[pdfernhout]

Good point and links on architecture. I am so grateful to the architecture student who told me about Jane Jacobs around 1990 and opened my eyes to how much urban architecture design (things like height restrictions as in Philadelphia, unsafe edge effects of big special-purpose areas, sidewalks & porches, and mixed-use zoning) can affect human behavior and "eyes on the street" safety. I also liked the point that new ideas require old buildings (for cheap rents).

This article and your comment makes me think of Lawrence Lessig's "Code 2.0" book where he writes that (at least) four things can shape human behavior:

    * rules
    * norms
    * prices
    * architecture

All are important -- but they influence people in different ways at different times. If we want to have healthy cities, all are worth considering.

Hopefully we could do so in a "Kaizen" approach of incremental improvement and usually small steps within existing cities? But we likely need a lot of new cities too with more housing (perhaps by upgrading towns on existing transit lines). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen