Unlearning for Better Cities: A Path to Meaningful Design
- Geoff Wilkinson
- Oct 8
- 2 min read
Updated: Oct 31
Rethinking Our Approach to Urban Development
1. Planning as Control
Old belief: Cities can be engineered like machines — predictable, ordered, complete.
What to unlearn: Life is adaptive and messy. Rigid zoning and static master plans flatten the diversity that gives cities soul.
New mindset: Plan for possibility, not perfection. Make space for local improvisation and gradual change.
2. The Car-Centric Paradigm
Old belief: Roads equal progress.
What to unlearn: Designing for cars erases walkable life and community fabric.
New mindset: Prioritise access over movement. Focus on walking, cycling, and local networks that reconnect everyday essentials.
3. The Separation Fallacy
Old belief: Order comes from separation — living here, working there.
What to unlearn: Separation creates isolation and waste.
New mindset: Reunite life’s functions. Bring home, work, and community within walking distance, where vibrancy replaces vacancy.
4. Planning for the “Average”
Old belief: There’s a standard user, a typical household.
What to unlearn: Designing for averages erases difference and identity.
New mindset: Plan for plurality. Create spaces that flex for children, elders, artists, and families alike.
5. Monument Over Moment
Old belief: Success is a skyline.
What to unlearn: Real beauty lives in the everyday — the courtyard, the shade, the place you pause to breathe.
New mindset: Design for experience, not iconography. A well-shaped street corner outlasts a monument.
6. Top-Down Expertise
Old belief: The expert decides, the public reacts.
What to unlearn: Communities are not “users.” They are co-authors of place.
New mindset: Shift from designing for to designing with.
7. Infinite Growth as the Goal
Old belief: Growth defines success.
What to unlearn: A city can expand and still fail to thrive.
New mindset: Measure quality over quantity. Focus on happiness, health, and human connection.
8. Form Follows Finance
Old belief: The spreadsheet decides the skyline.
What to unlearn: Short-term ROI distorts long-term value.
New mindset: Align financial feasibility with spatial ethics. Design places that perform economically and feel alive.
9. Timelessness Over Timefulness
Old belief: A city should be finished.
What to unlearn: Completion is an illusion.
Cities, like people, grow through change.
New mindset: Design for evolution — buildings that adapt, not fossilize.
10. The Western Universalism
Old belief: One model fits all.
What to unlearn: Every place has its own climate, culture, and rhythm.
New mindset: Root design in local identity — material, climatic, and cultural truth.
A Living System, Not a Finished Object
Cities are emotional infrastructure — the collective version of a home. When we plan them as machines, we strip away their humanity.
When we design them as living systems — layered, adaptive, and imperfect — we rediscover what makes space meaningful.
This philosophy anchors The Art of Space and the Altira system. Design isn’t decoration. It’s how we translate feeling into form and form into value.
To build better cities, we must begin where all good design starts: with humility, observation, and the courage to unlearn.
Reflection Prompt
“What feels broken in the places you live — and what might it take to help them breathe again?”
Next Step
→ Download the Altira Starter Kit to begin applying design-led thinking in your own space — one courtyard, one block, one city at a time.
