Messy cities: how to strive for more spontaneity in the planned city?

What do we mean by vibrant and liveable cities? Which buildings, activities and groups are desirable or undesirable in this context? And can this be planned and regulated from above by experts and professionals, or is it primarily a matter of leaving room for bottom-up initiatives? The answers to these questions ultimately determine how our cities look and feel: neat and orderly, raw and exciting, or a bit of everything. In the book Messy Cities, numerous authors express their preferences and seek to strike a balance between the planned and lived city. This article summarises and reviews this collection of stories about flexible planning, controlled spontaneity, orderly chaos, and convivial messiness.

This article is also available in Dutch

Cities and neighbourhoods come in all shapes and sizes. This blog often discusses the differences and convergences between the planned and lived city. On the one hand, there is the city that is conceived, designed and laid out from above by professionals and, on the other hand, there is the city that comes to life through the way in which residents, entrepreneurs and others use, experience and, above all, shape it. Although this is a theoretical dichotomy, you sometimes feel more in one world than the other, as I did in London. 

Vibrant
There's nothing like strolling through cities. That was certainly the case when I visited the English capital two years ago. On my way to Camden Market, I left Camden Town underground station at the end of the morning, where an excellent street musician welcomed me. After sitting on the edge of a planter and enjoying his guitar skills and the diversity of people passing by, I walked down Camden High Street, where, in an area dominated by low-rise buildings with wide streets, I was treated to a wide variety of colourful facades and street art. Every shop owner has given free rein to their creativity to stand out. In addition to the colourful facades, music was blaring from every shop (probably just above the permitted level) and the pavements were lined with products (sometimes forcing you to walk on the street). Because all the doors are wide open, every shop - and indeed the whole area - seems to be shouting ‘welcome’. Not only is there a great diversity of façades, but also a wide range of shops, including many specialist stores. A little further on, my senses were even more stimulated when I walked into Camden Lock Market, which looks like a food truck festival. Here you find numerous small stalls selling food from all over the world, including Dutch pancakes. The many different smells of street food compete to reach your nose first. You can also find cultural diversity in the old industrial buildings behind the market, where there are even more eating establishments, shops and studios. In other words, an area that can be described as a “melting pot of music, fashion, experiences and food”. 

Camden High Street (London)

Orderly
Later that day, I took the underground to King's Cross station to take a look at the urban redevelopment of an area that has undergone a considerable makeover over the last twenty years. Or, in the words of the King's Cross Estate project developers: “How this once derelict area has been transformed into a vibrant new part of London”. It is impressive how the commercial parties have managed to reduce crime and attract new jobs and residents by constructing large office buildings and luxury apartments. It all looks neat and modern, but it did not feel vibrant to me. Along Kings Boulevard are several stately new commercial buildings, housing Google and Universal Music, among others. High-rise buildings with mostly colossal pillars and uniform facades. This harsh appearance is somewhat softened on the ground floor by the green spaces and water features, which are sleek, streamlined and well-maintained. This also applies to Granary Square, a large stone square with 1,000 choreographed fountains and concrete benches. Next to this square is Coal Drops Yards, which has been renovated into a new shopping centre with numerous boutiques. There are no sales items or advertisements on the pavement here; everyone adheres to the established guidelines and everything looks immaculate. Behind the shopping centre are several residential towers and commercial buildings built close together, with tall, not very lively plinths. The video cameras and security guards in this area will give many people a sense of security. I mainly felt that I was being watched and was only allowed to sit in the designated areas. It is a typical example of a ‘privately owned public space’ (POPS) (see also Shenker, 2017), which, in my opinion, takes away the spontaneity and liveliness of public space.

Kings Boulevard (London)

In other words, two neighbourhoods that are less than 1.5 kilometres apart left me with a completely different impression due to their atmosphere, architecture, public space and degree of orderliness. Where Camden Town, thanks to its informal character and diversity, seems more like organised chaos and feels warm, the high-rise buildings and large, stony squares in King's Cross Estate create a more formal, businesslike atmosphere where everything is clean, intact and safe, and everyone walks neatly in line. 

Steet art near Camden High Street (London)

The pursuit of happiness
The book Messy Cities explores these different faces of a city. No fewer than 44 authors from different cultural backgrounds and various disciplines (including architecture, art, geography, journalism, landscape architecture, medicine, public health, urban development, and urban planning) contribute to the book. In different ways and with different emphases, they ask whether street vendors, shack-like buildings, messy architecture, excessive city noise and graffiti-covered walls are signs of decay and poor management, or rather indicators of a liveable, vibrant and inclusive city. Jason Thorne, an urban planner in Toronto, puts it this way: “Have our rules and regulations squeezed too much of the life out of our cities? Or are they critical bulwarks for protecting public health and safety? [...] But how do we plan and design a city that is safe and functional while also leaving room for spontaneity and serendipity?” (pp. 43-44). 

