Building New Neighborhoods With Old-School Charm

Tiffany Owens Reed  0:06

Hi, everybody! Welcome to another episode of the Bottom-Up Revolution podcast. I am your host, Tiffany Owens Reed. One question I've been thinking about lately is: How can we build lovable places? Why does it matter that our places are lovable? What does it mean to love a place at all. These are deep and complex questions.

I'm not going to attempt to answer them right now, but I do think our guest today has some thoughts on that, and I am really excited to bring you this conversation because she is in the business of actually, looking at North American cities and neighborhoods and figuring out as an architect, can we actually build our places in such a way that resonate with humans on an emotional level, resonate with people in a way that they find themselves like in love with the place? And I think that's important because when we love a place, we want to care for it.

I'm joined today by Naama Blonder. She is the co-founder of Smart Density, her professional practice combines the disciplines of architecture, urban planning, and urban design to bring a deeper, more realistic understanding of how cities can address housing affordability and champion inclusive neighborhoods with more equitable access to housing. She is a co-author of the book Building Charm: A Hyper Practical Guide to Developing Outstanding New Neighborhoods.

I'm really looking forward to talking with Naama today and sharing and sharing capturing her insights and sharing them with you. Naama, welcome to the Bottom Up Revolution podcast.

Naama Blonder  0:14

Thank you so much for having me.

Tiffany Owens Reed  1:35

I started this episode talking about lovable places because that's what stood out to me a bit from the section of your book that I was able to read, I have already confessed to you that I haven't read the whole thing, so I think I'm in the clear.

But I feel like one of the takeaways from what I did read was just this like fascination and this curiosity with how architecture and how we build places and how we design places, and I guess in a North American context, maybe how we fix places really impacts like how people how connected people feel to the neighborhoods where they live. So it was just a it was a it was a theme for me, and it's definitely something I've been thinking about. So I'm hoping we get to talk about that a little bit.

But just to kick things off, I'd love to hear a little bit about your background. Can you share a bit about where you're from and how you discovered architecture as a vocation and just a love for this whole space of thinking about cities and neighborhoods.

Naama Blonder  1:47

Of course, I am an architect, an urban designer, more urban designer than an architect.

I have to admit, I am based out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and it's interesting because when I feel like architecture schools make a transformation for architecture students, I think many of the students who start architecture school they will tell you we want to design museums and public buildings and libraries and architecture schools transform you to this, neighborhood lovers, neighborhood, being obsessed with residential, and it's so interesting to think about it because how many, residential we build versus how many libraries, right?

Like we, our generation experiences a housing crisis, and as architects, we're deal most of us. Most of us will eventually find themselves dealing with residential, the residential component of this profession, more than the library and the public building part of this profession. And we and I fell in love with it. I travel a lot, and when I say a lot, I mean now I have three young children, so obviously not as much. But when I graduated from architecture school, I went traveling for six months in East Asia. We we've been to seven countries in six months.

We and we when we go, we go to see how people live, and that changes everything. And I'm married to an architect, so you can imagine that we do that together. So it's it's a big part of my life, and traveling has been has made it a much bigger educational component of it, and made you me at least fell in love with it.

Tiffany Owens Reed  3:20

Where where is home for you?

Naama Blonder  3:20

I'm not from Toronto. I was born in Israel. We moved from Tel Aviv to Toronto when I was 27. With the big dream of living in a city that is a growing city that is open to new ideas, and I am calling Toronto home in the past almost 13 years.

Tiffany Owens Reed  4:36

Okay, and I want to. I still want to. Like, what was the initial experience or thought that, like, when you were deciding what to study or what to go into? How did you land on architecture?

Naama Blonder  4:55

I knew that I wanted to be an architect. It's a cliche, but I wanted. To be an architect since I was a kid, but I didn't really know what architecture is in that sense, and that's why I was describing that transformation that architecture school has has taken me through. I believe many will share the same concept with me.

Tiffany Owens Reed  5:04

That's interesting because my impression of architecture is not that it's more focused on neighborhoods or residential. Like I'm not an architect; I'm not trained in architecture, but I do listen to like some podcasts or videos and stuff about that field. And it's it's it's encouraging to hear you say that because I still my impression is that architecture is still kind of focused on the big materials and yeah and modernism and like making doing something interesting and getting a an award or something like that.

