Soft City: The Time of Your Life

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

John Lennon, 1981

The key difference between standard of living and quality of life, as I see it, is that standard of living comes down to the money we have and how we spend it, whereas quality of life is about the time we have and how we spend it. One is more about quantity, the other is more about quality. One is about stuff and the other is about experience. Rather than finding ways of affording and accommodating more things into our lives, we might instead consider solutions to give us better ways of spending our precious time, lightening our load in life rather than burdening it, and helping change the daily stresses and conflicts of working, rearing children, staying fit, shopping, running a home and dealing with neighbors, into everyday pleasures.

Perhaps the biggest challenge to living well is the physical separation of the different components of everyday life. Urban planning in the second half of the twentieth century hasn’t helped this, separating and spreading different activities. It is hard to live locally when so many of the things we need and want are so spread out. The detached suburban house, the industrial estate, the out-of-town shopping center, the office park, the educational campus, are all in different places. The dream of a peaceful suburban life with the promise of a quiet, green, and safe environment, has the Achilles heel of requiring a car, which is both expensive to buy and to run. Not everyone can drive (children, the elderly, the sick, the nervous) and one household may have many different activities in different directions, so that one car might not be enough. What is more significant in terms of quality of life, is not what the driving costs terms of money or energy, but what it costs in time.

We waste so much time travelling between the needs and the wants, while missing out on other more fulfilling opportunities to better connect ourselves with the places and the people immediately around us. In the broadest terms, time is equitable and truly democratic, because regardless of wealth, health, ethnicity, or education, everyone has just 24 hours a day in which to live their lives. After we have done all the things we have to do, what is left is the “everything else” time. This reflects directly on our quality of life, because the few precious hours left over every week is the time we have to spend on what we consider truly meaningful and worthwhile—investing in and advancing our lives, building relationships with friends and family, reading bedtime stories to our children, playing with the dog in the park, contributing to community life, learning and personal development (everything from home DIY projects to language classes), cultural experiences, starting a new business, volunteering for causes we care about, as well as all the other joyful, fun, and simple pleasures.

Can we design the physical environment of our cities and towns, neighborhoods, and streets to give us more time for the things that give us meaning? And can we make time more productive or at least the passing of such time more comfortable and enjoyable?

The obvious way to change the current segmented paradigm is to co-locate more of the activities that make up our everyday lives, so we are dwelling, working, learning, and relaxing in one place. This would greatly reduce or even eliminate the time spent in transit, which would also save energy and money. We would literally have several more hours a day to spend doing what we want.

Beyond having everything we need in closer proximity, we need to make the in-between times and in-between places more enjoyable and fulfilling. We need to make places that are loaded with opportunities to better connect us to where are, both in time and space, to unlock the real value of everyday life. For example, the trip to school might be family cycle ride, the commute to work might be a pleasant walk through the park, lunch hour might become a chance for all kind of multi-tasking opportunities and practical errands, even stopping at home or checking on your child at the kindergarten. The race to pick up the children from daycare would be less stressed, and there would be more time for after-school and after-work activities.

Imagine what you would do if you were given a few more hours every day. What would your day be like? It all comes down to how we build and use our towns and cities.

This is an excerpt from the book ‘Soft City: Building Density for Everyday Life,’ written by former Creative Director and Partner David Sim with support from Gehl and Realdania.