Walkable cities: is there any hope? Maybe an ancient medieval defensive structure can come to the rescue once again!

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Background:

One unfortunate consequence of the invention of the car is that cities started being designed for car-only use. In most cities built in the last ~70 years, the concept of a high-density walkable residential-and-commercial space only exists in shopping malls and amusement parks (Figure 1).

Fig. 1: A medieval city had many downsides, such as the Black Plague, but technical limitations of the day forced cities to be relatively walkable. In the modern city on the right right, we see a vast “desert” of parking lots that separates points of interest.

The Issue:

The main issue here is that cars allow city planners to just rely on endless “sprawl” for development. In the year 1025, it would not be expected that a city-dwelling laborer could walk 10 miles from their job to their place of work, but in the year 2025 this would be considered a completely reasonable—even rather short—commute.

Proposal:

Fortunately, we can bring back walkable cities easily, by just bringing back another feature of settlements of ancient times: the city wall (Figure 2)! Towns and cities could simply decide what a “reasonable” initial size for a city is, wall it off, and prevent development outside of the walls.

Fig. 2: The city wall provides a boundary to a city that forces the interior to remain relatively walkable and high-density.

Conclusion & Implementation Notes:

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The only implementation problem is one of motivation: in ancient times, the city wall provided a useful public service against roving marauders / gangs of bandits / howling wolves / other similar threats.

Now that those threats are diminished, it may be difficult to obtain financing for a city wall from a budged-minded city council.

The solution to this is simple: just re-introduce some sort of deadly peril that exists outside the city walls, like huge colonies of rabid wolves, venomous snakes, zombies, etc. The options are endless!

PROS: Extremely practical solution to urban planning!

CONS: None whatsoever: this would be an easy sell to voters that is unlikely to get any opposition, except maybe from a few homeowners.

Originally published 2025-10-27.