"What we have to address now is making livable, healthy, safe, and sustainable cities," (Jan) Gehl says.

Photo credit. 

Go to the article for the details. As always, the point isn't so much that New Albany should embrace outright such ideas from the realm of larger cities. Rather, it's that until we begin thinking these thoughts, we'll be unable to borrow from these ideas and adapt them to make a great, smaller city.

5 Rules For Designing Great Cities, From Denmark's Star Urbanist, by Diana Budds (Fast Company)

Danish architect and urbanist Jan Gehl has spent decades making sure cities work for people, not the other way around. Here's how.

... "What we have to address now is making livable, healthy, safe, and sustainable cities," Gehl says. It's a topic he's written about in his books Cities for People and Life Between Buildings, and spoken about in The Human Scale, a documentary about his life's work. His research and theories have inspired a generation of planners and urbanists who are intent on reclaiming cities for people. On the heels of a recent lecture he gave at the Van Alen Institute in New York, we asked him about the most pressing urbanism problems of today and what he thinks the path forward should be.

1. STOP BUILDING "ARCHITECTURE FOR CHEAP GASOLINE."
2. MAKE PUBLIC LIFE THE DRIVER FOR URBAN DESIGN.
3. DESIGN FOR MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCES.
4. MAKE TRANSPORTATION MORE EQUITABLE.
5. BAN CARS.