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Figure 1.13
Working in a beautiful urban place.
An anonymous worker telecommutes with 
mobile phone and laptop from the quayside 
in Dartmouth, Devon. When we can work 
anywhere, we’re likely to choose a beautiful 
place.
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resulting in yet more innovative encounters. This
creative energy is precisely the opposite of the passive
consumer culture portrayed by several critics of tradi-
tional urbanism (Kaliski, 1999; McDougall, 1999).
The greater the density of occupation, and the more
eclectic the mixture of uses in the neighborhoods
around the public space, the higher will be the energy
quotient and the greater the potential for economic
development.
We dispute the often-made assertion that some-
how, the urban life in these places isn’t authentic, and
that the only valid, creative urban activities take place
in marginalized neighborhoods amidst nondescript
surroundings (Chase et al., 1999). While every city
needs unloved and unlovely places that can be appro-
priated cheaply, or at no cost, for unprogrammed
uses by individuals and groups outside the main-
stream, there is a major inconsistency in academic
efforts to glorify these acts as somehow more pro-
found or better than actions taken in public space by
the middle classes. Appropriating urban space for
culturally specific activities by individuals and groups
of all complexions is a valid endeavor, and needs to
be facilitated wherever possible – even at the expense
of social discomfort, as in protest rallies and demon-
strations. A culturally diverse city needs different
places for different activities, but for critics to dispar-
age the business meetings, local commerce, sponta-
neous conversations, and kids’ homework activities
in places like our local coffee shop as mere ‘simula-
tion’ of urbanism is nonsense. Authentic cultural pro-
duction can take place in attractive surroundings as
well as in abandoned parking lots.
We expand on this theme in Chapters 3, 4 and 6,
and on the relevance of ‘urban village’ type develop-
ment in Britain and America. We believe strongly
that such mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods really
can become the inclusive crucibles of creativity, sus-
tainability and economic development in an increas-
ingly uncertain global environment. In our attempt
to ‘think globally,’ we design towns and cities locally,
street by street and block by block.
CHAPTER ONE
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PARADIGMS LOST AND FOUND