Naama Blonder  5:55

So I got many awards and I still focus on this part. You can you can get awards, and you can do the sexy architectural stuff and design and esthetics, focusing on on residential. And I think also, as I said, our generation experiences a housing crisis, and that is, by the way, true to my friends from Spain and my friends from South Korea. Everyone is saying the same thing, and I think that what has worked for previous generations is just not working for us. And therefore, architects has a have a very big role to play.

I wish more architects would take part in the public discourse in policy, and sometimes I feel that perhaps they are leaving it more for the planners in the room. But I wish more of us and more of them will take more active role, and that is very much related to neighborhoods, how we build, and that is also tied to the book because in the book we ask ourselves why in contemporary neighborhoods we don't even have that quality? That in the book we called it charm, but that quality even on the wish list.

And look around you; everything that has been built recently, can you say that it has the same qualities as older cities and older parts of cities that we are going and spend our vacations there or pay premium to live there, we are absolutely fall short in the ability to deliver that, and that is what the book covers.

Tiffany Owens Reed  7:29

Let's talk about the book a little bit. Can you unpack this concept of charm and how did you settle on that idea?

Naama Blonder  7:39

So I already gave the spiel of we and again it came from us traveling around the world and it came from us working in contemporary development the development industry and we just ask ourselves why the best old neighborhoods leave you with this lasting impression, but when we try to translate those qualities that we find in older places that we call charm, let's let's say we are in agreement of this subjective word.

Why is it that our industry today is absolutely falling short of being able to deliver that same qualities, and we learn so much as an industry since modernist times of Le Corbusier. We every municipality has urban design guidelines, and don't do that. Don't don't let the tower not define the street and the street as a public realm, and Jane Jacobs one on one kind of thing.

We've learned so much as an industry, and we can have all the manuals in the world, and we are still not able today to deliver that qualities of a space that we definitely find in older places. That missing quality we identified as charm. Now there's a probably dozens of pages in the book that describe what charm is, and we try to break it down to a physical definition. And we have four attributes of what build charm.

Probably everyone should read the book. but we are trying to break it down to what are those physical elements that you when you as a pedestrian or resident will be there and you will feel that immediately. And maybe the the public or non-architects will not be really able to define it in professional words, but they all know a good neighborhood when they experience one.

Tiffany Owens Reed  9:23

Would you be willing to unpack those four principles?

Naama Blonder  9:59

Let me see. I do have the book in front of me, so I mean, as I said, there are like a few, probably dozens of pages that.

Tiffany Owens Reed  10:00

Or maybe you can just share like your top three. Like if you're like, oh, your top three, this is this is. So the experiences that make up charm. So

Naama Blonder  10:19

we broke it down to four. So we said accommodating, lively, engaging, and connecting. But even under accommodating, we're talking about intimacy and calmness, and seamless movement. Under lively, we talked about visible presence and activity at the edge. We talked about soft landscape, so we really did break it down under those four categories: accommodating, lively, engaging, and connecting. And after that, and we talked a lot about some examples, some contemporary examples, and we tied it to those four attributes that we identified.

The second part of the book also speaks to how we should be able to do it today with the scaling down system, which I'm sure you and I will talk about more. but there is a very the book is called the hyper practical guide to developing outstanding new neighborhoods. So we really wanted to not keep it at the fluff level, yeah. Of what is charm and get a fluffy word and no, we believe that charm is a quality that we could rebuild into our developments today.

Tiffany Owens Reed  11:13

Well, what resonates with me about that idea is that when you take a step back and you look at the North American city, and you look at the experiment of suburban sprawl, and you look at the housing crisis, and you look at the transportation crisis. I think you've hit on something that can help interpret what we're seeing, right? Because you can interpret what we're seeing in lots of different ways. You can interpret it as a financial crisis, an engineering crisis, a crisis of values and vision for what it means to create a habitat for human beings.

But if you want a word to describe, like kind of the impact of it, I think having the language of charm can help describe like the impact of all of these choices we've made. we've built is uncharming a word. Our places are not very charming, right? And it's it's an easy way for people to kind of interpret the suburban landscape, right? It's very isolating. It's not hospitable. It's not lively.

