Thesis Statement: There are several features that make a city difficult for living well and three of the typical features are: putting cars in the center of urban life, making a city too smart and building too many high-rise buildings.
What makes a city unlivable?
For the first point, urban construction should accommodate human beings rather than the cars because the city’s main function is to human habitation. According to the reading, some residents oppose the planner’s suggestion that connect those cul-de-sacs in Mimico with a new road running nearby the lake as a result of the considering, this plan seems that everyone can come into their backyard and disturb their quiet life. Actually, a good traffic plan for a city should be used in reducing auto dependence and enhancing transit and walkable neighborhoods. Those poor planning will create places which discourage physical activities so that the bill will be paid in the form of reducing quality of life, and choking pollution and congestion. Consequently, a budding city must make shorter commutes, public transport, walking, and bicycling its top priorities if it wants grows healthily.
The second point refers to the high-tech that applied in city's plan with the purpose of serving the people rather than controlling the life of people. Following the development of technology, the smart city's computers can do more than programming traffic. It will calculate where offices and shops can be laid out efficiently, where people should sleep, and how all parts of urban life should be fitted together. In some famous “smart city”, each activity of residents has an appropriate place and time by prior calculations with the function from a central command center. Therefore, the citizens living in it are more like puppets than human beings.
Last but not the least, the planning of a city should avoid excessive high-rise building. As the author points out, some residents are worried about the height of new buildings would influence their original house and they didn’t agree to build the 11-storey condo at the corner of Lake Shore Blvd and Superior Ave either. As we known, high-rise buildings, once the planner's solution to urban overcrowding and were built as the symbol of a modern city, show more and more disadvantages now. Today, massive, clean, efficient housing blocks rising up in the urban let city lost its distinguishing feature and looked disorganized. For the original residents, new higher buildings block their old house, and for the new residents who live in it, high-rise buildings make them communicate less smoothly than before. That is to say, their traditional neighborhoods where friends and families could easily pop in for tea and conversation are destroyed by these new buildings. In conclusion, cars, high technology, and high-rise buildings could make a city difficult for living well.