares the same point of view: “Good transportation and communication are not only among the most difficult things to achieve; they are also basic necessities”. The problem of city development is that mobility has been treated from the exclusive perspective of allowing cars to move seamlessly anywhere. We gave them the top priority on roads against any other modes of transportation. In this regard, Jane hit hard on city planners! She accuses them of streamlining the city’s problems to just automobile traffic without considering the people. Jan emphasizes this statement by inserting a mix of horrible photos where avenues are full of vehicles, contrasting with other marvelous pictures where people are enjoying sitting and walking in sunny and lively pedestrian streets!

There is an implicit question behind their judgement: is the invasion of automobile traffic a desire from citizens or a consequence of building cities for cars? In this typical chicken-and-egg dilemma, Jane and Jan do not hesitate for a second and put the burden on urban structures which influence our human behaviors. New cities were built for cars and old cities were modified to facilitate the automotive traffic, and people had to bear with that trend. We allowed the destruction of the urban landscape by adding large roads with long walls, bridges, tunnels, parking lots, stationary spaces all along the streets, and other infrastructure which are perfectly appropriate for traffic but totally unsuitable for pedestrians. Because of this strict orientation, people were stimulated (I would not say “forced” as there is always a pleasure to drive and a feeling of liberty) to use cars for their movements and companies to use trucks for their deliveries. We entered a vicious circle where expanding roads and parking lots generated more traffic and congestion, until we reached a point where “a horse and buggy could cross Los Angeles almost as fast in 1900 as an automobile can make this trip today at 5pm ”. I underlined “today” because this date sends us back to the time of Jane’s statement, meaning sixty-years ago!

The immediate basic reaction would be to implement any means to reduce the number of cars in a city. You will see later in this article that it is not a great idea, but let’s entertain it for now. In this scenario, Jane provides an interesting list of tactics. Her proposal is to progressively implement these alternatives, in a gradual mode. She does not believe in drastic and accelerated transformational plans. Interestingly, Jan shares the same views of taking a step-by-step approach. This process is fine, but I was shocked by the fact that the recommended solutions to reduce the traffic in cities are not revolutionary at all. It looks like we had to wait for the Covid-19 crisis to implement practices that could have been considered many years ago: for instance, to widen the sidewalks and use them to enhance city life with outside bars and restaurant tables; to carry small parks across a street and create dead ends; to desynchronize the traffic light system to slowing down the circulation; to expand the bicycle lanes and dedicated stations; to forbid parking and standing for cars; to give priority to truck deliveries at any time of the day...

Now that we have removed cars from our streets, it is time to promote and accelerate the deployment of alternative mobility solutions. Jan is a strong supporter of bicycle and proposes a fully integrated transport strategy with the possibility to carry bikes on trains, metro lines, city buses, and even in taxis. He also imagines spaces to park bicycles securely at stations, hubs and offices, and finally he recommends to build a network of dedicated lines completely safe and expanded far enough to reach remote destinations. He further suggests three-wheelers vehicles for children and goods transportation, disabled people and taxi-bikes. I would add another important category of users: those who don’t know how to ride a bicycle because they feel unsafe or cannot handle their equilibrium. I know several persons in my family who are facing this problem and I am surprised that neither Jane nor Jan referred to these group of people.

Nowadays, in many cities in the world, there is a trend to establish dedicated lines for micro-mobility. We shorten the width of avenue space for cars and create ways for bicycles, e-scooters and other electric small vehicles. It seems fine, but it turns out that the recommendations from our two experts have only been applied partially. Because, at the same, we tend to forget pedestrians and sidewalks, which are an essential part of the mobility scheme. Jane is quite vocal on this issue: “Sidewalk width is invariably sacrificed for vehicular width, partly because city sidewalks are conventionally considered to be purely space for pedestrian travel and access to buildings, and go unrecognized and unrespected as the uniquely vital and irreplaceable organs of city safety, public life and child rearing that they are.” What is still unbearable today is that our sidewalks are filled with traffic signs, parking meters, bollards, street-lamps, litter bins, trees, benches, and other obstacles that complicate the movement of pedestrians, even worse when you move around with a stroller or a pram! Recently, I had a minor incident with a cyclist who popped up out of the blue and intentionally bumped into me simply because I was walking on a bicycle line without being aware of it. I would fully agree with Jane and Jan who state that the priority to pedestrians is mandatory in all circumstances and must always be the determining factor!

