The people in charge of designing cities have been getting it completely wrong for decades. Why is that? Let’s take a tour through the fundamental ideas.

Three big ideas dominated city planning throughout the 20th century. The first was Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City concept. Essentially, it was the desire to break big cities apart into small, quiet, self-contained towns. The second was Le Corbusier’s idea of the Radiant City. Imagine it as giant towers surrounded by empty parks, where people are separated from one another and cut off from street life entirely.

Another concept was called the City Beautiful movement. You may ask: What could possibly be wrong with making a city beautiful? The idea focused on building grand and impressive civic centers that looked good on paper. However, they had nothing to do with how ordinary people actually lived day to day.

What about the real-world results of all these grand plans? They were devastating. For example, thousands of small businesses were wiped out, and their owners didn’t even receive fair compensation, just to secure a facade. Tight-knit communities were bulldozed and replaced by cold, lifeless developments where neighbors eyed each other with suspicion and mistrust.

Don’t these planners remind you of medieval doctors who practiced bloodletting? They also had impressive credentials, sophisticated theories, and confident explanations for everything. However, their so-called cures were actually killing the patient. Just as sick people need to be energized and nourished rather than drained of blood, cities need to be made richer and more complex. Every time somebody imposes a tidy, logically looking solution on a messy, living neighborhood, something vital might get lost.