Happy City is a powerful argument for improving quality of life in cities, an introduction to visionary individuals leading the way, and a compendium of strategies and tools for achieving this goal.
Charles Montgomery (2013) Happy City. Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design. New York: Farrar Strauss & Giroux
In this wise and readable book, Charles Montgomery has gathered together recent evidence and eternal truths about how to make cities that foster a sense of well-being. He understands, better than most experts in the city-building professions, that the key issue is how the built environment shapes our everyday social interactions. He has paid serious attention to social scientists who have long insisted “the greatest of human satisfactions lies in working and playing cooperatively with other people.” And from this, he has deduced that “the most important psychological effect of the city is the way in which it moderates our relationships with other people.”
The author has absorbed and understood Lewis Mumford’s dictum: “Perhaps the best definition of the city in its higher aspects is to say that it is a place designed to offer the widest facilities for significant conversation. The dialogue is one of the ultimate expressions of life in the city.” Following from that observation, Mumford emphasized: “And if provisions for dialogue and drama, in all their ramifications, is one of the essential offices of the city, then one key to urban development should be plain – it lies in the widening of the circle of those capable of participating in it, till in the end all (men) will take part in the conversation.”
Taking these factors into account, Montgomery proposes a “recipe” for increasing urban happiness, which emphasizes: “Most of all, [the city] should enable us to build and strengthen the bonds between friends, families, and strangers that give life meaning, bonds that represent the city’s greatest achievement and opportunity.”
Montgomery is walking where many others have gone before, but this book takes the reader on a fascinating journey of discovery that he himself trod – to meet many of the current thinkers and doers around the world. He engagingly summarizes the roots of this way of looking at cities as contexts for human life, and implications for city planning and urban design.
This fascinating book introduces the reader to many real people struggling with the dismaying impacts of social isolation caused by suburban sprawl. It draws on the “insights of philosophers, psychologists, brain scientists, and happiness economists”, to explain the problems people face; and it introduces the reader to many of the great leaders in the field – mayors, architects, urban designers, and transportation planners who are working to solve this vast problem. And above all, he asks “Who is the city for?”
Montgomery’s own journey began when he met Bogotá’s visionary Mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who in 2000 began to transform his troubled city into a happy city, and who has continued to inspire mayors and planners the world over. On the journey we encounter urban space planner Jan Gehl, Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, political scientist Robert Putnam, neuroeconomist Paul Zak, transportation planners Lawrence Frank and Jeffrey Tumlin, psychology professor Robert Thayer, the Project for Public Space’s Fred Kent, and a host of others.
Montgomery examines the guiding principles of Modern architecture and planning, and the problems of zoning codes that led to suburban sprawl. He reviews the social implications of density and high-rise, and effects of urban design on conviviality, and arrives at the same conclusion as urbanist, Patrick Condon, that in American cities it was the streetcar suburb that provided the best scale for happy living – “almost everything you needed was a five-minute walk or a brief streetcar ride away.”
It is gratifying that these concerns are attracting such broad attention. In 1982, my late husband, Henry L. Lennard, a social psychologist and medical sociologist and I formed an organization called the Center for Urban Well-Being. Henry was a world-renowned expert on social interaction. In an earlier book, he had written: “Human beings are characterized by their strivings for, and dependence upon interaction with other human beings. Such interaction is an end in itself, and interactional deprivation leads to anguish, loneliness, and depression. Interaction defines the humanness of the self.”
We formed our organization (later renamed International Making Cities Livable -IMCL) to bring to the attention of elected officials and city-making professionals the absolute necessity of understanding the effects urban design and planning decisions had on the quality of citizens’ everyday lives, and to clarify how to create urban settings that help to develop social interaction and community. As we emphasized in our first book together, Public Life in Urban Places, “City dwellers everywhere seem to hav
Results (
Arabic) 1:
[Copy]Copied!