It's hostile, even in some situations, and I think it's a I think it's a helpful entryway into starting into having conversations about the built environment and the reality that so many of us have kind of just accepted that this is the way it is, and we know that I think many of us can kind of intuit that something is not is not quite right, and many of us are frustrated about it.

And I think having the language of charm can be a helpful way to kind of be able to articulate why we respond so emotionally to places that you said, like you said, we spend 1000s of dollars to visit. Right?

Why do they light us up in a way, and your book is helpful because it really does break it down almost to a technical level of like, well, if you don't see lots of people out on the sidewalk, if the sidewalks and the streets are not lively, like that can help you interpret your experience either for a charming experience or a not so charming experience, right? So I think it's very helpful. I think it is very helpful and is super practical. How are you? Let's talk about your work. So you co-founded the firm Smart Density.

I would love it if you could share about what you're hoping to achieve through your firm, and maybe you could share about some of the projects you're working on, and how do you apply this concept in the context of already built places? So, like North American cities. Like, you're not, as far as I understand, I don't understand your work to be building neighborhoods from the bottom up necessarily from scratch out on green fields and stuff like that. But how can we how can we think about charm in the context of suburban sprawl, right? North American city.

Naama Blonder  14:03

So first of all, I let's not blame just the suburbs. I travel in to many many North American cities, and they're uncharming as much as suburban Could be and okay. So going back to Smart Density and work. So first of all, I introduce myself as an urban designer. Many times, when you will try to introduce yourself as an urban designer to the general public, you will get a face of you will see immediately that they don't know what you're talking because they don't know what. What? How? What is this profession?

And so, so I just say I'm also an architect, but as an urban designer, we do work on on master plans, and a lot of it is in the suburbs. And I think we need to. And you mentioned that in in your last comment That in North America we built an uncharming way, and I think a lot of it is overly accommodating the car over people. And I think people will say, "Oh, it's freedom, it's convenience, everything." And this is not my point. I am not trying to get you to ditch your car. I'm not trying to exclude cars. I'm not trying to make your life harder.

And there's a big portion of the book that is dedicated to streets, which we call the support streets and the people streets. We are saying that not every street needs to accommodate, first and foremost services. There are streets that could accommodate and be first and foremost for people while still accommodating Amazon delivery and whatnot, and streets that are the support streets.

And the book is there's a big part of the book dedicated to those ideas around streets, which is highly speaking to how you design these these neighborhoods, I get a question around existing streets and what can we do with existing streets? A lot because obviously a lot of a lot of it is of our cities or is already built. Don't underestimate of how much is unbuilt yet, and how much we still have the opportunity to get things right.

For example, transit-oriented developments and transit-oriented communities are opportunities where we absolutely, even in North America, the car-oriented North America, we could put people first and people over cars. And this is a golden opportunity. That anything that is not near transit will make the argument much harder. But large parcels that introduce new streets and blocks near transit will absolutely have that opportunity. When writing a book, the hardest part is not is what not to include, and even this book is 360 pages.

I sometimes feel that we have several books within one book, and we did not include the part of what should we do with the existing fabric of our cities. We called it the hyper practical guide to developing outstanding new neighborhoods. A new neighborhood. We intentionally pick that word neighborhood because what is a neighborhood for us? Everything in large scale that introduces enough of streets and blocks could be a neighborhood, and I think that is really important for us to remember.

And dealing with new neighborhoods and my work at Smart Density, we absolutely do get green fields and brownfields, and to do a transformation. But even if it's the most suburban and even sometimes rural examples of new neighborhoods, we are trying to bring our values, and it's not easy because not every developer wants that. But it's trying to bring our values of how you can design those places to be charming and beautiful and accommodate the car, but not put it first. And that is something that our practice has been really strong on.

And what made us attract the right type of developers who see my content and say, where have you been all my life? Right, like this is what I want, and this is the type of work we're trying to focus on.

Tiffany Owens Reed  18:12

When somebody asks you, well, why does charm matter so much? why why do you talk about charm so much? Like, how would how do you answer that? Like, why why care about making this place charming?

