Soft City

Imagine waking up to the gentle noises of the city, and moving through your day with complete confidence that you will get where you need to go quickly and efficiently. Soft City is about ease and comfort, where density has a human dimension, adapting to our ever-changing needs, nurturing relationships, and accommodating the pleasures of everyday life. How do we move from the current reality in most cites—separated uses and lengthy commutes in single-occupancy vehicles that drain human, environmental, and community resources—to support a soft city approach?

 
In Soft City David Sim, partner and creative director at Gehl, shows how this is possible, presenting ideas and graphic examples from around the globe. He draws from his vast design experience to make a case for a dense and diverse built environment at a human scale, which he presents through a series of observations of older and newer places, and a range of simple built phenomena, some traditional and some totally new inventions.
 
Sim shows that increasing density is not enough. The soft city must consider the organization and layout of the built environment for more fluid movement and comfort, a diversity of building types, and thoughtful design to ensure a sustainable urban environment and society.
 
Soft City begins with the big ideas of happiness and quality of life, and then shows how they are tied to the way we live. The heart of the book is highly visual and shows the building blocks for neighborhoods: building types and their organization and orientation; how we can get along as we get around a city; and living with the weather. As every citizen deals with the reality of a changing climate, Soft City explores how the built environment can adapt and respond.
 
Soft City offers inspiration, ideas, and guidance for anyone interested in city building. Sim shows how to make any city more efficient, more livable, and better connected to the environment.

About David Sim

“In Soft City, David Sim draws from his great experience working on projects on all continents and in all corners. You will benefit from his outstanding ability to see, to observe, and to reflect upon the scenes from life and cities. Soft City is an important addition to the growing literature on people-friendly architecture and city planning. Indeed, architecture and city planning need to be quite a bit more soft. Here is a good place to start.” Jan Gehl

David Sim is Creative Director at Gehl. For the last couple of decades he has championed people-first urban strategies and design work worldwide. David’s intimate knowledge of the human-scale and continued development of Gehl’s methodologies places him as a leading authority in the push for more equitable, healthy and sustainable urban environments.