I spent last week in Zermatt with the kids, Mathilde and some friends. I'm lucky enough a close school friend of mine has a flat over there. This little swiss town is amazingly beautiful. Constantly dominated by the Matterhorn.
To stay on that urbanism theme and following yeserday's post Urban planning and the war on cars let's look briefly at Tallinn's example [Estonia's capital city - more about the city itself here - population being around half a million people].
I settled in Lyon, France 2 years ago. I came from Lisbon, Portugal where I spent 3 years in total and both my kids are born. People are usually surprised when they ask us why did we leave such a nice place [Lisbon is outstandingly beautiful] and I tell them: urban planning might be the worst I've seen since I walked around Jakarta, Indonesia.