It's really interesting. I've been studying planning for at least a dozen years now and I love reading planning studies. It sounds a little odd, but I do love reading planning studies.
There is a fellow named Jan Gehl, in Copenhagen. He's a professor. He's famous all over the world. He designed downtown Copenhagen. He just finished Times Square. He did downtown Sydney. The man is a genius.
They do all kinds of studies. There is a challenge you will find with people who live in an urban environment, as more and more of us tend to do. If you live in a concrete jungle such as they've created across Toronto's waterfront, it's a sterile, boring atmosphere. There are studies to prove that.
Jan Gehl did two studies, which I'm going to refer to very quickly.
One study was on how much stimulus the cerebral cortex required to not be bored. Well, every three seconds we need stimulus on our cerebral cortex or we're bored. When you walk through a place that has massive condominiums and 300-foot concrete facades, you're not going to be engaged in that. That is detrimental to your health and it's certainly detrimental to your sense of place.
There was another study done. I thought this study was absolutely incredible. You will notice in a lot of our images that none of them were more than six storeys. Jan Gehl's group did a study and they found that a mother could actually make eye-to-eye contact with her child from a six-storey balcony, yet she couldn't do that from seven storeys. Therefore, he doesn't design anything over six storeys for that reason.
These are all really interesting things, but it tells you a lot about the place. It tells you a lot about the urban forum.