Public transport is the other important element to compensate for the reduction of cars in cities. In this regard, Jan demands safe and comfortable public transport (buses, light rail and trains) with stations at close walking distances to people’s final destinations: “Good public space and a good public transport system are simply two sides of the same coin”. I like this genuine sentence which should be exhibited in front of all stations.?

Now we moved one step forward by focusing on pedestrians and developing a nice and effective micro-mobility and public transport system. So, did we meet our objective to build a city for people? Well, the answer is no! At this point, Jane seems to take a malicious pleasure to demystify the fairy tale of nice places with only pedestrians and bicycles. From her perspective, cities like Amsterdam or New Delhi at rush hours present an “appalling mixture” of bicycles with pedestrians.

We are touching two issues that are interrelated. Firstly, it is a wrong tactic to be negative about cars and believe that we can simply replace them by people on foot, on bicycle or by users of public transport. We will go nowhere and for sure we will not get support from the population, particularly from those living far away from the city center and who don’t have a viable alternative to the automobile. We have to address the mobility issue from a constructive standpoint and here, Jane converges totally with Jan on his positive approach. Secondly, the implementation of an effective new mobility scheme cannot simply come from attacking the automotive traffic and refrain it from the city’s streets; we need to integrate mobility dimension within the overall urban development of buildings, enterprises and all the other human activities in town. “Any consideration for pedestrians should not be focused on addressing traffic problems, but rather should improve diversity and livability”. This important statement from Jane brings us to our second chapter which is essential for developing cities without cars and for people.

2. Diversity with Liveliness as the Path to Follow

The generation of diversity is the fundamental topic defended by our two urban planners in their ambition to promote more livable cities. ?Up to now, I had a hard time dealing with this idea of diversity in city design. As a matter of fact, last year I joined an online course from MIT about Smart Cities where diversity was mentioned, but not in a great detail. It fell short of my expectations. Thankfully, Jane and Jan gave me an enlightened explanation!

I summarized in the image below the elements of this concept as described by Jane in several parts of her book. First and above all, diversity refers to a situation where you can get access to multiple opportunities in the public space, a street, a park, a district, a place, etc. The objective of diversity is to generate activities all day long, to entertain people every day of the week, at any time and during the night as much as possible. Jane distinguishes two kinds of diversity: the primary uses, such as offices or dwellings that will play the role of anchor locations. Then, the secondary diversity which are all the enterprises attracted by the primary uses, such as stores, bars, restaurants...

In order to gather enough people in these public spaces, you need a bit of density for the local residents. ?Jane, could you tell us what the ideal density for a lively district should be? Smartly, she wriggled out of handling the question by sharing a funny joke: “The answer to this is something like the answer Lincoln gave to the question, "How long should a man's legs be?" Long enough to reach the ground, Lincoln said.” She argued that there is no direct “mathematical” relationship between diversity and density. You need to control the level of density to a moderate concentration of people.

So, let’s ask Jan the same question! He too twisted the answer by making a funny comparison: to make a public space attractive, you need a minimum of people density. So, he took the example of a conference. If you are organizing a lecture and you expect to invite 100 students, you should better find a room that seats only 50. Because the room has to be packed with people, otherwise the invitees will assume that your lecture is not interesting, because it is not attracting enough people. At the same time, you need to keep a reasonable amount of space between people, otherwise it will be uncomfortable, and participants will escape. Here, he took the second example of the elevator, that we have all experienced many times. In this confined space, we hardly engage in a conversation with the unknown strangers, and we always end up in an awkward situation: “we keep our arms flattened to our sides and our eyes most likely glued to the lighted panel showing which floor we’re on.” In conclusion, the ideal density will be a combination of the underestimated room size and the minimum social distance in an elevator. Simple to figure out, no?!

