Why we should design cities like Disney | Zach DeBoer
TED Talks Daily

Why we should design cities like Disney | Zach DeBoer

B2Upper-intermediateOctober 2, 202617 min
  • One speaker
  • Society

Where you live shapes your relationships, your emotions and even how long you live, says community designer Zach DeBoer. After studying what a century of building cities around cars has done to downtowns in the US, he turned to lessons from some of the most walkable, carefully designed streets in the country: the ones inside Disney theme parks. With ideas ranging from narrower roads to buildings that pull you around the next corner, he offers a practical guide to turning ordinary downtowns into magical places people want to explore. Hosted on Acast. See acast...

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You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. During the pandemic, artist Zach DeBore fell down a very specific rabbit hole, watching

0:16

hours and hours of videos about Disney theme parks, how they're built, their history, their design. But the more he watched, the more he saw something beyond escapism. Zach the Parks presented a case study in what happens when human experience is the top priority

0:33

in designing a place. And that, he noticed, is usually the first thing cut in the real world. Nothing influences our lives more than place. Our surroundings affect our relationships, emotions, habits, even how long we'll live.

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