What are the attributes of a city you like to visit? Of one you avoid? Of your own? It's worth some consideration, because we've built urban environments that people flock to, and some that people avoid like the plague.
Charles Marohn is a land use planner and professional engineer, and he's largely discarded much of the prevailing thinking on urban planning.
Lessons from the past, recent and long ago, inform his approach, one he shares in the book Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity.
We get a flying short course on Strong Towns in this interview from 2019.