Having said that, the level of density is not the most important element. There are other critical conditions to be considered, such as mixing primary uses, not separate them, ensure short and varied blocks, etc. (see slide above) which will enable the benefits of diversity to materialize. If people enjoy spending time in the public space, you have reached your objective of diversity. If they just move around quickly and go back to their home, you missed it. I like the idea of finding ways to motivate people to sit down outside, stay and enjoy their time looking around. As Jan says: “People love of watching activity and watching other people.” I must confess that it is one of my favorite occupations when I am at a train station, an airport or in a park. Another phenomenon that we all have experienced for sure is that of people coming where people are. For instance, you enter in an empty shop, you move inside, look at the merchandises, talk with the vendor, and shortly you realize that the store is full of customers, as if you were an attractive magnet! Jan uses another nice sentence to express the importance for people to remain in public areas: “living in city space is a product of how many and how long”. Here, you can see why a pure focus on mobility with walking distances and bicycle lanes is not enough. You also need to provide a space in the city that will attract people to stay and enjoy activities outside of their private residences.

Jane is using the parks, as an unconventional example to capture the meaning of diversity. Spontaneously, you will consider that a park is a pleasant space full of greeneries bringing fresh air and rest for the pedestrians. You would not pay attention to its location and connection with the surrounding urbanism. Then, same as me, you would be completely wrong. Jane demonstrates that parks are also a key factor for diversity generation and need to be treated carefully with strong interaction with other primary and secondary uses close by.

The first time I visited my daughter in Canterbury, I was pleased to walk in a small park settled down in a short distance from her apartment. I was enthusiastic describing this marvelous place with chirping birds, smelling flowers, and running squirrels. What a beautiful square to enjoy! What was my surprise when my daughter told me that she never crossed this park, that she was purposely avoiding it by making a long diversion on her way back from the university, because she did not feel safe. When I looked back at this so-called charming park, I realized that it ticked all the negative trends for diversity decline as raised by Jane: no intricacy; no mixture of uses, only the park; zero secondary activities; no enclosure with a total absence of residences around; and located apart from the majority of popular gathering points.

If I had read Jane’s text earlier, I would have agreed with my daughter on the lack of consideration from urban planners about women safety in downtown: “Why are there so often no people where the parks are and no parks where the people are? Unpopular parks are troubling not only because of the waste and missed opportunities they imply, but also because of their frequent negative effects. They have the same problems as streets without eyes, and their dangers spill over into the areas surrounding, so that streets along such parks become known as danger places too and are avoided.” For Jane, a park should be treated like a sidewalk or a place with a mix of many different activities so that it is always busy with people entering and leaving the park at different times of the day.

This brings us to a very important factor to generate diversity which is the need for safety. This feeling is crucial for people to enjoy wandering in city space. A few weeks ago, I met a young architect who referred to the expression “eyes upon the street”: it refers to an informal and indirect surveillance of neighbors who will watch the street and intervene if any incident happens. Jan mentions the same and gives credit to Jane as the author of this formulation.

The best way to understand this concept is to illustrate it with a real example given by Jane in her book. It is a bit long, but so compelling that I can’t help reproducing it as I am sure it will help you to remember forever the benefits of this collective attitude:

“The incident that attracted my attention was a suppressed struggle going on between a man and a little girl of eight or nine years old. The man seemed to be trying to get the girl to go with him. By turns he was directing a cajoling attention to her, and then assuming an air of nonchalance. The girl was making herself rigid, as children do when they resist, against the wall of one of the tenements across the street. As I watched from our second-floor window, making up my mind how to intervene if it seemed advisable, I saw it was not going to be necessary. From the butcher shop beneath the tenement had emerged the woman who, with her husband, runs the shop; she was standing within earshot of the man, her arms folded and a look of determination on her face. Joe Cornacchia, who with his sons-in-law keeps the delicatessen, emerged about the same moment and stood solidly to the other side. Several heads poked out of the tenement windows above, one was withdrawn quickly and its owner reappeared a moment later in the doorway behind the man. Two men from the bar next to the butcher shop came to the doorway and waited. On my side of the street, I saw that the locksmith, the fruit man and the laundry proprietor had all come out of their shops and that the scene was also being surveyed from a number of windows besides ours. That man did not know it, but he was surrounded. Nobody was going to allow a little girl to be dragged off, even if nobody knew who she was. I am sorry—sorry purely for dramatic purposes—to have to report that the little girl turned out to be the man's daughter.”