The setting for these stories is predominantly Toronto (Canada), as many of the authors live or work there. This narrow view is not as bad as one might initially think, as the city is portrayed from so many different perspectives. In addition, there are occasional short trips to Berlin, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Hanoi, Istanbul, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, Palestine, São Paulo, Tokyo, and Trinidad.

New construction around King's Cross (London)

Less is more
On the one hand, the collection of stories is a paean to more disorder in our cities, as evidenced by the book's subtitle (“Why we can't plan everything”) and the introductory chapter: “It is time to rehabilitate the term [messy] as the necessary counterpoint to the drive for order” (p.10). Many authors argue that we have gone too far in planning, designing and regulating our cities, leaving too little room for things that deviate from the norm. Criticism is therefore levelled at application processes, building codes, bylaw enforcement, design guidelines, permit policies, property standards and zoning regulations. Especially when they are complex, expensive, illogical and rigid, and based on questionable values. 

A good example of the latter is the story of Nina-Marie E. Lister, professor of urban and regional planning (Toronto Metropolitan University), who has turned her front garden into an ecological paradise - a habitat garden - using perennial flowering plants. However, this rambunctious garden does not match how front gardens are supposed to look in North American suburbs. So, after complaints from neighbours, she receives a visit from a municipal official who points out that a bylaw stipulates that grass, weeds and vegetation must not exceed 20 centimetres in height. The added value of biodiversity for both humans and animals is not taken into account in this assessment. As a result, thanks to regulations like this, all front gardens look the same: neatly mowed lawns. Anything that deviates from this is labelled excessive or untidy. Many authors believe this should change, such as writer Shawn Micallef: “A truly messy city requires a certain amount of bureaucratic inattention, perhaps even some benign neglect” (p. 209). In addition to overregulation, certain planning principles are also being questioned, for example by Chiyi Tam from Toronto, who is constantly asked in her work what does and does not fall under Chinatown: “Planners ask the wrong question. It is clear that what they are also asking is where Chinatown isn’t. The need to know where Chinatown begins and ends in order to make policy. They need to create borders in order to do anything” (p.64). 

Camden Lock Market (London)

Shades of grey
On the other hand, most chapters also show that it is not black-and-white but rather a complex balancing act between the planned and the unplanned, between the orderly and the messy, and among numerous other ideologies that are discussed (see Table 1). We should not glorify one more than the other: “The question is not what kind of urbanism, messy or orderly, is better, but how they interact,” says architect Andrés Borthagaray (p. 238). The different ideologies should therefore not be approached as opposites, but rather as a continuum in which the search for the right balance is ongoing, as also mentioned by author Jake Tobin Garrett, who questions the way parks are designed: “Parks should be designed to be high-quality spaces, with excellent materials, relevant community amenities, and well-cared-for landscapes. They also require a set of rules to help govern their use. But, as with everything, there is a balance. Overdesigned and overregulated spaces filled with shiny amenities and byzantine rules can provoke that formal sitting-room feeling: look but don’t touch; whisper, don’t shout; and for god’s sake, sit up straight!” (p.176). 

Table 1 Words used in the book to describe the different ideologies

Neat Cities	Messy Cities
Planned	Unplanned
Top down	Bottom up (grassroots)
Control, order	Complexity, disorder
Laws, rules, regulations	Agency, shared power, community-driven
Grand design, clean lines, monochrome facades	Utilitarian design, organic growth
Blandness, consistency, homogenous, identical, indistinguishable, monotoneus, sameness, symmetrical, uniformity	Asymmetrical, diverse, dynamic, interruptions, mixture, vibrant
Predictable, conceived, outlined	Spontaneous, serendipity, surprising, unexpected
Boundaries, fixed, finality, stability	Adaptive, flexibility, fluid, fuzzy
Pretty, spotless, tidy, unsullied	Disturbing, tarnished, untidy, used
Harmony, perfection, pleasant	Friction, practical, unpleasant

Resident initiatives - several of which are discussed in the publication - also require a constant search for the right balance. Shari Kasman, an artist from Toronto, describes this beautifully in the project in which she and residents transformed a vacant lot in the middle of a residential area into ‘Bloordale Beach’: “The beach was an illegal guerrilla project that wasn’t technically allowed to exist, but was permitted to exist, or was tolerated, yet it was admired by authorities, though it could not be supported financially, due to its status of being on the wrong side of the law” (p.79). This touches on a common dilemma: how do you ensure that a fun, informal project or successful pilot grows into something permanent without losing its unique character? Take, for example, a spontaneously created nudist beach by, for, and of the LGBTQ+ community: “Must queer spaces become institutionalised, commercialised, or hypervisible to survive? And if so, what is lost in terms of the informal and subversive qualities that made these spaces so vital in the first place?” (p.116). 

