Liveability and urban challenges – a review of urban life methodologies

Globally, cities face growing social and environmental challenges, while struggling to improve their liveability. An anchored attitude within the field of urban design argues that just as much as being part of the problem, cities are pivotal players in the solution. This paper scrutinizes and discusses which recent trends, strategies, and paradigms affect urban life strategies (and thereby liveability of the cities) and how they are approached.
Jan Gehl has (together with allies) through half a century been the master of articulating and displaying the interconnection between urban design and public life. Gehl and Svarre´s well-known analysis and diagrammatic overview of the development of public life (in: “How to Study Urban Life”, 2013 (p. 157), on which they partially based their urban life methodology, extends from 1880 to 2005. The model points to central urban topics such as 'pedestrian streets', 'public life and urban activities', traffic calming, and the 'resurgence of bicycles'.
Since the publication of their analysis and methodology, agendas such as climate adaptation, the need for increased biodiversity in urban settings, a growing aging part of the population, gender awareness, effects of mass tourism, and a growing focus on community building, which all spawn from current social and environmental challenges have dominated the approach and discussion on future urban design.
Based on analysis of planning documents and -policies and a row of expert interviews with Gehl and Svarre, City Architects (from cities where the above-mentioned methodology and approach have been embedded), and leading practitioners and academics within urban design, the paper presents an extrapolation and discussion of topics to update the known model, and how the new agendas influence and expand methods for a contemporary approach to the study and implementation of urban life strategies.