In order for this technic of “eyes upon the street” to operate efficiently, you need people in the streets, on the sidewalks, in the parks, in all places and also at the windows of the buildings. We are back to the need for diversity! This is a kind of urban ecosystem with a virtuous development: diversity brings people in the public space which brings safety which encourage more people to spend time outside.

The worst scenario for impersonalization is a high-density area with high-rise buildings and poor secondary activities around them. As Jan says: “new urban areas are often dense and fully developed, but their city spaces are too numerous, too big and too impoverished to inspire anyone to venture into them. (...) Erecting tall buildings to create very high density and poor public space is not a useful recipe for lively cities.” The dwellers are not encouraged to stroll outside because of limited activities, so the streets on the ground are deserted. On top of that, all these towers are equipped with corridors and elevators, which function as streets but piled up vertically; effectively they play the same role as avenues and vehicles on the ground; they are the infrastructure to move people vertically. From a safety standpoint, we are facing a double negative impact for residents moving in and out, because the “eyes on a street” technique cannot be applied. Firstly, these vertical streets are closed spaces not opened to any control which make them scary even during the day. Secondly, residents are living in too high stories so they cannot see what is happening in the public space outside. At the extreme, dwellers will remain locked up in their apartments, leaving the streets at the disposal of odd wanderers, like burglars or drug dealers (examples given by Jane). “Two and two-and-half story town houses have considerably more street life and socializing per household than those with taller buildings.” Jane supports this recommendation from Jan, but with a higher tolerance on the height of the buildings up to six-seven stories.

Jan made a check list for safety failure with the following list of items: “long horizontal and dark facades, access to parking places or garages on edge zones, streets with solid metal shutters close off, insufficient lighting, deserted paths, pedestrian tunnels, dark nooks and crannies, too many bushes, dark park areas...”

By not paying enough attention to safety, we enter in a vicious circle destroying diversity. Eventually, people will move to gated communities to seek for safety, and public spaces will get more and more empty, which makes them every time less secured. The case of this multiplication of gated communities reminds me a book from Jim G. Ballard, who denounces that these places might not be safe either. He is a famous author for a fantastic series of novels on climate change, but he also wrote a terrific short story, “Running Wild”, which takes place in a village totally protected by security fences and bodyguards. The residents feel totally safe and expect that everything will be perfectly fine. However, one day a terrible event happens: all the adults are killed, and the kids disappeared. An inspector is sent to the vicinity, and he will discover very soon with dismay that the violence came from inside as the murders were the kids themselves.

Jan summarizes in one nice sentence the conditions for a successful town for people: “Lively cities require compact city structure, reasonable population density, acceptable walking and biking distances and good quality city space.” So, why this recipe to bring happiness to our cities was not fully implemented in our urban planning projects? Simply because happiness and love for people was not the final goal of these projects. Urban planners were too focused on their own holistic vision of the city and forgot to consider the daily life of the future residents. Jan uses the tone of Jane in a strong sentence! “Dominant planning ideologies have rejected city space and city life as untimely and unnecessary.” This is the topic of the final chapter below.

?3. Happiness as the Goal to Reach

All along her book, Jane brushed aside several major urbanistic projects aiming to build the future city of happiness. She referred to them in several chapters to illustrate how bad they were and how poorly they influenced urban planners to make mistakes after mistakes in city developments. The first one is the Garden City project initiated by Ebenezer Howard in 1898. This English professional hated the overcrowded London and wanted to bring back citizens to nature and small towns. He conceived a city model surrounded by a belt of agriculture land and countryside. In the center, he segregated three urban zones with the industry on one side, the schools and housing on the other side, and in the middle a mix of commercial, club and cultural places. This is exactly the opposite of Jane’s concept to stimulate mingling and mixtures of work, commerce and residences together. She will use her sarcastic tone to describe this Garden City development: “Really very nice towns if you were docile and had no plans of your own and did not mind spending your life among others with no plans of their own.” We could say that Jane has not been heard enough, because the Garden City concept spread out in many cities in the world since then. Interestingly, Howard was inspired by a contemporary science-fiction novel from Edward Bellamy “Looking Backward”. Very often, utopian tales tend to influence innovations, and particularly urban transformation as in this case.