Naama Blonder  18:12

So unfortunately, you write like charm is not even on the wish list. I feel today, like we are dealing with real crises. Don't get me wrong; this is not like a crisis of charm. I mean, it is, but we have the climate crisis and affordability crisis and refugee whatever, right? Like there are real things on the menu, and I think that charm is 100% related to affordability because once you create high-density environment that is attractive to many, you will create a more sustainable model of living and therefore more affordable.

I think here in Toronto, what I see is that many are very hesitant to live in high-density communities. Raise their children in. They look for the house with the backyard, and it doesn't matter. I just want to make make it very clear. You can even design suburban suburban communities with walkability inherited in them. And I think we need to have this discussion. Right now, it's a chicken and an egg. The product is not there.

We are not building in that way, so we can't really blame it on young couples, let's say, who are looking for a place to live because I don't believe we are providing it as an as an industry, and when you ask me why charm matters, so I believe it is related directly to affordability and sustainability. It's the way we design our our places, and it's also if I really want to go to the bottom line of why developers should care, kind of a thing. I believe it creates a differentiation in the market. That right now we see the market.

I know you are from Texas, and I'm hearing even Texas is struggling. So if Texas is struggling, just imagine what the rest of the world is experiencing.

But we are, the market is the market, the economy is the economy, and it's not doing so well, and in in days where developers are offering more and more incentives, having a product that stands out and differentiates itself is something that I believe not enough developers have tried to that matter, and not to mention that working with compact streets as definitely benefits, once you don't waste land on asphalt, you have freed your land to work on uses that you care about, like more homes. Again, hence the affordability, or just more open space.

But it's really we waste an insane amount of land on asphalt. Our streets are oversized and overly accommodating the car over the well-being of people.

Tiffany Owens Reed  21:44

When I think of charming places, I think of a couple things. I think of longevity, the types of places that people could see themselves living for a long time. Like I just talked to a friend last night whose family lives in a small town in Idaho, and I asked her, I was like, "Do you think this is it?

Is this your forever town?" And she said, "Yeah, they've moved a lot for her husband's job." And she was like, "I think we've decided this is, and it's largely because of some of the components that you outline in your book, like things like her children can ride their bike to different places around town. They, it's really walkable, so they can run into people organically, which they just really have come to value. They used to live here in Texas too, and always joke with her. And I was like, now you see that I'm not crazy, right?

Like missing walkability. but things like the town has a town wide 25 mile per hour speed limit, right?

Like they, they're just they have lot they have like I think five kids and so just their the way that their stress has come down because of how much more connected they feel to the community through walkability how much safer the kids are how much more freedom the kids have and then there are other things too that really make it feel like home for them but I think this is like a conversation worth this is an aspect to the housing conversation of like, are we just building products or are we building places where people are not just like living, but they're building a life, right?

And I think charm touches on that because it, if you're thinking from that perspective, you're thinking long term. Like, how could we make this a place where people see, oh, we could make this our forever place, right? Like this could be a place we could commit to, we could really care about, we could invest in, we could stay, rather than just a product that's disposable. And I think that's the feeling that I have when I see some subdivisions.

It just feels like it's just very disposable, and like people are not treated with a sense of dignity, I guess, and like respect. Like I'll be driving around sometimes, and I don't know if you've noticed this, but sometimes I'll see parked cars, then about 10 feet of grass, and then a three-foot sidewalk that goes straight into car traffic. And when I see this, I ask myself, why do parked cars need 10 feet of grass to protect them from pedestrians? It's just little things like that. Like we should have just switched it. Do the parked cars do the sidewalk?

Do the grass? Do the moving traffic? Little things like that, just kind of rooted into hospitality. So I don't know. I think the I think the question of time, like you said, it does have impact for the way we approach land use, for like our our climate concerns, for our financial viability concerns. But I think at the end of the day, it's really asking people to think about the people living here and the fact that they're going to be living like building a life here and possibly raising children. I just think that's. I don't know.

It just feels like very important to me, and I think your emphasis on charm really is an invitation for developers and cities and just and residents to kind of rethink like who are we building for? Are we just building for consumers, or are we building for people who are building? Building lives and also building legacies here, like and that to me just feels like very important work.

