As heatwaves stretch longer, affecting more people and cities across the world, many centres of human life are becoming increasingly unliveable. More greenery, shade and water would help but these alone aren’t enough. We also need cool spaces where the temperature, noise and light levels allow our bodies to rest. Fortunately, bringing urban temperatures down is a challenge that humanity has faced for millennia and there’s a lot that we can learn from ancestral technologies. For example, ancient Persian structures such as the yakhtchal or badguir offer effective but low-technology design solutions.
A yakhtchal is a vast communal fridge built from porous materials (eggshells, ground plants and even goat hair), designed to hold ice harvested in winter and keep food cool during summer. A badguir is a wind tower that catches hot air, channels it towards cold underground water, then circulates the cooled air back into living spaces: passive air conditioning making use of climate knowledge, materials and physics.
As a designer and artist, I have tried to reinterpret some of this thinking for today. With architect Imma Sierra, I designed a piece called “Pavillon de l’air”, a covered bench in a semicircle with a slanted fabric roof providing shading throughout the day. The roof is coated in beeswax, which allows rainwater to flow down ventilated terracotta walls below, where it’s stored. When heat warms the hollow bricks through which air can flow, the water is released, cooling the structure through evapotranspiration. The properties of the pavilion’s materials bring temperatures down without electricity.
We also need to make more use of underground spaces. Beneath the streets of Paris (topping Monocle’s 2025 liveable cities index), for instance, there are old railway tunnels, underground chambers and more. These places – La Petite Ceinture, the quarries and catacombs – are naturally cool and quiet. We explored these subterranean locations for a project called “14C”, another collaboration with architect Imma Sierra, which we are showing at this year’s Venice Biennale. Though often inaccessible or neglected, such spaces have enormous potential as sanctuaries from extreme heat. By incorporating elements such as natural light, reflective surfaces, plants and art, we could turn them into inviting underground piazzas where people can gather, cool down and reset.
I collaborate a lot with scientists to ensure that my projects are grounded in data. This was how the “14C” project discovered that the temperature beneath Paris stabilises at a depth of 10.84 metres, a fact that could inform the creation of effective and sustainable cooling solutions in the future.
Though I like low-technology solutions, I’m not against innovation (“14C” wouldn’t have been possible without thermal-imaging cameras). Electric cars reduce noise pollution. Ancestral technologies and new ones don’t need to contradict each other. We must combine ancient and cutting-edge design, with a little more attention given to simpler solutions.
We hear a lot about smart cities but those conversations shouldn’t just be about sensors and data. A yakhtchal, a shaded piazza, a quiet underground tunnel that’s open to the public – all of these are smart. Climate resilience can come from new technology but also from making the most of what already exists: the sun, the wind, the materials at hand.
Read next: Monocle’s 2025 Quality of Life Survey: The world’s 10 most liveable cities
About the writer:
Clémence Althabegoïty is a Paris-based designer and visual artist. She is exhibiting her video installation “14C” at the 2025 Venice Biennale. As told to Monocle Paris bureau chief Simon Bouvier.
This essay originally appeared in the fifth installment of Monocle’s Companion series – browse the entire series in our shop.
The point is simple: a great city is one that doesn’t over-nanny its citizens – and may even let them get away with minor infractions, as long as they know how to take care of the serious stuff. It’s the sign of a city that isn’t too tightly buckled and lets its citizens get on and live.
As someone residing in the bel paese, who enjoys the national sport of rule-bending that takes place in Italy, I’m campaigning for “colouring outside the lines” to be given consideration in our next ranking of the world’s most liveable cities. Indeed, the city where I abide, Milan, may have been in Monocle’s Quality of Life listing last year but didn’t make the cut this year. Of course you can’t please every metropolis, and each year we get people writing in to us making a case for why their home warrants inclusion. The case I wish to make on the Lombard capital’s behalf? Milan warrants inclusion for one vital quality of life metric: the freedom that it gives people to, well, just be.
