Architectural style has been assigned by the less thoughtful and those with a bias, as the primary character maker of a city.

Style, in the most basic and obvious way, deeply affects the way a city looks. But it quality really assumes the role of primary character maker.

Art, in the common reasoning, is superior to craft, set apart for a higher purpose. Contrary to common reasoning, I believe that they are the same thing in ultimate effect. Only art is stripped of the practical constraints integral to craft, becoming a subset requirement of well considered craft.

Most of the inhabitants of cities have not fully fleshed out what the ideal city, actually looks like, works like, or feels like. The dreamer, and the NIMBY, the planner, and the chronic complainer, the entrepreneur, and homeless man all occasionally ponder our own vision of a city. We see through the lens of our own narrow interests, missing an all encompassing vision of the community. Our lens doesn't permit the vision of how the whole place works, and how all the various pieces all work together to make a better place…

Most of the inhabitants of cities have not fully fleshed out what the ideal city, actually looks like, works like, or feels like. The dreamer, and the NIMBY, the planner, and the chronic complainer, the entrepreneur, and homeless man all occasionally ponder our own vision of a city. We see through the lens of our own narrow interests, missing an all encompassing vision of the community. Our lens doesn't permit the vision of how the whole place works, and how all the various pieces all work together to make a better place…

To pick a number, I think that the City of Pasadena where I live should make a goal of cutting automobile and truck travel by 50%…

Naturally, I had to push a button to cross the intersection. In Southern California, the traffic engineers have decreed that pedestrians need to register their presence in order to cross a street. Otherwise no light will come on telling me that it is safe to cross. I, being the dutiful citizen that I am, pushed the button…

The New Urbanist movement has been a remarkable endeavor, a force to be reckoned with in planning, government, and design communities throughout the world. It is part academia, part enterprise, part Arcadian vision…

So there is a division, an invisible demarcation between the most public of private places, and the public itself. This invisible demarcation separates places where passers-by are free to roam, and where people are 'invited in'. I'll call these 'invited in' spaces ‘The Semi-Public’.

It helps me to understand relationships if I do a diagram. Here is one I did to explain the relationship between the Public place and the Private place.

It seems to be an accepted fact that where many inhabitants live in great cities, are also deeply compromised as places to live. The so-called price of living in that great place. The wealthy, and the fortunate few who with live the quirky exceptions are the only ones who defy the compromise.

An architect is trained to think of each building as a discrete whole, bounded by its sides and top. An object understood on its own; more simply put, four walls and a roof. A program is understood, the needs of the inhabitants are thought through, and a shape is made to wrap what goes on inside. If the program is lavish, if the architect is a sculptor and makes a statement with each work, the shape is fully considered from all sides. This isn’t about the rugged self-reliance of the architect. Those who commission the building, and those who build it see it as a very singular act, governed by vague notions about ‘fitting in’.

As a society, we prescribe a procedure and a set of rules to make good cities. We like good, and we dislike bad. When someone does something bad, makes a bad building, or does something that is deemed inappropriate to the health and welfare of the general public, a rule is made, and a procedure is enlisted to carry out the rule.

The correct gear is part of craft. The tools that amplify and leverage the skilled hands of a craftsperson are elemental to its creation.

There may be numbers on how many individuals are preoccupied by craft across the globe. No matter how many exactly; suffice to say that it is in sufficient numbers that we are not in any risk of losing the trait in our universal society. It is a self-sustaining characteristic, and it has been with us since creation.

Craft exists in spite of the forces surrounding and influencing it. It derives from the love of a human being for the materials, the process, and the realization of making something exceptional. It exists, often not by choice, but by a great inner desire of the craftsperson. Because craft is the act of making something useful, thought through, and with an artist’s sensibilities, it can be the most compelling of endeavors…

It's very easy target to identify the desire for a local place as a faddish antidote for perceived threat of globalism, the threat of a folly that propagates an increasingly secular and disenfranchised world. Given that the localism movement is, in some part, a reaction to global sameness, he may have correctly identified the fad. Folks with reactionary blood in their veins, conspiracy theorist types who ascribe every evil to corporations, and practical people who believe that shipping food halfway around the world is silly, all flock all flock to a desire to return to local economies and networks.

It's very easy target to identify the desire for a local place as a faddish antidote for perceived threat of globalism, the threat of a folly that propagates an increasingly secular and disenfranchised world. Given that the localism movement is, in some part, a reaction to global sameness, he may have correctly identified the fad. Folks with reactionary blood in their veins, conspiracy theorist types who ascribe every evil to corporations, and practical people who believe that shipping food halfway around the world is silly, all flock all flock to a desire to return to local economies and networks.

It's very easy target to identify the desire for a local place as a faddish antidote for perceived threat of globalism, the threat of a folly that propagates an increasingly secular and disenfranchised world. Given that the localism movement is, in some part, a reaction to global sameness, he may have correctly identified the fad. Folks with reactionary blood in their veins, conspiracy theorist types who ascribe every evil to corporations, and practical people who believe that shipping food halfway around the world is silly, all flock all flock to a desire to return to local economies and networks.

One of the great experiences of an interesting and vibrant city is in the personal act of moving through it. The processional quality of walking down streets endowed with the quality of being great ‘outdoor rooms,’ the act of moving through from one interesting surprise to another, these all make cities compelling to be in on a day-to-day basis. Even to someone very familiar to a certain street processional, moving through one of the great urban volumes remains a sublime experience. Taking-in the space itself, the tree canopy, the mass and detail of the flanking buildings, the shop windows that draw you in, and the interesting vantage point that you see ahead, these are the things that keep us in love with a city over time.

In the 1970s, Oscar Newman led a study out of Washington University regarding issues of territoriality in the spaces near and between buildings. His thesis was that the way that buildings were arranged can and did physiologically affect their inhabitants as well as those who were passers by. The results of these studies resulted in the landmark book, Defensible Space. The study and book launched a movement that offered the idea that appropriate design could be a deterrent to crime and a basis for building a healthy community.