Naama Blonder  25:07

I just want touch on on what you just said about the cars parked in front of the house and how much land we're wasting for that front, that space in front of the garage, and I encourage everyone go to on our website we're showing some renderings of our streets, street design. It's at smartdensity.com. Go to work, and you will find several of them there. What one of the things we do is that we bring the homes literally closer together. There's no street parking on those. And as I said, like we have different street types and typologies of how to work.

We call it a menu of streets. Like why not? Why to have just one street type that we are asking it to do everything and achieve nothing at the same time? Well, we can have a menu of streets that yes, you can have your your vehicle traditional vehicle street. We also make it a bit narrower than the standards, but can we have more intimate streets in our smallest residential neighborhoods? And one of the things we do is, for example, we eliminate in those streets.

Again, you will have where a place to park your street your to park your car, but we eliminate street parking from those very small, narrow residential streets because we want to keep it narrow. We bring the homes closer together, so not that massive front setback that you have that wasteful piece of grass that does nothing. You will still have your two-car garage. People ask me about their RV and their boat. Someone asked me last week. What about my boat? You will still have a place like this. Is a standard two-car garage.

We're not taking it away from you, but we're putting the houses closer to the street. The street is narrower, so no one is driving fast in front of you. It's very walkable. Every I hear a lot people are saying that they're moving to the suburbs because it's more kid friendly. Where on earth you're letting your kids play on those streets today? and once you may, and we believe you mentioned that neighborhood in Idaho your friend moved to has a speed limit. We believe that design shapes that speed limit. Yeah, I agree with that.

Yeah, once you have the street much narrower and compact, no one is driving fast. It automatically signals the driver you are not the king or queen of the road. You need to substantially slow down because this is not about you. And there's research done, saying that every feet that the street is wider, adds 2.2 miles per per hour of how much the driver feels that they could increase their.

Tiffany Owens Reed  27:24

Oh, that's really interesting. And

Naama Blonder  27:51

and we believe that you don't need that artificial speed limit and bollards and whatever and speed bumps because once the street is narrow and it's designed in a way, the driver slows down, and that what makes it truly kid friendly and senior friendly. Senior as well, not just kids.

Tiffany Owens Reed  28:12

I think part of the struggle is that people experience the built environment primarily as a driver. Rarely, most contexts rarely as a pedestrian, and it's tricky. I guess I'm just curious: how do you navigate conversations when people are are wrestling with their their desire to have a certain type of experience as a driver, as a car owner? They're used to that, and it's and it's like we have a street here where they made it more narrow. They put a bike lane, and I heard someone say, "Oh yeah," then everyone got really mad about it.

And I understand why they're mad about it because it's uncomfortable to drive. You have to drive really slow now. And I understand how someone could be frustrated when they're like, "I have to spend a significant portion of my life in an environment where I have to drive." And I think I don't know. Does that feel like a paradox to you? Sometimes it feels like a catch 22 to me as well. Well,

Naama Blonder  29:05

first of all, remember we're not suggesting to make all streets narrow, slowing down traffic. Right? Like we're just saying the residential component of where we could have more intimate residential streets, that we could make them narrower and provide that quality of life for the residents. We want to achieve it there. Okay, so we're not saying like let's change everything in the city or everything in suburbia, everything that you we won't be able to speed up. You should be able to drive.

We're talking like what happens where you are entering a residential neighborhood, a residential street, and I want to argue that even people who love driving love okay so there's this group that drives for almost as you said a big portion of their day. Out of them, there are people who hate it. Okay, we don't need to convince them, but there are some people who will tell you that they love driving. I believe that even. Those who love driving will appreciate walkability in their own neighborhood.

They appreciate the ability to walk to places that right now our built environment doesn't really provide. It doesn't provide more than that because I, what is walkability? Walkability is a destination. You you have a place to walk to, but also the walk itself is pleasant because it doesn't matter if there's a place that you can that you can walk to, but the walking itself is horrible, right?

Tiffany Owens Reed  30:05

No, I know. I always say like proximity is only part of it. You need like it has to be the quality of the walk as well.

