"A neighborhood is not just a place, it's also a state of mind."

I'll admit that I'm not a great vacation planner. When we go on trips, the responsibility of trip planning almost always falls squarely on Tammy's shoulders. As an enneagram type one, she admits to craving organization and planfulness in everything she does — especially with trip planning. As an enneagram type three, this level of detail doesn't fall within my wheelhouse and it often takes me hours to plan things that would take her minutes.

That said, in our most recent pre-COVID trip to Kauai, I spearheaded the planning to take the burden off her plate. I found places to eat, activities to do, things to see, and places to chill. I thought I had it all planned out until Tammy casually spent a few hours reorganizing my calendar of planned events, meals, and activities a week before our trip.

Somehow, with an hour to spare, she connected the dots. She bundled our activities more intuitively (e.g. no loco moco before the bumpy boat tour), reduced driving time between destination centers, and incorporated the sorely needed morning coffee stop at a different cafe every day.

How is it that she could make such small adjustments and make our trip that much more enjoyable?

She planned around the city.

I recently bought David Sim's book Soft City: Building Density for Everyday Life. In the book, he emphasizes that our cities need to be designed with several key elements: the ability to live locally, to increase density with the missing middle, and improve pedestrian mobility.

The interesting part in this book and his presentation at the H22 Summit last year was not just the Soft City concept, but instead, the soft metrics that we don't often see, hear or quantify on a policy or planning level.

From beer to bus in 2.5 seconds.

Can we design building edges that maximize the value of every second? Make it easier to access public transportation from the corner pub or cafe.

From bedroom to bakery in 35 seconds.

Can we design high-density housing that allows everyone the same luxury of leaving their home and walking to public transit with a croissant in hand?

The list goes on.

• Create buildings with a 1-second walk-in and out on the ground floor.

• Organize apartment buildings with a 7-second walk from street to courtyard.

• Add continuous concrete sidewalks to reduce our average walk time from 5 minutes to 3 minutes and deprioritize cars.

Soft may not be as sexy as Smart, but it emphasizes the small details in a city and its buildings that make our lives easier, more enjoyable, and more efficient by prioritizing the people that live in it.