One writer's view of the modern city goes negative. If our environment affects our happiness, surely we're all suffering from depression.

Architect Bill Beard gives his critique of America’s miserable built environment in an essay on AdBusters. Pulling few punches, Beard offers a scathing assessment of our "flat, dystopian landscape," which at best is a succubus on our creative spirits.
Our common daily experience in the modern American anywhere is anything but robust. We live in un-places, built of cheap materials, ignorant of scale and proportion, executed with little care, imbued with no trace of the human hand and lacking in a sense of context - which can only create humans of similar character. That is to say that humans implicitly absorb the character of their surroundings. Ugly, thoughtless, depressing surroundings do not encourage beautiful, creative, vigorous people - people with soul and spirit.
The take-away from Beard's assessment is that we're doomed if we do nothing to fix things. The impacts on our health and well-being might not be visible in the short term, but this "ailing built environment condition" will irreparably harm our society in the not so distant future.
FULL STORY: The modern built environment

Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

Map: Where Senate Republicans Want to Sell Your Public Lands
For public land advocates, the Senate Republicans’ proposal to sell millions of acres of public land in the West is “the biggest fight of their careers.”

Restaurant Patios Were a Pandemic Win — Why Were They so Hard to Keep?
Social distancing requirements and changes in travel patterns prompted cities to pilot new uses for street and sidewalk space. Then it got complicated.

Platform Pilsner: Vancouver Transit Agency Releases... a Beer?
TransLink will receive a portion of every sale of the four-pack.

Toronto Weighs Cheaper Transit, Parking Hikes for Major Events
Special event rates would take effect during large festivals, sports games and concerts to ‘discourage driving, manage congestion and free up space for transit.”

Berlin to Consider Car-Free Zone Larger Than Manhattan
The area bound by the 22-mile Ringbahn would still allow 12 uses of a private automobile per year per person, and several other exemptions.
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Custer County Colorado
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