Naama Blonder  30:05

Yeah, absolutely. And there's also research, making sure that so the research argues that once it's more pleasant to walk, it's it time goes by faster. People enjoy right. I don't need I don't need to.

Tiffany Owens Reed  30:44

I learned of that concept recently. I can't remember what the actual term is, but it's a term that describes when you start walking and you just keep walking because the walk is so stimulating and interesting and comfortable, it's like a technical term, and I, I, it explained my experience of when I lived in New York City.

And sometimes I would just start walking to my train station, but I would just kind of get into the groove that I'd be like, I can walk another nine blocks because you knew the train stations were about six to nine blocks apart, so I just I'll just catch it at the next one, and I was going, and then I just feel like I'll just catch it at the next one. And there are times, even in the winter, even with snow on the ground, where I would just find myself walking for 40 minutes because it just kept.

I don't like the experience of the walk itself kind of suspended time and let me enter this mode of like thinking and just I don't know. It was great, so I love discovering that term. It it it's and also explains the opposite of when a walk is really hostile and it's not hospitable at all. All you can think of is like this is taking forever and this is miserable. Like time almost does the opposite thing where it feels, it feels incredibly long.

Naama Blonder  32:04

Absolutely, and I think many. I think it feels so intuitive, right? Like we don't need to convince people that it's that is the case. So I want to, even around driving. And I think once we stop making that argument that this is kind of a war between cars and pedestrians, and that what you mentioned about the bike lane is very common here in Ontario as well. We just and the book talks speaks to that as well. We we believe that bike lanes should not be on or share the the road with.

If if I have an alternative, okay, as a cyclist, why would I pick the road with the cars, right? If I have those people streets that I'm talking about, and they're safe, and why? Why would I pick? So so let it be, right? Like let the car be on those streets, and you don't have to. And I'm thinking here of in Toronto, there's this fight as well between every political government that you can you can think of, okay, between the city and the province, and we absolutely me as a cyclist and as an urbanist, I don't want a bike lane everywhere.

There are some streets that are extremely unsafe to ride. So if we could separate between the bike lane and the, I agree with you. Traffic streets. Why not?

Tiffany Owens Reed  33:07

Have you read the book Bike Battles? It's very dense. It's very dense, but it goes into the history behind this. I didn't read the whole thing, but it's basically there was a point in time where that was kind of the approach to bike lane to bike infrastructure was to just create separate networks for cyclists and bikers away from the car traffic. But there, and I think there there was like this one guy who like really fought for it to be like the opposite, where cars and bikes should go together.

And I think it's a huge reason why bike infrastructure doesn't really kind of work in the U.S., but lately, as I've been driving around Waco, I think I've kind of become convinced that, like, no, we need to have like a like bike lanes need to just have their own network. Like, I think it would be so much more enjoyable. I think it's it's sort kind of like the transit conversation in North America. I love trains, but honestly, trains are not feasible for most cities.

Like, I think we'd really have to go all in on busses if we really want to give people public transportation in most typical North American cities. You got to think bus, right? When it comes to biking, I feel similarly. It's like you just need your own separate bike network. I don't think this because I see the bike lanes in high traffic areas.

Nobody wants to be on them, partly because they're not building them right, and so they just create these stressful, conflict-prone, experiences where you're not you're still stressed because you're still going to coordinate with drivers who have a totally different set of priorities and values. And I, yeah, I've become convinced that separate is better in most cases. There might be some cases where it works to have them together.

But for the most part, I think self, like kind of separated bike networks throughout a city that's mostly organized around cars probably makes the most sense for the North American context. One of the main concepts of the book is this idea of scaling down. Can you unpack what that means and how you apply this in your work?

Naama Blonder  35:04

Yes. So the scaling down system is our answer to all the problems that we mentioned of lacking charm, essentially, and that's why we called it the hyper practical guide because we wanted to. This is not just a book that criticizes everyone around us. It's a book with with a solution that we have, and we listed the clients that have given us the authority and freedom to try these ideas and new things and test them in real life. So we felt like they deserve the credit.

And scaling down is basically asking how we're building in human scale again, because a lot of the lack of charm, spoiler, is the lack of human scale. The streets are too wide. The buildings are way too way too big. And even if you're talking about single-family homes in in pure suburban context, it's still lack of scale because the streets are so oversized. And the scaling down system speaks to how can we work and build in human scale again.

