Travel is a good way to see what makes cities tick. My family recently spent a couple of weeks vacationing in central Italy. The trip showed me a number of urban best practices that could potentially be applicable to Los Angeles.

My time in Italy was brief, so this article is not meant to be any kind of conclusive study of Italian urbanism. It’s just my observations and thoughts. Apologies for places where these run pretty shallow. (For what it’s worth, here are similar observations from my vacation in Mexico.) We spent time in Rome, Pisa, Calci (a small town just outside Pisa), Lucca, Venice, and Florence.