Other stories cover topics such as defensive urbanism, desire lines, DIY urbanism, gentrification, gendered urbanism, heritage planning, human-scale urbanism, inclusivity, informal economy, NIMBY, organic area development, placemaking, pop-up urbanism, shared spaces, street art, sharing economy, suburban sprawl, and tactical urbanism.

Granary Square (London)

Insight into everyday life
The book is not the result of extensive scientific research, but rather a colourful mix of personal stories and observations. Each author has been given six to seven pages to present their argument, which usually begins with an anecdote and then makes a case for some form of messiness. Some of these texts read like an extended column, while others are more like short essays. The diversity of authors ensures that the issue is examined from all angles, and by giving a voice primarily to people with practical experience, you get a good overview of the possibilities and impossibilities of allowing a little more excitement, rawness, irregularity and unpredictability into our cities. The other side of the coin is that the stories are just a little too short. Just when the main message of the author in question becomes clear, you want to delve deeper with him or her, but then you are already faced with the task of reading the following story. It is also up to the reader to find the patterns within this kaleidoscope with its many shades of colour, because a good and comprehensive concluding chapter is missing. 

As far as I am concerned, the central theme is the question of whether we should approach the city as a machine that produces the right products in an effective and efficient manner, or whether we should accept that the city is a complex, chaotic and dynamic organism. This is an area of tension - or perhaps ‘search’ is a better word - that has been discussed many times on this blog and also by people such as Jane Jacobs (Visual Order: Its Limitations and Possibilities), Richard Sennett (Closed vs. Open City) and Jan Gehl (Hard vs. Soft City). The Dutch sociologist Abram de Swaan (1993) also writes about this and in the past he used another beautiful metaphor that is applicable here. He wrote that we should not see the city as a clean, intact, and safe bathroom: “A liveable city is not a polished city, but a city with the right mix of entertainment, amazement, surprise, tension, and annoyance”.  

Camden High Street (London)

In the eye of the beholder
All in all, it is an enjoyable read for anyone involved in urban planning, and certainly for those who are passionate about public outdoor spaces and the conflicts that can sometimes arise there. It encourages you to think about when something is truly undesirable, inappropriate, and problematic. For example: when should we label urban sounds as noise pollution? And when does graffiti become art? The logical answer to these questions is, of course, that it differs from person to person. Each person experiences and appreciates a different level of clutter, clarity, diversity and liveliness. It will therefore differ per neighbourhood where you feel most at home. Both in London and in all those other exciting cities.

References

De Swaan, A. (1993). Stadsgevoel. NRC Handelsblad, 30 september 1993.

Helleman, G. (2016a). Op zoek naar nieuwe verhoudingen: over de relatie tussen de geplande en geleefde stad. De Haagse Hogeschool. 

Helleman, G. (2016b). Privately Owned Public Spaces: curse or blessing? Blog Urban Springtime.

Helleman, G. (2020). Ontmoeten in de publieke ruimten. Blog Stadslente.

Helleman, G. (2021). Hoe openbaar is de openbare ruimte? Blog Stadslente. 

Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House Usa Inc.

Reid, D., Ebrahim, Z., Woo. L., & Lorinc, J. (Eds.) (2025). Messy Cities: Why we can't plan everything. Coach House Books.

Sennett, R. (2018). Building and dwelling: Ethics for the city. Allen Lane/Penguin Random House.

Shenker, J. (2017). Revealed: the insidious creep of pseudo-public space in London. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.jackshenker.net/work/revealed-the-insidious-creep-of-pseudo-public-space-in-london 

Ter Avest, D. & Helleman, G. (2023). Semi-publieke ruimte: inleiding op een themareeks. Rooilijn, 56, 7 september 2023. Retrieved from https://www.rooilijn.nl/artikelen/semi-publieke-ruimte-inleiding-op-een-themareeks