So I already talked a lot about the streets and how we have the support streets and the people streets, but making them making sure that they are designed first and foremost for people, not just people walking, but for people and you and in human scale, and the other thing is, the size of buildings. So what we're saying is that we cover a lot the fabric. There's low rise fabric, mid rise fabric, and tall buildings. And we talk about in depth the advantages and disadvantages of each here in Toronto. So first of all, just a bit of a background.

Toronto is a city that has grown a lot in the past 25 years. So there's a very lively debate around height, which is true to every place in North America that I've been to. There's this fear of tall buildings. People don't want to see it in in their neighborhoods. They're changing their character. We believe that the combination of low rise and high rise when is needed, so mostly when it's like really a lot of pressure to deliver high density.

But if it's not, the advantages of a dense low rise fabric up to four stories in height could deliver a lot of the advantages. Part of it is that it's a human scale. So here in Toronto, a lot of the of the people you will hear pushing for midrise over high rise, and we believe that it's really hard to design high quality of mid rise. It again goes in in depth in the book, but it creates less desirable units because it has only one direction of light and ventilation, and not to mention that the scale of mid-rise buildings is really, really big, right?

Like you, it's just you walk along it, and you walk, and you walk, and you walk, and nothing changes. So we are saying, when we can, let's build everything in a low-rise fabric. It's in human scale. It works very well with compact streets. If you think about it, if you have a mid-rise building, it's not going to work very well with narrow street, right? It will be too too prompt, too out of proportion for sure. For sure. So building again in human scale means not falling to the oversized street manual and building in low rise as much as possible.

When there's a very high pressure, you could embed tall buildings in the low rise fabric, and then you achieve the advantages of having a high rise because of the density. But what you will experience as a pedestrian will be absolutely the four stories. You're not going to experience, and there are neighborhoods here, like not too many, but build that way. And we take people on tours, and we show how you really what you get to experience as this pedestrian will be the first four stories because you don't the towers are not overwhelming the public realm.

So, everything in this book. The answer to building charm is building in human scale again, and building in human scale will be the width of the street and the height of the building.

Tiffany Owens Reed  39:23

To what extent does like do you all touch on like I said? I didn't finish all of it. Like building materials or mixed use, like how? Because I know that, like, when you're talking about vibrant streets, then when I hear that, I immediately think like mixed use. But when I think about charm, and I think about beauty, and I think about like the material and the style that you're building as well. Anything you'd like touch on pertaining to those sides of it?

Naama Blonder  39:54

We say that no good architecture could fix a bad street. So if the street is if the street is not built in that human scale that we're talking about, and it's oversized, and you just want to, you're so overwhelmed with the presence of cars, you most likely are not going to enjoy a beautiful building with lots of details and architectural expression and articulation and materials, because it will be really hard to pay attention to that building.

So the book says that even actually pretty lame architecture in the right context of the right foundation of the narrow streets in human scale could shine over beautiful architecture, if the foundation is bad, so we are not getting into we are not getting into so much the building material and what you should architectural detail. No, we are talking about the bones of what will get you as a pedestrian experience a street in a way that you will appreciate it, and then good architecture is good architecture. It's it's of course very helpful.

And what you say about commercial? It's definitely the most successful commercial streets are the ones built in in human scale in a pedestrian environment, pedestrian friendly environment, and hence we're all travel we travel to Europe and we in awe of how they build it there. So and then you try to bring it back to North America and you absolutely can. So and it's it's a big part of the question of the book. So commercial streets they are the most they are successful when there's density and when they can thrive because of pedestrian flow.

Tiffany Owens Reed  41:54

Yeah, I mean I think it's interesting that the name of your firm is Smart Density, right? And density I think is a huge part of the conversation around how it's interesting because density scares people off, but it's so important, right? It's so important. You have to have density if you're going to have walkable places, if you're going to have thriving small businesses, if you're going to have the opportunity to run into your neighbors.

