Building Cities of Serendipity
We should all come home saying, "You'll never believe what happened today."
When I got laid off last spring, I spent a lot of time reading and learning new skills that would help me land my next job.
(I promise this has to do with cities, so stick with me.)
In the course of that journey, I learned a good amount about digital writing - thus the creation of this newsletter - and its power to be, as digital writing coach Dickie Bush puts it, a vehicle for serendipity.
Committing to intentional and consistent digital writing over the last several months has led to all kinds of new friendships and opportunities I couldn’t have imagined.
And most were seemingly by happenstance. The serendipity vehicle has been driving at full speed.
I’m excited to see where things go next. But a question that’s been on my mind has been how cities can become at least as serendipitous a force as sending out a well-structured tweet.
Every city’s slogan should be “You never know what could happen.” And there should be fruit to back it up.
What if your town was a great place to find your next career opportunity while chatting up a stranger in a coffee shop? A place to have a creative breakthrough on a calm evening walk? A place where “meet cutes” are so frequent they become “meet commons”?
A place designed for possibility.
So how do we do that? We design for human interaction.
A busker has more chances of being discovered when streets are opened for people. A child can find more potential lifelong friends at the park than alone in their fenced-in suburban backyard. A hopeful romantic has better odds of sharing a glance at the post office with his future bride - then a conversation at deli, then a first date at a local dive - if both aren’t using the drive-thru at every stop.
A few weeks ago, I wrote that the next generation of city builders have to take cynicism off the table. Perhaps the best way we can do this is by casting the urbanist vision as one of everyday opportunity.
Most people will never get jazzed up by reducing VMT or installing bollards. But they’ll at least give you an ear when you center a discussion around creating opportunities for their talents, their hearts, and their children to be discovered.
And when we root discovery and opportunity in place, it fosters the kind of local pride and affection that inspires the masses to protect and expand that potential of serendipity for future generations.
Because it’s a way of life. And it’s a way of life worth building towards.
One Thing to Get Excited About:
Denver, Colorado, is exploring decriminalizing jaywalking.
Jaywalking laws tend to disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities (where pedestrian infrastructure typically lags behind), and specifically make life harder for those in wheelchairs, who can be tagged for jaywalking when they have to use the shoulder of a street to go around a broken sidewalk.
Jaywalking is already decriminalized in most of Colorado, and following suit in the state’s largest city would be a big win for pedestrians.
One Action to Get You Started :
Start seeing every errand you run as an opportunity to activate the serendipity engine in your city. Get out of the car, skip the drive-thru line, and go inside for everything. Take the bus if you can. Walk if you can. Do things in person that you’d normally do online.
Interact with people, talk to them, and watch what happens.
One Resource to Check Out:
As I mentioned above, this article was inspired by a post that digital writing coach Dickie Bush wrote about how to cultivate good luck in your life. You can check that post out here.