What makes a city a great place to visit? That’s fun to think about. A great city oozes history, presents art both formally and informally, and is blessed with eye-catching and interesting architecture. A great city stimulates the senses whether with color, design, smell, sounds, and tastes. A great city has a vibrant and dynamic feel and spirit when you are in the public spaces out among its people. A great city is arranged to enable fluid movement whether by transit or on foot. A great city has a flow about it that sets it apart from other places and times.
Lisbon is a great place to visit. (Lisbon impressions)
Author Rebecca Solnit is an American writer who I enjoy reading. She addresses a variety of subjects, including the environment, politics, place, and art. Rebecca and others have some great observations about cities and public spaces — I’ll pepper a few of these throughout this article.
“In great cities, spaces as well as places are designed and built: walking, witnessing, being in public, are as much part of the design and purpose as is being inside to eat, sleep, make shoes or love or music. The word citizen has to do with cities, and the ideal city is organized around citizenship — around participation in public life.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
Public spaces and places within public view benefit from a broad array of fountains, parks, monuments, and art (both formal and informal).
“There is no mysterious essence we can call a ‘place’. Place is change. It is motion killed by the mind, and preserved in the amber of memory.”
— J.A. Baker
“Sense of place is the sixth sense, an internal compass and map made by memory and spatial perception together.”
— Rebecca Solnit
“The magic of the street is the mingling of the errand and the epiphany.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
“What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.”
― Charles Baudelaire
“Cities have always offered anonymity, variety, and conjunction, qualities best basked in by walking: one does not have to go into the bakery or the fortune-teller’s, only to know that one might. A city always contains more than any inhabitant can know, and a great city always makes the unknown and the possible spurs to the imagination.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
There are a variety of transit options that mesh well with walking. Electric trams are both photogenic and will get you up some pretty major hills. The subway system and bus system are easy to navigate for longer hauls.
“You know what a sense of place is? It’s when the place you’re in feels like home. Where you’re at peace.”
— N.R. Walker
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