Beautiful City Index (BCI)

Schöne Städte developed the idea of the beautiful city index which assesses EU cities on co-created criteria, fostering wellbeing for all life in city policies & practices.

Beautiful cities are known for their healthy, attractive, inclusive and regeneratively designed public space and architecture.

Join us and co-create with us the first index comparing policy and measures on improving public space, liveability, diversity and design of the urban environment.

Let’s make European cities more beautiful! We can create a valuable new tool for policy makers, NGOs, researchers and citizens around Europe!

Contact: Erik.Ooms (at) Schoene-Staedte.org

background

For too long we have regarded the beauty of a city as a purely subjective issue. This idea of subjectivity started with the modernist architectural movement in the early 1920s. An example of this is Bauhaus movement (form follows function), which used the subjectivity argument to get more space for experimentation and deviation from the traditional standard in (architectural) design. But after the second world war, this subjectivity argument was miss-used on a disastrous scale. Instead of creating a room for experimentation, it became a solid argument (e.g. for property developers) to reduce costs on the quality of buildings, the design of public space, and the role of the well-being of humans in urban planning and architecture.

Not only buildings became uglier and increasing unattractive, leading to areas where little people would spend their free time. Also the public space was transformed from a place to meet people, allowing many different types of societal functions (trade, sports, dancing, discussions etc.), to parking lot and roads for private cars. The well-being of humans became of a lower and lower priority in urban planning and architecture, and any beauty standards, regarded as subjective

The decreasing attractiveness of the public space and architecture, led to major suburbanisation movements in the 1970s until the 1990s (urban sprawl). Here, on a large scale, areas where developed designed for use of the car and made as unattractive as possible for human interaction and any type of human scale. Housing was made as cheap as possible, and building were being build having a lifecycle of less than 20 years, before large scale renovation of demolishment would be needed. De de-humanisation and uglyfication of public space and architecture is still happening until now, with urban planners and architects developing mono-functional urban areas (shopping or living or business) and unattractive glass-based landmarks. The unintentional goal of these areas is to encourage humans leave as fast as possible, although the artists impressions during development always show the opposite, in the form human actively interacting in public space.

There is however hope on the horizon, although still very fragile in its existence. Many citizens and policy makers at major European cities have noticed the ugliness of their public space and cities. They are recognizing a shift is necessary away from mono-functionality, cheapness, dehumanizing public space and architecture towards areas where well-being of humans is increasingly important and the public space and architecture should be considered interesting, though calming and consistent. Concrete examples are the removal of car parking from the public space, as well as place-making concepts being applied (multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces). Furthermore, also the European Commission realised a change is necessary. Therefore, in 2021 they launched the New European Bauhaus initiative, which aims to “connect the European Green Deal to our living spaces. It calls on all Europeans to imagine and build together a sustainable and inclusive future that is beautiful for our eyes, minds, and souls.”

To stimulate the transformation of making cities more beautiful and contributing to human well-being, Schöne Städte, in cooperation with other NGOs and research organisations will develop the beautiful cities index. The idea behind the index is to co-create a set of new norms and values (assessment criteria) on the topic of beauty and human scale of public space and architecture. Cities around Europe will be assessed following these criteria, and a top 20 will be public published, providing free advertisement for these cities, and pride at inhabitants. More over the index can function as a tool to discuss what is important in architecture and design of public spaces, and provides opportunities for sharing good-practices as well as networking between for example policy makers and NGOs dealing with the topic. The concept of the Schöne Städte Index is in its first ideating phase, so we are asking all interested parties to get in touch with us, and share your ideas and input on how to make this tool even better and more effective for reaching the goals.

aim

The main goal of the BCI is to create a set of values regarding urban beauty and humanisation (architecture and public space), and thereby fostering cities to develop policy and actions to get higher in the ranking. This needs to lead to more beautiful cities. By developing and assessing cities on certain criteria, the index provides concrete aims and targets where cities can aim for in their policy if they want to make them more beautiful and human-focused. Cities can further use this to develop visions and strategies, programs and actions on how to reach these goals.

building upon

The Beautiful Cities Index will be based upon all the different already existing indexes. We are evaluating all the different city or comparison indexes we are aware of, and learn to understand how they are working and if how they are effective. If you are aware of any indexes which might be missing in our overview, please let us know. If you are involved in any index (or index project) which can be useful, we love to have you in our team.

