Urbanism Is A Human Story. Let's Talk About It That Way.
And the story needs more, and better, storytellers.
Reintroducing Hope in Cities as Market Street: weekly readers for thoughts, tactics, and insights on selling the promise of better cities—straight from urbanism’s self-appointed marketing director.
If you’re reading this, the most likely reason is that you either follow me on Twitter or subscribed to this newsletter as one of the recommended options when you signed up for the newsletter of another proud member of Urbanism Twitter. (To the rest of you, hello! I’m glad you found your way here.)
That means a lot of us live in a bit of a digital urbanism bubble.
But how many people outside that bubble even know what urbanism is?
It’s not that urbanism isn’t being talked about. It’s that the way we talk about it often misses the mark. Urbanist ideas rarely come wrapped in narrative. They’re not connected to people’s lived experiences.
So when “urbanism-y” changes show up—like bike lanes, new housing, or less parking—they don’t land as improvements. They register as disruptions.
That’s especially true because these changes are often retrofitted into places that weren’t designed to support them. Instead of coming across as thoughtful upgrades, they interrupt the usual flow of daily life:
They’re late for work and stuck behind a cyclist going 15 miles an hour below the speed limit.
They can’t find a parking spot because spaces were removed for a bike lane or parklet.
A travel magazine discovered their downtown, and now it’s overrun with U-Hauls and out-of-state plates as out-of-towners flood in.
In places where these ideas are foreign, these kinds of changes don’t register as progress. They register as stress and inconvenience.
The urbanism bubble does a bad job responding to this reality.
Most people have never even stopped to consider whether the environment they live in is built the right way. That’s particularly because sprawling, poorly-designed suburbia is so pervasive in the U.S. that it feels like it’s just how things are supposed to be. Surely we wouldn’t build like this that often if it was the wrong way, right?
We often treat people as if they’re willfully ignorant or intentionally cruel for seeing disruptions to their daily lives as problems. But that resistance doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s shaped by how people have been taught to see cities and who they’re for.
Cities in the U.S. are presented as being for three kinds of people: those at both extreme ends of society, including the wealthy elite in finance, tech, or the arts, and the deeply impoverished living in what’s often called “the inner city.” For everyone else—aside from farmers and those in truly rural areas—sprawl becomes the default. That’s the version of America that feels “normal.”
So when people see a new apartment complex or a bike lane, the early signs of what urbanists might consider progress, all they see is disruption to the status quo. At best, it looks like something designed to help a group they don’t identify with and assume doesn’t care about them. At worst, it feels like a nuisance or even a threat.
And too often, the urbanist response is eye rolls, dismissiveness, or outright condescension.
…because we all know that being scolded famously wins people to the cause at a near perfect success rate.
(Queue the Chandler Bing gif)
It makes sense why this happens. A movement with such a prominent digital community is going to have those those digital-native habits start bleeding into the way we talk about change offline.
But bringing the discourse of a Twitter reply section to the fight to bring about change in our communities will not only get us nowhere—it actually sets us back.
Urbanism doesn’t need more uptight ideology reply guys. It needs better storytelling.
It doesn’t need more rigid and stuck-up purists. It needs empathetic storytellers and communicators. Not just because empathy is nice. But because it’s strategic.
In a 2016 article, Gary Vaynerchuk put it like this:
Sometimes being empathetic can be confusing. You might ask yourself, “Am I being empathetic because I care or am I being empathetic because I know being understanding will give me leverage in the situation?” The answer is both. Being good is always the best option. But I’m not gonna lie either: giving a shit is a real thing and gives you the chance to make your relationships mutually beneficial . . . . Whether you’re a salesperson, an operator, or a businessperson, if you can understand what the other person is thinking and what their goals are, you can reverse engineer those aims and map it back to your goals too. That knowledge sets you up to win. You’ll both win.
Empathy particularly matters in the urbanism fight because our real battle is not with our ignorant, frustrating, or resistive neighbors.
It’s with the power structures—zoning boards, highway departments, real estate finance systems—that make bad places feel “normal.”
Those same neighbors who vacation in Europe or walkable American beach towns? They short-circuit at the thought of their own towns working that way. Not because they consciously hate good design, but because the story they’ve heard says, That’s not for you.
While there’s any number of ways to “fight the power,” if we want to make progress in building an urbanism movement that can go truly viral, storytelling is the only tool powerful enough to shift mindsets and move hearts.
While the composition of the average American household has shifted dramatically over the last few decades, the narrative surrounding what constitutes the American Dream hasn’t adjusted to match.
That leaves a massive void. And movements that win fill that void with a story.
The shift toward storytelling isn’t about getting soft or sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya. It’s a strategic move.
Facts alone, no matter how jarring or striking, won’t win people over. As Yuval Noah Harari says in 21 Lessons for the 21st Century,
Humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better.
And this isn’t just conjecture. It’s science.
When our brain sees or hears a story, the neurons in our brain fire in the same pattern as the storyteller’s. It’s called neural coupling or mirroring.
It’s a process that engages several parts of the brain, which helps block out distraction—a critical feature, particularly in our instant-everything-all-the-time culture.
The emotions stories create also result in excess dopamine, making us remember things easier and resonate with them more deeply, while also helping us share them more easily with others.
By contrast, facts and statistics primarily activate the language and numerical processing centers. So even if you’re able to cut through someone’s initial skepticism and truly drive statistics and facts home, you’re still only reaching their logic. Not their imagination. Not their identity.
And we know that humans aren’t inherently logical beings. We’re emotional creatures. Winning hearts is at least as important as winning minds, if not more.
And there’s a key reason that typically doesn’t happen right now.
Urbanism is currently a movement about place. It has to become a movement about people.
If urbanists are going to effectively tell stories that navigate the tricky nuances of things like gentrification, eminent domain, less parking, higher density/rapid population growth, more traffic, and public safety concerns in urban places, it has to be done in a way that puts people at the center.
And not just one kind of person. All kinds of people:
The lifetime suburbanite who has never stepped foot on a public bus and either has no clue how to do that or is fearful of the unknown
The longtime resident of an “up and coming” neighborhood who sees the new development coming and is afraid they’ll be priced out after living there 40 years
The new parents who are considering the suburbs to make sure they do what’s best for their new baby
Victims of crimes in urban spaces who feel urbanist narratives about safety in cities dismiss or invalidate their experiences
The local, state, or federal politician who perceives urbanist ideas to be unpopular campaign liabilities
Without storytelling that puts all of these kinds of people at the center, urbanism comes across as nothing more than an aesthetic or lifestyle preference. It says that we want our neighborhoods to look a certain way and serve our own lifestyle design.
Urbanists know it’s much more than that. It’s a movement to build a world that is more beautiful, affordable, accessible, safe, healthy, and connected.
But most people, if they even know about urbanism at all, don’t know that.
That’s why people need to feel not just informed or corrected, but invited into a story.
A story that makes room for them. A story that helps them see what’s possible, not just for their city but for their own lives.
That’s the kind of story I want to help tell. And more importantly, help others tell—in neighborhoods, on city councils, in town halls, and in the everyday places where decisions shape what gets built.
Because this isn’t just theory. Storytelling is strategy. And strategy shapes what comes next.
We *do* need better urban theory. Making urban theory more coherent would facilitate coherent and compelling story telling.