Text by Sarah-Eve Leduc
As we press further into the 21st century, the design and functionality of our cities become crucial in addressing issues of sustainability, livability, and inclusivity. With two decades of experience navigating the complexities of urban planning and development, Steven Cornwell, the Global Director of ERA-co, possesses a deep understanding of and expertise in addressing the important designs of our cityscapes. Armed with a deep understanding of the urban labyrinth and a passion for more accessible and equitable spaces, he dissects the most pressing issues facing our cities today, offering profound insight and forward-thinking solutions.
Flanelle : In your experience, what are the most significant flaws in the design of our cities today?
Steven : There are a myriad of significant flaws in the design of our cities today – many of which we aim to overcome at ERA-co through thoughtful, impactful placemaking. These include density, accessibility, affordability, community prosperity, climate change, public space commodification, standardized architecture, gentrification, inequality, unchecked development and land sprawl, pollution, lack of walkability, lack of mixed-use development and more.
A few to focus on that we’ve found to be significant in our work lately are uncoordinated land use and transport planning, inequality, and density.
Quite often, especially in the U.S, transport and land use planning occurs in isolation, which leads to large urban systems that are disconnected from each other. These create fundamental structural problem across cities which take great effort to reverse.
Within the equality issue, what we design is contingent on how we design. As our tools have become more sophisticated, and our inputs more technical, we as an industry and a people have not fully seized the opportunity to make the design process more participatory, more democratic, and more diverse. As a result, we keep designing for a certain population, not for everyone. Writing in the 1960s, pioneering urban activist Jane Jacobs wrote: “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.“
When London simultaneously ranks as the best city to live in Europe[1] and the global city with the highest inequality (ahead of Johannesburg, Lagos, and Rio de Janeiro)[2] then there is something seriously wrong with its design. What we say at ERA-co is that great placemaking has the power to advance humanity: it means being globally successful, and a place where people thrive.
Another “flaw” and a key emerging argument for density is fighting loneliness and social isolation. The US surgeon general recently released a report outlining the epidemic of loneliness facing the US, which is having strong impacts on the health outcomes of Americans. Cities which are designed without thoughtful public spaces, without areas for populations to mix and assemble, and without the infrastructure to connect and bond disparate areas will feel these ill effects most.
The only way we can make better places is to design them with and for communities.
Steven Cornwell
How have historical city planning and development practices contributed to these flaws?
Many cities, especially where local governments are quite powerful, lack the resources or power to plan at the regional scale. That means places that are right next to each other often end up competing, not sharing services, and generally being poorly integrated. For example, the New York Metro region has three rail services (Metro North, NYC Subways, and Long Island Railroad) which have different ticketing schemes and infrastructure despite significant overlaps in geography and ridership. This legacy of poor regional cooperation is making it hard for metro regions to fully tackle large scale issues like transportation, housing, and fighting climate change.
Particularly in the US, 20th century planning based on vehicular modes of travel and land use planning based on single-use zoning has created isolated urban islands. Large city regions across the US are typically comprised of small municipalities that create individual local plans that don’t consider neighboring areas. Without a unifying strategic plan, these urban conurbations have grown unsustainably creating areas of traffic congestion and under isolated, poorly performing settlements.
Can you provide examples of places that were developed in the past and have now become less functional as time passes? How have these places adapted, if at all, to better serve their communities?
Our streets are our greatest public resource. Repeatedly we see that cities that were built around accessibility, public space, and vibrant street life have stood the test of time. The poster child for cities that rejected these principals would be the cities of America’s Rust Belt. It is impossible to simplify their decline into a few points, but many of these cities ripped out their downtown density and ended their public transport programs during a period of rapid freeway expansion and urban renewal. When the economy soured, these cities quickly hollowed out.
While this was a national trend, cities that gutted their own cores with parking lots and freeways were harder pressed to ride the wave of urban recovery at the end of the 20th century, and what recovery they have experienced has been highly concentrated around their remaining walkable areas.
Can you provide examples of places that were developed and have now become MORE functional with time?
It’s not just functionality. An older walkable city with winding streets may be less functional if all you mean by function is how fast it takes to get from a to b, but many beloved cities around the world are exactly this.
