Gustav Milne makes a simple argument via The Guardian: urbanization "is bad for us."
Gustav Milne sets the stage for tough talk in an article for The Guardian Cities:
However “civilised” we may now consider ourselves to be, biologically we are much closer to our stone age ancestors. There is a major mismatch between our modern urbanised world and our “paleolithic genome”, the genetic material encoded in our DNA, which supports an ancient hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
The central conceit of Milne's argument is that urbanization is bad for humans—as evidenced by the scourges of "scurvy, rickets, osteomalacia, Reiter’s syndrome, gout, ankylosing spondylitis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, septic arthritis, tuberculosis, osteitis, poliomyelitis and leprosy" when the Romans introduced Britain to town life 2,000 years ago. Now it's "obesity, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis, high blood pressure and various cancers" that kill urban populations.
The remedy of the maladies of urban living, according to Milne, can be found in a return to the Paleolithic past. The article lists several categories of actions that can improve the health of urban dwellers, from matters of physiology, crime, and planning for evolution.
FULL STORY: Stone age cities: what modern urbanites could learn from paleolithic humans
Oregon Passes Exemption to Urban Growth Boundary
Cities have a one-time chance to acquire new land for development in a bid to increase housing supply and affordability.
Where Urban Design Is Headed in 2024
A forecast of likely trends in urban design and architecture.
Savannah: A City of Planning Contrasts
From a human-scales, plaza-anchored grid to suburban sprawl, the oldest planned city in the United States has seen wildly different development patterns.
Washington Tribes Receive Resilience Funding
The 28 grants support projects including relocation efforts as coastal communities face the growing impacts of climate change.
Adaptive Reuse Bills Introduced in California Assembly
The legislation would expand eligibility for economic incentives and let cities loosen regulations to allow for more building conversions.
LA's Top Parks, Ranked
TimeOut just released its list of the top 26 parks in the L.A. area, which is home to some of the best green spaces around.
City of Rochester
Boston Harbor Now
City of Bellevue
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Mpact Transit + Community
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
City of Birmingham, Alabama
City of Laramie, Wyoming
Colorado Department of Local Affairs
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.