ABSTRACT
The soft city, created by David Sim, is based on the idea that from the union of density and diversity a more liveable and healthier city can be obtained, as the proximity of an environment can be translated into time. The local identity can be stronger than the national or cultural one, and being more inclusive, it can be considered one of the healthiest forms of collective identity. The soft city is a combination of hardware, which is the streets and buildings – and everything that is built – and software that affects the invisible part such as behaviour, trust, planning and legislation. The streets are also of different types – main, secondary, avenues, alleys – and can create different ways of being lived and of movement, just as parks and squares could be part of a path for going to work and to a garden in a courtyard, constituting a shortcut.
