Some years back I attended a public input meeting for our 5 year Town Master Plan Review. A number of dignitaries milled about looking important. They referred most of the questions to their hired engineers.

I was pointed to one of them. He asked about my thoughts. “Well” I said, “I see buildings and streets, major traffic corridors, but I don’t see any people”.

This confounded him, like I was suggesting there should be little stick figure graphics all over his blue prints. It took a good 10 minutes for me to explain my point. As an example I pointed out a few neatly ordered distinct housing groups. They were connected by roads but not crisscrossed with shortcut foot paths. Other than bus stops there were no pedestrian gathering points like a parkette with a bench.

He hmmm’d a little. I went on to suggest that these pedestrian nodes should also be choke points, that would force a little human interaction.

He hmmm’d a little more and then proudly pointed out a few of the large scale community hubs planned in other areas of town. His argument was that they were trying to “put people first” by building these great cathedrals to sports and culture.

I can see that, I replied, but reality is, that these really become nothing more that collection points for masses of unrelated people from all over town, to use for their own individual benefit. Yes the crowds will gather, but do they encourage interaction and community?   “Here” I said, “you show a public square, with 10 or 12 little tables for people to sit”. “Why not replace that with one great long table”?

Fast forward, the one suggestion that did sink in and was eventually acted on, was the need for a community vegetable garden.

Building is strictly a utilitarian endeavour. You need shelter, you build a hut. Architecture is an embellishment. It adds artistic expression, shows off wealth or status, frames a picture, inspires awe and creates a focal point.

All good things, but in that pursuit it is easy to forget humanity’s most primal needs.

Interaction, companionship, acceptance and a need to feel like you belong. Every one of us has either lived or had friends that lived in a high density area, where almost no one knew their immediate neighbours.

Contrast that to almost any older neighbourhood in any city, where most of life played out on the front porches and rolled into the street. You could sit on your stoop and look left or right and see a neighbour on either side.

Somehow we have moved life into the private and secretive enclave of the backyard. Out the front, you may see the guy to the left getting into his car in the morning, but the other side is blocked from view and conversation by a hulking garage.

An other unintended side effect of architecture is the seeming need for order and uniformity. As a result the corner stores, neighbourhood pubs or little bread bakeries have been systematically removed as gathering points in communities. Try these days to strike up a conversation with a stranger at the Super Grocery Mega-center, and you’re viewed with suspicion or thought of as a lunatic.

I recently visited Valencia. I was astounded about the creative and unique architecture and public spaces just up the river from the harbour. One of the buildings was so cleaver in it’s engineering that it seemed to defy gravity. After taking a lot of photos, passing a number of tourist taking lots of photos, I started to get a sensation of loneliness.

I headed back to the chaos and mishmash on the narrow streets in the old part of the city, near the train station. After brushing by and bumping into numerous perfect strangers on these crowed streets, my feeling of loneliness disappeared.

Adding elements into Architectural design that not only encourage human interaction, but leave people no other choice can be difficult to do, but is vital if we are to talk about “walkable/liveable” communities.

While not architectural, one of the most ingenious elements I have seen was that from a little old Lady, re designing her front garden. She had lived in the little house for all of her adult life and wanted desperately to stay. The area had changed so much over the years. All of her neighbours had passed or moved away.

Lot’s of young families and immigrants were moving in. Regularly out in her garden, she tried to engage her new neighbours, with little success. She noticed many of them had dogs. She liked dogs. For fear of earning her ire, they would hustle their dog past the yard to do business in the next ditch.

The situation took a huge turn one day. Her son took her to the garden center. Siting with a host of concrete garden ornaments was a brightly painted fake fire hydrant. Today every dog defies it’s master’s commands and stops at that fire hydrant. She now knows all of her neighbours!

Good Architecture is an extension of the space it occupies, and some of that space is in hearts and emotions of the people it needs to interact with.