New European Bauhaus Initiative

The European Bauhaus initiative has already provided some first words on what they consider to be a beautiful town. However, the European Commission is in the phase of gathering more input. In the development of the BCI it is important to stay connected with the discussions at the Bauhaus initiative.

https://europa.eu/new-european-bauhaus/index_en

Copenhagenize Index

The Copenhagenize Index, developed by the organisation Copenhagenize, is a comprehensive and holistic ranking of bicycle-friendly cities in the world. The goal of the index is to show the public which cities are the best cities for urban cycling. Besides public awareness and city promotion, it also creates a sort of healthy competition among policymakers from cycling cities on how to make the cities even better for cyclists in the near future. Besides this, the index website also contains some good-practice examples and started to function as an international networking hub on the topic of urban cycling.

The development of the Index started in 2011, when 80 different cities with more than 600.000 inhabitants were assessed based on different criteria. Every 2 years a new list is published, consisting of the 20 friendliest cities for urban cycling. The other cities which are assessed but not in the top 20 are not published. The assessments are conducted by employees of Copenhagenize themselves to make sure the comparability is high. The following criteria are used in the assessments:

Streetscape Parameters (0-4 points): Bicycle Infrastructure, Bicycle Facilities, Traffic Calming.
Culture Parameters (0-4 points): Gender Split, Modal Share For Bicycles, Modal Share Increase over the last 10 Years, Indicators of Safety, Image of the Bicycle, Cargo Bikes
Ambition Paramaters (0-4 points): Advocacy, Politics, Bike Share, Urban Planning

relevance for the BCI

The Copenhagenize Index is an institution in cycling land, and provides various learnings for the BCI:

The Index is well-known and is often refered to in (inter)national news articles. This promotion increases the influence it has on policy makers and governments.
The Index has a broad understanding of cycling, including factors as culture, innovation and policy making. Thereby it is more than an analysis tool, but also analyses what policy aims and goals are dedided on.
The website is very attractively designed and provides clearity for users.
The methods used are clearly explained, as well as the choices of assessement.
The name of the Index sometimes creates a biased feeling at users, especially when Copenhagen is obtaining the first place.

School of Life

The School of Life, an international open discussion organisation, has a category of Art/Architecture where experts write journalism blogs. One of the articles provides two concrete ideas of how to make the cities more beautiful: The School of Life - Wikipedia

The architectural style of buildings should fit into the bigger area. Architecture can be beautifully impersonal and repetitive, but still can have its own details and atmosphere. An example is to take a certain width of facades, certain colour schemes, building material as well as coherent buildings heights.The European Bauhaus initiative A few architectural landmarks can be placed in the city, but they should not become the norm of streets.
Local/regional building materials, architects and traditional building methods give a clear flair to the architecture of a city. Do not build buildings which could be placed anywhere, but give the city its own individual charism.

https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/why-is-the-modern-world-so-ugly/

stationary activity mapping

The architectural company Gehl, based in Denmark, is a frontrunner when I come to assessment and design of human-scaled places and buildings. Sources which can be used for criteria development is the book: The Soft City, written by David Sim, or tools such as the Twelve Quality Criteria for Urban Space, the Age and Gender Tally, and the People Mover count.

https://gehlpeople.com/tools/stationary-activity-mapping/Gehl

The place standard tool

The Place Standard Tool developed in Scotland provides a simple framework to structure conversations about place. It allows people to think about the physical elements of a place (for example its buildings, spaces, and transport links) as well as the social aspects (for example whether people feel they have a say in decision making). The tool provides prompts for discussions, allowing persons to consider all the elements of a place in a methodical way. The tool pinpoints the assets of a place as well as areas where a place could improve.

