I stumbled upon a headline today found at the website, TimeOut: “The 49 coolest neighbourhoods in the world.” As you might imagine, this caught my interest. After all, when one is designing a NewCity, it can be helpful to be directed to the 49 other cities people think are cool. I knew many of these cities. I have visited 10 of them.
I was invited to take the survey, in which I was asked to describe my city and neighborhood in specific ways. I was asked to select from two lists of words to describe my city. I was asked to describe “living” in my city: can I express my opinion; is it easy to get around my city without a car? What makes my city great? Then, I was asked questions about my neighborhood. And a couple more questions were asked and descriptions invited.
The survey was thought provoking. It certainly gathered criteria to measure cities against each other. TimeOut used local editors and contributors to vet the public vote. Probably good practice.
One can find many similar surveys about cities throughout our world. They are certainly helpful. Still, they are not fully objective but what is these days. It jogged my brain. I would hope my definition/creation of NewCity would score well in most surveys.
I will commit to developing a survey page on this blog. It will be a place to list the attributes “we” believe are to be valued in NewCity.