The second arrow thrown by Jane targeted Le Corbusier, who invented, the Radiant City, a kind of Garden City in vertical, with skyscrapers scattered in the middle of a park to maximize density, with large arterial roads to allow the intrusion of cars in the city. It seems that this vision fascinated planners who all wanted to follow the paths of Le Corbusier, which made Jane mad at them: “No matter how vulgarized or clumsy the design, how dreary and useless the open space, how dull the close-up view, an imitation of Le Corbusier shouts "Look what I made!". Like a great, visible ego it tells of some one's achievement. But as to how the city works, it tells, like the Garden City, nothing but lies.”

The third and last project killed by Jane is the City Beautiful of which the first large scale program was handled by the architect Daniel Burnham in Chicago. The basic principle was to erect a monumental building in the center and expand boulevards and city spaces around it. Here again, Jane has no word to express her desperate opinion about these developments. Her final judgment is unappealable: “From beginning to end, from Howard and Burnham to the latest amendment on urban-renewal law, the entire concoction is irrelevant to the workings of cities. Unstudied, unrespected, cities have served as sacrificial victims.”

These “Radiant Garden City Beautiful” utopian visions, as Jane combined them, regrettably could not do anything to bring happiness to their citizens, for a reason that our both famous experts spotlighted in several instances in their books: urban planners used to consider the city as a whole and like to value their work as “grasping the whole picture”, and by doing that, they forget the residents on the ground and how they live every day in this city.

On this point, Jan brings a fascinating analysis on the way to deal with a city development by using different levels of scale (see my summarized image below). He differentiates three very distinctive degrees to plan a city: a high level from an aerial perspective, a middle level where you scroll down through a closer helicopter view, and finally a low level where you are on the ground looking at the city from the horizon line.

In modern urban development projects only the two top-level scales – Large (City) and Middle (Development) – are properly addressed. In Jan’s opinion, on these two scales, a wealth of information is available. We can easily get benchmark data and make proposals which will be recognized as valuable thanks to quantifiable statistics and figures. However, for the Small “human scale”, both experience and relevant information tend to be scarce, so you have to work with more subjective, inconsistent and unreliable data. The majority of planning decisions are made on the top-level scale, while it should be the opposite. Priority should be in that order: Life, then Space and finally Buildings. I am not an urban planner, but I can imagine how much more existing it must be to work at high level and create a beautiful overall architecture rather than looking at the city from the solid ground and missing all the aerial perspectives. The issue is that ultimately, as Jan says so well, “there is no desire to invite people to use city space”.

The caricatural case reported by Jan is the city of Brasilia: a very nice architecture from aerial view, but a catastrophe seen at eye level. It is such a terrible example that the town won an unfortunate celebrity by being recognized as a model of failure through the designation of “Brasilia Syndrome”.

Jan recommends coming back to the traditional way of expanding a city as in the past time. “The history of urban development shows how the oldest settlements were developed along paths, trails and market places. (...) The life-space-building order can be followed throughout urban history until the recent modernistic period in which buildings took center stage rather than life and space.” He lists cities like Copenhagen, Siena or Roma, as best examples with many qualities to make you feel good and happy to be there. I don’t know if he would agree with me, but I would recommend also middle size municipalities in Spain where I used to spend enjoyable time in historical places and streets around the old main squares. Venice is another successful example cited in several instances of his book, which is considered as the perfect town built for bringing happiness to people: dense city structure, short walking distances, small spaces, high degree of mixed use, active ground floors, distinguished architecture and carefully designed details, human scale buildings, possibility to hear voices and birds, pleasure to speak quietly with your friends, and... no cars!

