Creating the City Beautiful

What makes a city beautiful, livable, walkable, and simply a desirable place to call home? And on the other side, what mistakes can destroy a city’s appeal to residents, visitors, and investors? For the last six years, Cal Poly Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning Dave Amos has been exploring answers to these questions through his hugely popular YouTube channel, City Beautiful. The channel embraces a mantra: that cities are amazing, and then seeks to understand what makes some cities succeed while others stumble. Amos’ inquisitive, fast-paced, and approachable style has earned his channel more than 651,000 subscribers, with his videos about cities and city planning regularly attracting millions of views. Amos has explored what happened when cities banned cars, why high-rise public housing projects were once thought to be part of the answer to America’s chronic housing projects, and even what urban planning looking like in the former Soviet Union. Join CMC and City Beautiful creator, producer, and narrator Dave Amos and Manuel Santana Palacios, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning, The Knowlton School of Architecture, The Ohio State University, as we explore the factors that shape the cities we call home, with host, Belkis Schoenhals, Principal Planner, The City of Columbus