10 observations, nice things, and little ideas that made Madrid pretty pleasant for a week-long trip last spring:

  1. You can’t make a city like Madrid with token spend. You probably can’t even make Madrid by gathering numerous friends in an underdeveloped grass plain and deciding you’re going to make a great city. 🤷🏻‍♂️
  2. Extremely related to the previous: Madrid has many nice things because it’s a lot older than most American cities. It necessarily evolved and was built at human scale. It was probably a major pain to get a (pretty good, IMO) subway underneath it. But, given the fixed locations of palaces, royal gardens, etc. you get a pretty pleasant place.
  3. Money invested in a city doesn’t automatically improve it. And it can’t buy you happiness. But it can avoid many kinds of misery! (Possibly only if you invest capital in making things nice, and invest socially to avoid misery? I know, it’s going to be difficult to get the private enterprise types to wrap their heads around that one.)
  4. It is quite charming to have parks, gardens, etc. spread throughout the city. Pocket parks and recreational parks are delightful, but something more akin to English or royal “gardens” is even better. Robert Moses should be jealous on this point. (He probably was not.)
  5. Good public transit makes every part of a city that it reaches 20% better. One system of buses, subways/light rail, and streetcars/trolleys is a delight. Obviously, the places that public transit reaches have to be walkable. Lucky for Madrid …
  6. Many things in Madrid are good simply by having evolved at that human scale. It’s challenging to spend or regulate into that. For better or worse, most American cities have car-scale deeply embedded in their structure. (🤔What can we do moving forward?)
  7. Counterpoint: the pall of smoking is prevalent the moment you can see the sky in Madrid. It is the one jarring thing we constantly noticed and thought we have it way better back home.
  8. Granted, Madrid seemed lovely at the center of its energy (and geography). The Disneyland of Madrid, per se. Like useable (not even good?) public transit, I’m not sure what percentage of Americans would ever actually experience this sort of thing. Even on vacation, seems like a rarity.
  9. Related, Madrid has a plethora of museums, history, and cultural touch-points. As cities go, you can only luck into that and then try to preserve it. A city unfurled across history is a rare delight.
  10. Gardens, useable benches, people watching. We could have these things in US cities if we wanted. And, were willing to address all the second-order forces that prevent us from having them now.

In summary:

  1. Madrid can have nice things because it’s old
  2. Except the smoking
  3. Walking amongst history, museums, culture: no notes

Therefore, enjoy Madrid like I did:

  • Go to museums, enjoy the history, see old things
  • Walk and take public transit whenever feasible
  • Drink Spanish vermouth, sleep in