https://nationalperformance.gov.scot/measuring-progress/national-indicator-performance

https://www.placestandard.scot/

The place making diagram

The Place Diagram is one of the tools Project for Public Spaces has developed to help communities evaluate places. The inner ring represents a place’s key attributes, the middle ring its intangible qualities, and the outer ring its measurable data.

https://www.pps.org/article/what-is-placemaking

The Ideal City: Exploring Urban Futures | SPACE10

A resourceful city manages to be both ecologically and economically sustainable. It is welcoming not only to human beings, but also to other sentient beings on our planet. It prioritises circular principles, meaning fully closed water, nutrition, material, and energy loops. It builds sustainably and uses waste as a resource.

Accessible

An accessible city is built for diversity, inclusion, and equality — regardless of age, ability, gender, religion, financial stability, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or political views. It ensures fair and equal access to urban amenities, employment, healthcare, education, services, business, culture, leisure, heritage, sport and nature. Finally, a truly accessible city provides affordable housing and access to home ownership, inclusive decision-making with transparent governance, and fosters community involvement and empowerment.

Shared

A shared city fosters a sense of community, collaboration, and togetherness. It is designed for social interactions through shared facilities, public spaces, co-working and living spaces, and transportation. It enables pooling intangible resources too, like skill-share, shared mobility technologies, or initiatives that encourage meaningful social connections.

Safe

Resilience to climate change, extreme weather events, and floods is imperative for the safe city. It promotes a feeling of safety by providing protection for all, with an emphasis on crime prevention and rehabilitation. Going beyond, a safe city ensures a healthy environment to live in while providing access to resources such as food, water, shelter, and care, and fosters physical and mental wellbeing through access to healthcare and green spaces.

Desirable

A desirable city is one that is a pleasure to be in. It is designed on a human scale, making everything accessible within a 15-minute walk. It is a city that encourages the playful side of humans by promoting curiosity, wonder, and discovery. It nurtures a vibrant public life, with access to culture, art, and activities, and appealing public spaces for relaxation, wellbeing, and learning.

https://space10.com/project/the-ideal-city-exploring-urban-futures/

the-15-minutes-city-for-a-new-chrono-urbanism

The Leipzig Charta

2020: THE NEW LEIPZIG CHARTER: THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF CITIES FOR THE COMMON GOOD

The result is the “New Leipzig Charter”, a member state document. After its adoption at the informal ministerial meeting in Leipzig in November 2020, it will serve as a guideline for integrated urban development policy within the framework of the European value model and the common good. The New Leipzig Charter formulates three decisive dimensions of action for cities:

the “just city”,
the “green city” and
the “productive city”.

The new charter strengthens crisis resilience and local authority to act in order to be able to cope with the upcoming social, economic and ecological challenges. Digitisation affects all three dimensions and can strengthen sustainable urban development as a comprehensive cross-sectional dimension. In spatial terms, the New Leipzig Charter refers to the three relevant levels: the neighbourhood level, the city as a whole and the functional area. The charter identifies five principles of good urban governance:

urban policy for the common good
the integrated approach
participation and co-creation
the multi-level governance
the place-based approach

Sustainable Urban Mobility Indicators (SUMI) Benchmark Tool

During the SUMI project (2017-2020), cities have voluntarily filled in and submitted a total of 473 indicator spreadsheets on different indicators developed. These formed the initial basis for the database underlying the Benchmarking Tool. The tool aimes to spark discussion on the topic of sustainable urban mobility.