Don’t get me wrong: I am a fan of the civic good-neighbourliness that exists in the UK and the rules-based order that the Nordics are best-in-class for. But as I come up on my fifth anniversary in Milan, I’m starting to appreciate the elasticity of rules (or rather, the interpretation of them) and the fact that you’re left to get on with things without too many people getting in your way – the police included. Milan manages to do all of this, while also being a design, fashion, business and finance powerhouse. In other words, it hasn’t descended into lawlessness in the process.
Take parking. When I first moved here I was horrified at the idea of briefly mounting a pavement in order to pack-up the car for the weekend, or double parking if you need to drop your child at school in the morning. But these things are generally deemed to be acceptable – and I have mellowed. On a recent trip to the park, I was forced (your honour) to leave my car in a temporarily questionable position which saw me following one of the the Italian rules that everyone can agree on: if someone else has done it before you, it’s fair game. I felt an odd, and slightly wrong, feeling of exhilaration that I had finally become a local – happily popping my car into a space that clearly wasn’t an official space at all, swerving to avoid a crowd of smokers flouting the “hardened-up ban” introduced earlier this year.
And yet, despite having lived everywhere from Buenos Aires to New York, something continues to niggle at my northern European soul. Maybe I really should be raging against the small contraventions that happen here. But then I fear all that stress wouldn’t be good for my quality of life at all.
Monocle’s 2025 Quality of Life shortlist has been revealed – but which cities pipped Milan to the post? To enjoy Monocle’s full city guide to Milan, click here.
There’s perhaps no urban issue that vexes and divides us as much as housing. Everyone who lives in a city should be able to find a safe and comfortable abode but even when we treat that aspiration as the bare minimum, we quickly move on to perilous ground once we start debating the issue’s myriad other conundrums.
Ours is a time of great prosperity in which billions of people have flocked to the centres of commerce and industry. This has exacerbated housing shortages but also inspired ingenious solutions to problems such as overcrowding, transportation and poor design. Monocle spends a great deal of time speaking to those who aim to create better housing in different places across the globe through vision and imagination rather than bluster. Here are our two cents – or perhaps we should say 10.
1.
Bring back the lodger
Build a stepping stone to independence by opening up unused spare rooms
Whatever happened to the lodger? In the past, the gap between living at home with your folks and finding a place all of your own was often bridged by a period spent renting a spare bedroom in someone’s home – then suddenly everyone wanted to skip the middle bit. But being a lodger has much to recommend it. It can be affordable, prevents large houses from being occupied by a single person and often brings together a young renter with an older homeowner. Multigenerational living can be fun when it’s a choice.
The return of the lodger could also help to ease housing shortages and loneliness, as well as increase energy efficiency. Unlike major developments, opening up spare rooms requires no cranes, no concrete and no lengthy planning battles. It’s a nimble, low-impact way to help relieve urban housing stress.
2.
Build beautiful
Set rigorous design standards
and don’t be afraid to enforce them
As we race to build new homes in ever-more packed cities, beauty should not be sidelined. The places that we inhabit influence our emotions and the ways in which we interact with one another. While focus has rightly been placed on meeting environmental criteria, it’s time for cities to add stricter aesthetic requirements to their design codes too.
Done well, attractive new developments can enhance their surroundings and lift the spirits of their inhabitants. Just look to the neighbourhoods of Vauban in Freiburg and Nordhavn in Copenhagen: both are celebrated not just for their green credentials but for being pleasing to the eye too.
3.
Get into prefab mode
Make modular housing part of the solution
“Prefab” and “modular” need not be dirty words in the world of domestic construction. Faced with a housing shortfall of 3.5 million homes over the next
five years, Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has pledged ca$26bn (€16.5bn) in financing for prefabricated homebuilders to help solve the country’s housing crisis.
