The street in front of our hotel is about 8.3m wide. (I actually measured it.) And this is generous for Palma’s Old Town. The building directly in front of us is also 6 storeys tall and has exactly zero setbacks and stepbacks. It is one straight elevation all the way up. In other words, it is an urban condition that does not follow any of today’s generally accepted rules of planning. The street should be wider. And the building should have a bunch of stepbacks, right? Maybe not. Lots of people seem to love this kind of dense, unplanned, and walkable built form in Europe. Eating outside on a narrow street is a feature. But for whatever reason, when people return home, many don’t seem to want it anymore, or worse, they actively oppose it. It’s an interesting dynamic that I don’t fully understand. Because personally, I enjoy visiting places that I could see myself living in. What about you?
Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.
One response to “For visiting only”
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One of the differences is that old Europe centers rarely have buildings over 6 stories, because they are all walk-ups. 4-5 stories is more common. There’s tons of retail, so no one who actually lives there needs a car to get their needs met. They don’t even really need public transportation unless they get out of their neighborhood. Shadows keep the most intense sun from cooking you, but low buildings still let enough light in that you don’t feel you’re in an urban canyon. And of course, there are meeting and resting plazas everywhere.
A major difference – perhaps THE major difference – is that these old town were all designed before the car. Sure, you can get a horsecart up them, but that’s about it, and that would have been rare, even when they were built. People just didn’t have so much stuff to move around and buy (the endless clothing shops now are a new invention). It’s a completely different mindset, one that people had for 100s or even 1000s of years; we probably evolved to appreciate that kind of density.
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