I like you and could work with you. I am going to exchange with you data that would help us design our transactions.

I start communicating with you by referring to some words of yours. (A considerably more richer communication seems possible between us.)

I welcome everybody to this conversation and to other public conversations. One usually focuses on planning towns. When you, dear reader, want to improve a village, I’d gladly work with / for you. Small localities play a major role. I like recognizing it because of my love for reality and realism.

1. “tree-lined streets”

1.1 This is one of the methods that I like for improving e.g. air quality.

1.2 I remember cycling in Mannheim in 2000 and hating the town. It was grey. Streets form rectangles and are identified with an alphanumeric code.

People love colours. They have coloured buildings more or less, and even decorated them. One reason for me to love streets from Latin America.

How should localities and streets be shaped?

There is a lot to take into account.

I’d say that people feel better in localities that are not rectangular and the streets of which don’t form a grid.

We need to reduce the average amount of energy used by a person. Does this mean that we’ll see more straight streets?

In what cases were triangles desirable or useful?

When should streets be round lines?

I’m trying to get to the fact that I’ve imagined building a locality with many parks. It seems fairly easy to design a locality with straight streets, in which one would reserve often rectangles in which people can spend time among other species. Playgrounds and sports grounds can be included in such (rectangular) spaces.

As we’re going to discuss, imagining is far from enough. We need to plan the transition from what a locality is to what its inhabitants want it to be. For this, one needs to have a connected discussion about people planning their lives. Not only is it unusual to make someone spend most of their life in one locality, but people seem more and more probable to move around. They are to agree on who decides on how they manage a locality’s resources, e.g. its real estate and infrastructure. One the one hand, some factors create the risk that there is less or fleeting interest in managing the resources of some localities; on the other hand, it were great if we increased quickly the quality of this management in many countries.

I’d also like to do this when a locality wants to discuss life quality: create something like a forest belt.

Well, you referred to transportation safety. That is another complex discussion. We can find time for it.

2. I find it difficult to argue with supporting cycling in a locality. After my grandfather taught me to ride a bicycle, I’ve liked this vehicle all along. But I’d discuss with every person, household, or community how they plan their days, in order to agree on how their transportation needs are met best.

I’d make / join any effort to make / improve cycle tracks.

3. “It’s not, however, about them”

I like your talk and the fact that your daughter finds it silly to not be able to see with whom one crosses paths. (I was going to write more about this, but I find it easier to read the words that I’ve highlighted in your message than to listen again to spoken words.)

4. “They’ve had their century of trial and error — mostly error.”

It’s rather rare that a person points out how wrong we are. The worse we mess up, the more we punish people who want to help us improve things.

We might have something in common here; instead of feeling any aversion towards your statement (people should mind that a fact, a statement, and a person are different things), I’d like to know about these errors, e.g. because the design that you’ve suggested for a street intersection from Paris stroke me as excellent and I’ve always loved excellence. I work a lot to improve things. I certainly welcome the words and thoughts of people like you.

5. “We’ll redesign our cities and tell them what to do and how to help us — based on human observation, rationality and logic.”

I do support this, as I support this two-sided approach:

5.1 Let’s improve communication!

More public communication is needed. We need to discuss things in groups of sizes corresponding to the size of the matter.

First of all, this is a global matter. Every language group should discuss this. While we might not get hundreds of millions of people discussing in one group, we can manage communication better.

5.2 We need to be more realistic.

You invite us to use our common sense, which we develop as youngsters.

We need calm, respectful discussions about matters of fact. We need to understand how closely related we are and work closely to manage resources around our households.

You seem to have a similar view, because you wrote that planning “has been overtaken by mathematical models — traffic, density, impact assessment, public costs etc., discarding common sense and empirical observation.”

6. “the right planner”

You seem a right planner. You and I can take on the tasks to build a dialogue that results in valuable solutions and to involve in our dialogue and work more and more specialists.

7. “the right political will”

Beside some business teams, I represent teams that help people to build political dialogues and to make political decisions. One of this teams creates national parties that represent the right political will for what I think that you want done.

8. “De rien, Paris.”

What did you feel when you wrote this?

The French say “for nothing”, Romanians “for little”, and Brits: “Don’t mention it!” It shouldn’t be for nothing or in vain, and it doesn’t seem like a little thing.

At the same time, we have a huge data management problem, in connection with which we should discuss the psychological forces that have created the tradition of discussing some things too privately, which has also resulted in an exhausting multiplication of data. The problem is that I’ve seen many people addressing others over the Internet, actually wanting to address others. Instead of that, it were helpful if more people managed more data together.

How much do you want to talk with French citizens who decide on the future of this intersection?

We can build a dialogue with the mayor of the 7th district of Paris.

Had I found her Medium profile, I would have mentioned her. I’ve addressed her in English.

9. I might not stress enough that 91% of the inhabitants of Copenhagen “DON’T drive a car in the city”.

You’ve pointed out that since 2010 people have been using heavier cars. This is one of the ways in which we are killing ourselves. At the time when it’s urgent to avoid epidemic diseases, famine, and destruction because we are running out of resources, e.g. drinking water, let’s discuss how much we want to deplete resources and waste water by driving alone rooms on wheels and how much we want to redesign our transportation in order to let our children breathe a little!

10. You didn’t mention advertisements in your message. I add this because it occurred to me while replying to you; it is related to how we plan public spaces.

I like localities without advertisements. In a locality without advertisements, my life is not interrupted.

I find it enough to communicate over the Internet and in live meetings, and I schedule my calls and my meetings.

What about you? Do you want your locality designed practically, so that you can focus on what you please?

11. When you sell this content internationally, I’d discuss with you having Sol Content stream it.

Relationship Management

I like you and could work with you.