Thinking Big by Thinking Small

Sharing a blog post from Jeffery Tompkins, an urban planner from Indianapolis. His blog, Thinking Big by Thinking Small recently had a post entitled "Why the Five-Over-One Feels Dead". This is a thoughtful and thorough analysis of what makes a streetspace compelling and human. It is well worth a read for anyone grappling with why some blocks in your city or town feel good to you, and why others do not.

Check it out!

And for those Jan Gehl fans out there, here is a pertinent snippet from the post:

"Gehl called it the five-second rhythm. At walking speed (about 3 miles per hour, or roughly 4.4 feet per second) you cover approximately 22 feet every five seconds. If something new happens in the streetscape every 22 feet, your brain keeps clicking. You keep walking. You want to look. You maybe linger. Perhaps you even stop or come back. If nothing changes for fifteen or twenty seconds, if you are walking past the same wall, the same material, the same blank surface, your brain checks out. You grab for your phone. Any new messages? Your feet speed up. You are no longer in a place. You are passing through."

"This is neuroscience. Our human brains are wired to seek novelty, a survival mechanism that once kept us scanning the savanna for predators and now keeps us doomscrolling through feeds. Cognitive scientists call it the orienting response: when something new enters your visual field, your attention snaps to it. Maybe it’s a painted yellow door. A funky window display with plants. A person wearing a wild and strange outfit. Each one resets your brain’s attention stopwatch. And each one gives you a reason to stay present in the physical world rather than retreat into the one in your pants pocket. When the smartphone offers infinite novelty at zero physical effort, the streetscape has to compete, not with content, but with cadence. A streetscape that delivers richness at walking speed gives you something Instagram filters cannot: the feeling of being somewhere."