Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

Amazon.com Price: $15.76 (as of 11/10/2019 07:20 PST- Details)

Description

A globe-trotting, eye-opening exploration of how cities can―and do―make us happier people

Charles Bernard Law Montgomery’s Happy City is revolutionizing the way we consider urban life.
After decades of unchecked sprawl, more people than ever are moving back to the city. Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks, and condo towers an improvement on the car dependence of the suburbs?
The award-winning journalist Charles Bernard Law Montgomery finds answers to such questions at the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness, throughout an exhilarating journey through probably the most world’s most dynamic cities. He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a “sexy” bus to ease status anxiety in Bogotá; the architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan hill towns to brand new-day New York City; the activist who turned Paris’s urban freeways into beaches; and an army of American suburbanites who have hacked the design of their own streets and neighborhoods.
Wealthy with new insights from psychology, neuroscience, and Bernard Law Montgomery’s own urban experiments, Happy City reveals how cities can shape our thoughts in addition to our behavior. The message is in the end as surprising as it is hopeful: by retrofitting cities and our own lives for happiness, we will be able to tackle the urgent challenges of our age. The happy city can save the world―and we will be able to all assist build it.

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