Cover image featuring a bird’s eye view of a city street with people walking in a variety of directions.
Can an architect really design a space that would encourage you to kiss? Leo Hollis certainly believes so in his, ‘Cities are Good for You : the Genius of the Metropolis’.
As the world urban population grows, Hollis believes that city life may actually help us to solve some of our greatest problems. His hope is that the increasing movement to cities could make us greener, better able to share our increasingly limited resources and may even make us happier.
Hollis does admit that there are many problems to be resolved in city life. Slums are on the increase and the gap between rich and poor is also growing. In many areas, there has also been dramatic decline in community life.
This is ultimately, however, a positive book about urban life. Hollis’s anecdotes from his travels to cities around the world are hopeful and inspiring. He believes that by reinvigorating communities and by thinking more about how people relate to one another when designing spaces, urban life can be much improved. If we can build a city in such a way to influence how we feel and behave, it certainly gives us hope for the future and you never know – it may just make people want to kiss.
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