At this stage, you might wonder why I did not yet address climate issues, which is becoming essential today for happiness in a city. Jane made several comments about pollution due to traffic, but nothing more, likely because climate was not yet a major concern at the time she wrote her book. For the anecdote, I laughed at her comments on parks stating that it is a “science-fiction nonsense that parks are "the lungs of the city." It takes about three acres of woods to absorb as much carbon dioxide as four people exude in breathing, cooking and heating. The oceans of air circulating about us, not parks, keep cities from suffocating.” Jan, on his side, looked at it from the citizen’s perspective: “it is highly unfortunate that most city planning makes no attempt to ensure the best possible natural climate quality in city space. In many warm regions, extensive road systems, asphalt parking lots and hard roofing materials raise the air temperature from high to unacceptable, whereas trees, lawns, green roofs and porous paving stone would have lowered it.” I want to add here a lovely quote from Mark Twain that is reproduced by Jan: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”. It is true that walking in the streets of this city is quite an experience. The high buildings cast a shadow on the streets, and the wind transforms the open space in tunnels and engulf itself to freeze all the unfortunate visitors who dare to step outside for a walk.?

At the end of these two lectures, it became obvious for me that to reach happiness in a city, there is no abracadabra formula: the secret is in good relationships between people. “The first fundamental of successful city life: people must take a modicum of public responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other.” Jane explains that trust between people will come progressively. It is formed over time from many little public sidewalk contacts by same people interacting together regularly and becoming close relatives. This exchange cannot happen if you use your car or if you are entrenched in your private place. You have to walk around to meet and interact with people. This is what Jan emphasizes by saying that “walking is more than walking! There is direct contact between people and the surrounding community, fresh air, time outdoors, the free pleasure of life, experiences and information, and a special form of communion between people who share public space as a platform.” By improving the condition for pedestrians to flourish in the streets, we also - and more importantly - strengthen city life. This is the beauty of incorporating the human dimension in all forms of urban projects and cultivate the spirit of positive and respectful relationships between citizens. This is the only way to bring happiness and dignity which are the foundations to build cities for people.

*

Jane and Jan are not the only well-known people who gave me consolation recently. When I felt a bit gloomy, I remembered my favorite poem from Jacques Prevert, “Attempt at a Description of a Masked Dinner at Paris-France”, a sarcastic description of flatterers and impostors, appropriate for this time of craziness where people seem “to be bald inside the head” (lovely verse open to multiple interpretations). Let me also share a few more smiling faces, those of exceptional personalities that I have read, seen and heard over the last couple of months. I just want to celebrate their attachment to decency, love and compassion. They are the persons that I am proud to admire, the role models that I am eager to follow. Here is a portrait gallery of their sparkling look presented in a deliberate disorder: Mamoud Darwich, Olga Tokarczuk, Amos Oz, Romain Gary, Kamel Daoud, Le?la Slimani, Edward Said, Ursula Le Guin, Edgar Morin, Ito Ogawa, Aharon Appelfeld, Jacqueline de Romilly, Amin Maalouf, Abnousse Shalmani, Hanna Assouline, Marguerite Yourcenar, Tzvetan Todorov and finally Elias Khoury whose most recent beautifully published work invokes tears throughout the pages...

In his fantastic novel, “To Your Scattered Bodies Go”, the whimsical writer Philip Jose Farmer invented a universe where all the humanity would resurrect on the banks of a large and infinite river, embedded between impassable and unbroken mountain ranges. I love this story because it features famous historical characters like the explorer Richard Francis Burton or the “unhappy-with-San-Francisco” author Mark Twain. If I could be reborn on the shores of this “Riverworld”, I would strive to gather all these beautiful personalities to build a diverse and peaceful community. If this attempt turns out to be excessively na?ve, as an ultimate recourse, I will rally Rabelais and Erasmus to laugh together at the folly of our tragic condition. I have no doubt that I would spend a hilarious and gorgeous time with these two satirist humanists, allowing us to keep a warming smile on our faces.

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• Future of mobility #21: Serendipity, Flanerie and improvisation in smart cities.
• Future of mobility #14: "Reinventing Cities" by C40.
• Future of mobility #3: Future design in Yahaba, Japan.