According to the country’s government, prefabricated and modular housing can reduce construction times by as much as 50 per cent, costs by up to 20 per cent and emissions by up to 22 per cent compared to traditional construction methods. Modular construction also allows homeowners with an empty roof or a garden to scale up as their families grow and their needs change.
4.
Legalise backyard homes
Support gentle density and the era of the mid-rise
Many urban areas suffer from a binary choice: leafy low-rise suburbs or high-density tower blocks. Cities should also be investing in the middle-ground option: mid-rise, context-sensitive developments. From backyard homes and duplexes to in-fill developments, these options can help to create community-minded mixed-used neighbourhoods. Strict regulations and zoning laws have limited housing supply so it’s time to allow for low-to-mid-rise housing that can slip in alongside terraces and detached homes. It works, as the city of Auckland can attest. Now a decade into its Unitary Plan, it has rezoned more than half of the city’s residential land to let homeowners build up to three extra dwellings per lot. Same pretty street, more nice neighbours.
5.
Use it or lose it
Name and shame the owners of long-term vacant units
If homes are primarily seen as an investment, it will be impossible to fix the housing shortage. For too long, many have viewed property as a means by which they can hold an appreciating asset, often in a currency other than their own. And these so-called assets are frequently left empty. Some cities are beginning to fight back, cleverly using data to identify the scale of the problem. In 2023, Melbourne’s government examined water consumption and calculated that 100,000 homes in the city were unoccupied or underused, while Paris monitored census data and electricity usage, and found 262,000 empty dwellings. Both cities have seen calls to increase taxes on the owners of such uninhabited properties.
6.
Make transit the first stop
Compel developers to invest in better public-transport links
A move to the suburbs is not a social death sentence if you can easily zip into town on public transport. The building of big developments should come with an obligation on the part of the developers to improve local transport connections. Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation’s Rail 1 Property model is a good template. It builds high-rise residential and commercial buildings above metro stations, funding the transit system while creating vibrant, car-free communities. Another example is London’s Battersea Power Station redevelopment, which required a contribution of £270m (€320m) on behalf of the developers towards the construction of two new Underground stations.
7.
Encourage community power
Bend a few small rules in order to make a lot of big changes
Macro interventions in the housing market by the relevant authorities – at both the local and national level – are important but these take time and tend towards the bureaucratic. Nobody knows what’s better for a place than the people who live there. While order and basic structures are necessary, citizens should know when to break (or, let’s say, “bend”) rules too. Excessive regulation can slow change to a crawl. So, if you see an abandoned green space that’s overgrown with weeds or drowning in litter, why not lobby to turn it into a garden or vegetable patch? The hubbub of outdoor socialising brings life to the streets and can make an area safer, as long as it’s done responsibly. The same can apply to allowing children to play outside.Yes, even if it is a dreaded ball game.
8.
Turn nimbys into yimbys
Help locals to buy into planning decisions by putting more power in their hands
Inside every Nimby (“not in my back yard”) is a Yimby straining to get out. There is growing evidence that many objectors simply resent not being involved in the planning process and feel that building decisions are being made without
due consideration towards the potential concerns of the area’s residents. One possible solution for transforming Nimbys intoYimbys is to give members of the neighbourhoods involved the ability to sign off on – or even propose – new buildings or building extensions. If people believe that new homes could be available to previously priced-out relatives or friends, then objections might melt away.
9.
Properly regulate short-term lets
Don’t let Airbnb-style rentals rip the heart out of cities
The laissez-faire attitude to short-term rentals has hollowed out many inner-city neighbourhoods across Europe and provoked an electoral backlash. Spain has ordered the platform to remove 66,000 property listings for unlicensed apartments, while Barcelona plans to ban all short-term rentals by 2028. Airbnb counters that it isn’t to blame for housing shortages but it’s clear that the market needs more regulation. Amsterdam’s mayor, Femke Halsema, has proposed a novel solution. In the Dutch capital’s most rapidly gentrifying areas, the government will vote on whether to reduce the maximum number of nights for which properties can be rented out from 30 to 15.