Like you just have to have you have to have density if you're gonna have transit, like density is so fundamental to all of that, and I think density plus human scale is maybe close to magic formula. I mean, I would put beauty in there just because, but if you had to, if we had to take one off the list and keep it to two, I think I think the right density and the and human scale, are are hugely critical to getting those things that make us love a place,. Because what we love is we love seeing people. We like seeing human activity.

We like the unpredictability of like what are people going to be up today,.

Naama Blonder  42:47

Absolutely, we're social creatures, absolutely.

Tiffany Owens Reed  42:47

And so if you're thinking about like, well, the storefronts are coming up to the street. What that means, you have storefronts, with window displays that you can go look at, right? Or you have it just kind of unlocks all of the things that make you want to wander around and lose track of time, and ultimately to stay a while, which is what we want. we want to build places where people want to stay. I feel like I could ask you so many more questions. Let's see. I know that we're running a little bit out of time here.

I want to ask you quickly, like what could people do who listen to this show and love and want their place to be more charming? What piece of advice would you give them?

Naama Blonder  43:42

Wow, wow, that's something that I actually never thought about because we mostly work with developers who are building at scale, and not only that, I always say that for me, going to even a conference or a room with 1000 developers, it doesn't matter. I really need to find the 10 that will fill in their gut that the way we are building today is so awful that they want to change it and they're waiting for someone like me to talk about the things that I'm talking about.

So I never thought of the the individual end user living in those spaces, but big part of what we're talking is what we call the soft edge. The soft edge is a personal expression of the person who lives in in in that residential unit. It could be a house, it could be low rise, whatever. But it's a self expression with planters and furniture and things that you put there. It's called we call it the soft edge because it's kind of an in between. It's not a sharp, distinguished space between the public and the private.

So I think, and it's and it's interesting because. I believe that the way we're building it will enable the person to, on their own, feel that they could feel comfortable putting some chairs and planters of their own in something that is technically the public realm. But so now, if I have the opportunity of speaking directly to them, do that, have that expression. That's what creates. It's a part of that of that charm, and it's on us to build it in a way that they will feel safe and invited to put things in the public realm that will be, kind of private.

And a lot has been written on the about the porch, right? Like the porch is this in between. It's the size of eight feet,. And I think it's on us to build in a way that creates such a welcoming invitation for people to make their place more charming.

Tiffany Owens Reed  45:47

Well, that's what I find to be charming about charming places is that you have kind of this combination of, the grounding built environment, right? The streets, the sidewalks, the buildings, the infrastructure. But then you have these intrusions of personality, where the shopkeeper, the resident, the child have added their touch, right? And that's what keeps you curious because you just never know what you're going to see when you turn the next corner.

Naama Blonder  45:47

Yeah, yeah.

Tiffany Owens Reed  46:28

That's definitely definitely up there. Now, I usually ask people to share one of their favorite places in their neighborhood. I know you're low on time. Maybe you could just leave us with like a favorite coffee shop or bookshop or maybe a place that you think has a soft edge that you particularly love to see around town.

Naama Blonder  46:28

Yeah, thank you for that question. So I live and work in downtown Toronto, and there's a little park called St. Andrew’s Park, and it's just the scale of it, which is again something we cover in the book about the scale of open space and how we should also scale down our open spaces and not just put gigantic parks in our developments, but the scale of St. Andrew’s is like the most the closest thing for a European plaza I can think of. So I'm a coffee junkie, so I don't think you should ask me about coffee.

But that place is a plaza, as a as a square, as a park, as a it has a small dog park, a small playground area, but the way it's designed and the scale of it, especially, makes it, I think, probably the best in Toronto. So check it out when you're here.

Tiffany Owens Reed  47:02

Excellent, Naama. Thank you so much for coming on the show with me and sharing about your work. We'll put the links to the book and to your website and all of that in our show notes, our listeners can explore more in more depth what you've what you've put out into the world. But thank you so much for your time.

Naama Blonder  47:43

Thank you

Tiffany Owens Reed  47:50

to our listeners. Thank you for joining us for another conversation. I'll be back soon with another episode. If there's someone who you think I should interview, please let us know using the suggested guest form. I'll be back soon. In the meantime, keep doing what you can to build a strong and, I should say, charming town.

Naama Blonder  47:50

Thank you very much.

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