One city that comes to mind is Barcelona. The Cedrà plan for the city envisioned a grid where each block had its own interior garden. In practice these courtyards ended up being used for storage and parking, but now you have an effort in the city to open them up, link them, and create linear parks from the combined spaces. Is it more ‘functional?’ I’m not sure, but it’s a great example of a city looking at its existing plan in a creative way. And certainly, the benefits to public health and happiness make it worth it.
Birmingham’s bullring is an example of a place that did become more functional over time following an organic pattern of development that was negatively altered during the 1960s, to then be dramatically transformed during the 2000s to become the success it is today. There are not many retail developments that can trace their beginnings to the 12th century. Birmingham’s Bullring shopping districts has been an area where its population has traded for nearly 900 years. The area gets its name from the cattle which were brought in from surrounding farms to be sold. Its organic form was kept until the 1950s and 1960s, car-based urbanism drastically altered its human-centric qualities. A modernist Bull Ring shopping centre was designed and placed in isolation to its surroundings, and an elevated, ring-road created a concrete collar which furthered urban severance and caused pollution. Over time, the place was neglected and avoided. 40 years later, bold new plans saw parts of the elevated ring road and the shopping centre demolished. The pre-60s old street and road alignments were connected, the functional, human-centric qualities of the area were reinstated. Today with iconic buildings such as the Selfridges, the Bullring has become a city landmark and a success story for Birmingham.
What are some innovative solutions that have been implemented or proposed to address these flawed city elements?
I think the idea of a flaw is very subjective, but if you’re talking about widely agreed upon urbanist goals than anything that easily increases the mobility of citizens has to go to the top. Everyone agrees that people should be able to easily move. The simple e-bike is probably the most revolutionary piece of technology in our cities in the past ten years and I wish it got the same level of attention from governments as electric cars. They work with existing road network, and they are cheap enough to be accessible to many. The potential to replace a car-based grocery or school run with an e-cargo bike is there, and the investments cities are making in charging stations and e-infrastructure absolutely needs to take e-bikes and scooters into account.
How can urban planners and developers better prioritize the needs of the community when designing new spaces or redeveloping existing ones?
The only way we can make better places is to design them with and for communities – a part of our approach at ERA-co called ‘Human Dimensions.’ This isn’t about compromise, it’s about bringing forward ideas, bringing forward stories, and finding the authenticity that makes for great placemaking. When prioritizing the needs of communities, it’s important that we remember who they are – they are human – and their needs are not a reductionist list of parking spaces, bedrooms, and coffee shops. Their needs are about belonging, wellbeing, opportunity, and growth.
The public sector is beholden to the people, and in the US you have quite robust public review and input periods for all projects. The same care is not always present on the side of developers. Some do quite a good job of listening to the existing communities and designing amenities and spaces for them, but too many use the same rinse and repeat placemaking toolkit. Worse, many design with the explicit goal of catering to a new audience rather than the existing community, they may put a tennis court in a park because they think it will attract a young affluent set when what the area really needs is a playground.
In your opinion, what are the key aspects of urban design that should be considered to ensure that cities remain functional and sustainable in the long term?
The greatest thing about city life is other people. Cities are social arrangements; their magic comes from the possibility of connection and exchange. Even in a digital age, the attractiveness of a busy street or park remains. Urban design needs to embrace this and create the physical conditions to enable human interaction. The ongoing reduction of space for cars, investments in parks and greenways, and new considerations for things like shade, seating, and general comfort in the public realm are all encouraging trends globally.
What is the role of ERA-co and how does it help cities improve their urban designs?
I think the average person would be surprised how many specialists are involved in the creation of the average place. While specialization is essential, ERA’s strength comes from its multi-disciplinary approach combining architecture, planning, marketing, storytelling, and experience strategy under one roof laddering up to one vision. We tend to be called in when it’s not enough for a place to function well, but also must be distinctive and emotionally pleasing. For our clients, before we ask where the streets should go or where the benches should be placed, we start with how we want people to feel. Everything starts with an understanding of the human being.
Steven Cornwell’s insightful perspective underscores the gravity of the situation while inspiring hope for a brighter, more equitable, and sustainable urban future. ERA-co, under his expert leadership, shows us that it’s not just about creating functional cities, whatever that may mean—it’s about fostering environments that resonate with our shared human experiences. As we finish our interview, we are left contemplating not just the current state of our urban homes but also the endless potential they hold—potential for change, for growth, for a future where cities are not just inhabited, but loved and created by and for the humans in it.