10.
Train more builders
You can’t create more housing without enough construction workers
Countries suffering a housing crisis often announce ambitious building targets only to discover that they lack the required construction workers to achieve them. Importing foreign builders is often politically fraught so there has been a renewed focus on training young people, while making construction a more appealing and sustainable profession.
The UK’s Labour government recently unveiled a plan to build 1.5 million new homes by 2029. Faced with more than 35,000 unfilled vacancies in the building sector, it also announced a scheme to train as many as 60,000 construction workers. This £600m (€710m) investment will also include the establishment of new technical colleges, thousands of apprenticeships and more than 40,000 industry placements.
Illustrations: Jonny Glover
What makes a good city? That’s a question that Monocle has grappled with since its launch. Why? Well, in 2007, as we surveyed the multiple city surveys that were already in existence, we were suspicious about whether the people who compiled them had ever visited the places that they scored so highly. While we all love a diminutive, wealthy city where ambulance-response times are short and the education system only churns out geniuses, what about having some unalloyed fun in the urban mix? A sense of freedom? A bit of sex too, perhaps (all rather curtailed in places where folks are in bed by 10pm).
Rather than just harrumphing about this state of affairs, we made our own survey, underpinned by hard data and including statistics for the softer elements of city life too, such as the ease with which you can expect to grab a glass of wine in a bar past midnight or buy food on a Sunday. We also had plenty of input from our correspondents, a wise but entertaining crowd. Over the years, the metrics have evolved with the times – for example, we have focused more on nightlife and the health of high-street retail since the coronavirus pandemic. But in truth, even in our survey, a relatively small set of wonderful cities has consistently triumphed as other places that we love have stumbled at the final hurdle – a city that scores highly for personal safety, say, might miss out because its public-transport system is kaput.
So, this year, we’re deviating from the old format and shaking things up. The 2025 Monocle Quality of Life Survey names not one but 10 winners: nine category champions and an overall star. The issue drops this week – it’s on newsstands from Thursday – so I won’t give the game away now. But here are five ideas that we put front and centre and how they led us to some interesting choices.
1. Safe streets
Everyone wants to live in a safe city – but at what cost? In some places where the crime rates are low, your every move is tracked by the authorities. Even your phone messages are available to prying eyes. Other cities are safe and have tight social cohesion but are terrible at making outsiders feel at home. So how come this thriving – but not the richest – European city is welcoming, multicultural, low on surveillance and super safe? I think that you’ll agree that it deserves its prize.
2. Health
Why are some cities blessed with such impressive longevity statistics? And believe me, it’s not because everyone is at the gym all day and living abstemiously. As we looked at the topic, we were led to a city where people like a drink and often smoke, yet stick around longer than their European city rivals. How? We’ll reveal all.
3. Housing
The lack of affordable housing has become a pain point in every city. Migration, tourism, local governments that have failed to invest – the issue has a long list of causes. But it’s possible to fix this. We have found a city that has stayed ahead when it comes to housing its residents.
4. Cleanliness
Again, this is something that we can all agree is a good thing (well, some people still think that graffiti is cool but they can stay out of this bit). Now, while you need the basics – regular rubbish collections, successful recycling programmes – there’s nothing that beats having engaged residents who care. In Monocle’s survey, you’ll discover a city that has almost no public bins – or dropped litter.
5. Good for start-ups
How can a city welcome entrepreneurs and create an environment where some risk-taking and experimentation are supported? And be a fun and affordable place to operate from too? Well, this plucky city, never ranked in any Monocle survey before, has taken the top spot because it has the answers.
You can read the Monocle Quality of Life Survey in our July/August issue, which is on sale from Thursday. Also make sure to visit monocle.com for a whole week of city-making debates.
