Great cities celebrate the season

  Tokyo (by Gideon Davidson)

As I have written before, it is impossible to have a great community without great public spaces - appealing and accommodating streets, sidewalks, parks, storefronts, plazas, accessible cafes, and so on.  Transit systems, too, are an important form of public space, albeit one that moves.  These are the essence of what many city planners and thinkers call "the public realm," to contrast with the realm of privately owned and secured homes, yards, and private office buildings.  People love communities from Paris to Santa Monica precisely because their public spaces are so enticing.  The best ones really come alive at this time of year:

  Paris (by me)

  Chicago (by Devyn Caldwell)

  Copenhagen (by Andy Revkin)

  Rostock, Germany (by Carsten Pescht)

  New York (by Luke Redmond)

  Nantes (by me)

  Dublin (by Katie King)

  Vancouver (by Tom Maglieri)

  Prague (by Hynek Moravec)

  London (by Mika Ueno)

  Manila (by Stefan Magdalinski)

  Paris (by me)

  Stockholm (by Brian Colson)

  Tokyo (by Gideon Davidson)

  Chicago (by Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar)

  San Francisco (by Todd Lapin)

  Sao Paolo (by Andrés David Aparicio Alonso)

  Washington (by Ahmed Meta-Man)

  Colmar (by Rémi Stosskopf)

Peace and goodwill to all.

Related posts:

• Shaping shared places to improve cities (November 13, 2012)
• City places that inspire romance (a gallery of walkability, part 2) (February 13, 2012)
• People Habitat: great city places (November 7, 2011)
• Celebrating the vernal city (photo essay) (April 15, 2011)
• Have yourself a merry TRANSIT Christmas (December 22, 2010)
• Celebrating the autumnal city (October 26, 2012)
• Great public spaces make great holiday places (December 20, 2010)
• How a great public space anchors a great city neighborhood: DC's Dupont Circle (August 5, 2009)

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