Have you ever thought that our cities could offer natural spaces accessible to people?
When I look for new models and references for cities’ development for the 21st century, I find a futuristic design, with high buildings, wide avenues with intense traffic. For most people, it is hard to imagine a future where the priorities are not related to immediate problems such as mobility and security. The cities have become degraded places, surrounded by air pollution, noise, and contaminated water. Since a while, it became more usual to see people leaving these great centers in search of a life blended with nature, sounds of birds, fresh air and tranquility. However, the search for small and medium-sized cities ends up repeating the same model of growth and development, generating the same problems again.
A good strategy to bring more quality of life to our cities can be the creation of public spaces with nature and natural features. The cities of the future can favor natural spaces along the rivers and hills, for example, creating connections with the urban area. We could have interconnected paths and tracks, that also merge the city and the natural areas. These spaces could be a starting point of a new way of life, where people approach nature to seek more reassuring experiences. An environment that favors human interactions and the perception of public spaces. And that, thus, allows full personal development and intellectual work, a ‘natural’ axis of development, facing a world that requires increasingly complex solutions.
The city of the future should have trails along the rivers.
In hot summer days, the rivers are an oasis!
The cities should have trails in the hills.
Text and photos by Walter Carlos Weingaertner