The indicators are divided into two groups: The core indicators and the addiotional indicators. The core indicators are:

Affordability of public transport for the poorest group indicator
Accessibility of public transport for mobility-impaired groups indicator
Air pollutant emissions indicator
Noise hindrance indicator
Road deaths indicator
Access to mobility services indicator
Greenhouse gas emissions indicator
Congestion and delays indicator
Energy efficiency indicator
Opportunity for Active Mobility indicator
Multimodal integration indicator
Satisfaction with public transport indicator
Traffic safety active modes indicator

The additional indicators are:

Quality of public spaces indicator
Urban functional diversity indicator
Commuting travel time indicator
Mobility space usage indicator
Security indicator

Walkability Index

https://plan4better.de/posts/2021-08-06-walkie/

The Beautiful Cities Index will make use of these indicators, but has a stronger focus on the additional indicators (e.g. quality of public space, urban diversity) than on the core indicators. Besides this the BCI will not look to analyse only the current quantative status, but look into the policy and vision developed aiming to improve outcome at the indicators.

evaluation

The evaluation can be made in 3 levels:

self evaluation
evaluation exchange between city partners
evaluation by external body (needs to be specified)

The evaluation shall be best done based on proven facts. Thereby we acknowledge that in many cases there will be no public data, and in some cases the judgement can rely only on subjective impressions.

The BCI describes for each category the desired best solution and the worst case scenario. The person / group who is doing the evaluation will describe the situation in their own city or quarter and will judge about the points to be given. 2 points will be given for the best practice solution and -2 for the worst situation.

Example

CATEGORY BUILDINGS

best practice

Most buildings have green facades and roofs (without the space needed for windows and solar panels).

worst case scenario

There are almost no green facades and roofs.

own situation

In our city there are only very few green facades and roofs.

points to be given

depending on what “few” means it will be -2 or -1

Possibly we will give extra points for protection of our climate, health, …

the (sugested) process

Schöne Städte has developed a first very rough framework and idea of the BCI, but can not continue the process. Therefore we will be happy if someone / some organisation will pick up this idea and bring it into live!

Best will be a team of experts and interested people, to transform it into a well-functioning and respective tool. The aim is to do this in a co-creation process, with several workshops and online discussion forums. We imagine the following process, as a first draft, to be taken place:

A consortium of EU wide NGOs and research organisations in the field of urban planning, mobility, and human empowerment, including hopefully the people behind the already existing indexes, collects all possible material potentially relevant for the BCI criteria.
In different workshops the criteria are being discussed, and divided into several categories (e.g. 3 or 4). For every category a small workgroup is being created. These work groups afterwards work on defining the different indicator names and possible ways of qualitative assessment.
The work groups come together during a long day or weekend, to make from the individual criteria, a complete BCI, which prevents overlap of overemphasizing on criteria, and discusses potential ways of measurement. A total of about 20 criteria are being applied.
An open process is organised where citizens, as well as other NGOs and research organisations, are asked to give a value of the different criteria (what are the 5 most important points). Based on their input, and discussion followed, weighing factors are being applied.
An assessment manual is being developed by the consortium, explaining the different indicators, ways to get information for the assessment and practical tools and methods.
Every partner from the EU wide consortium, has to conduct the assessment for all cities bigger than 600.000 inhabitants in their country, or cities which have been regarded as very important for the EU, country or the region (e.g. capitals, or regional capitals).
The data is inserted and the first index is made.
The BCI is improved based on the practical issues and problems risen during the assessments conducted by the partners. The BCI will become a user friendly online tool and be public available for interested organisations or persons. Citizens and NGOs can conduct a self-assessment of their neighborhood or city and share their findings online on the Beautiful Cities Index portal.
Promotional activities on social media and with the institutions are organised.

The assessment is thought to be conducted every two years. However, also every two years, some changes are made in the methodology. A total of two new criteria can be replacing two existing criteria, which have seemed to be difficult, or not really following the trends and discussions. Also the weighing process with other citizens and organisations is conducted again. Also the BCI will be improved based on comments from users doing the self-assessments.

Interested in taking over?
Please send us an email.