مدينة سعيدة حجة قوية لتحسين نوعية الحياة في المدن، ومقدمة للأفراد البصيرة تؤدي الطريق، وخلاصة لاستراتيجيات وأدوات لتحقيق هذا الهدف.مدينة سعيدة مونتغمري تشارلز (2013). تحويل حياتنا من خلال التصميم الحضري. نيويورك: فارار شتراوس & جيروفي هذا الكتاب الحكيم وقابلة للقراءة، مونتغمري تشارلز قد جمعت الأدلة الحديثة والحقائق الأبدية حول كيفية جعل المدن التي تعزز إحساس بالرفاهية. أنه يتفهم، أفضل من معظم الخبراء في المهن بناء المدينة، أن القضية الأساسية هي كيفية الأشكال البيئة المبنية تفاعلاتنا الاجتماعية اليومية. أنه قد أولت اهتماما جديا لعلماء الاجتماع الذين أصروا على فترة طويلة "يكمن أكبر قدر من القناعات البشرية في العمل واللعب تعاوني مع أشخاص آخرين". ومن هذا، أنه قد يستنتج أن "التأثير النفسي أهم من المدينة هو السبيل الذي المعتدلين التي لدينا علاقات مع أشخاص آخرين".The author has absorbed and understood Lewis Mumford’s dictum: “Perhaps the best definition of the city in its higher aspects is to say that it is a place designed to offer the widest facilities for significant conversation. The dialogue is one of the ultimate expressions of life in the city.” Following from that observation, Mumford emphasized: “And if provisions for dialogue and drama, in all their ramifications, is one of the essential offices of the city, then one key to urban development should be plain – it lies in the widening of the circle of those capable of participating in it, till in the end all (men) will take part in the conversation.”Taking these factors into account, Montgomery proposes a “recipe” for increasing urban happiness, which emphasizes: “Most of all, [the city] should enable us to build and strengthen the bonds between friends, families, and strangers that give life meaning, bonds that represent the city’s greatest achievement and opportunity.”Montgomery is walking where many others have gone before, but this book takes the reader on a fascinating journey of discovery that he himself trod – to meet many of the current thinkers and doers around the world. He engagingly summarizes the roots of this way of looking at cities as contexts for human life, and implications for city planning and urban design.This fascinating book introduces the reader to many real people struggling with the dismaying impacts of social isolation caused by suburban sprawl. It draws on the “insights of philosophers, psychologists, brain scientists, and happiness economists”, to explain the problems people face; and it introduces the reader to many of the great leaders in the field – mayors, architects, urban designers, and transportation planners who are working to solve this vast problem. And above all, he asks “Who is the city for?”Montgomery’s own journey began when he met Bogotá’s visionary Mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who in 2000 began to transform his troubled city into a happy city, and who has continued to inspire mayors and planners the world over. On the journey we encounter urban space planner Jan Gehl, Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, political scientist Robert Putnam, neuroeconomist Paul Zak, transportation planners Lawrence Frank and Jeffrey Tumlin, psychology professor Robert Thayer, the Project for Public Space’s Fred Kent, and a host of others.Montgomery examines the guiding principles of Modern architecture and planning, and the problems of zoning codes that led to suburban sprawl. He reviews the social implications of density and high-rise, and effects of urban design on conviviality, and arrives at the same conclusion as urbanist, Patrick Condon, that in American cities it was the streetcar suburb that provided the best scale for happy living – “almost everything you needed was a five-minute walk or a brief streetcar ride away.” It is gratifying that these concerns are attracting such broad attention. In 1982, my late husband, Henry L. Lennard, a social psychologist and medical sociologist and I formed an organization called the Center for Urban Well-Being. Henry was a world-renowned expert on social interaction. In an earlier book, he had written: “Human beings are characterized by their strivings for, and dependence upon interaction with other human beings. Such interaction is an end in itself, and interactional deprivation leads to anguish, loneliness, and depression. Interaction defines the humanness of the self.”قمنا بتشكيل منظمتنا (في وقت لاحق أعيدت تسميته "الدولية مما يجعل المدن ملائمة للعيش"-إيمكل) لفت انتباه المسؤولين المنتخبين وصنع مدينة المهنيين على الضرورة المطلقة لفهم تأثيرات التصميم الحضري والتخطيط القرارات كان على نوعية حياة المواطنين اليومية، وتوضيح كيفية إنشاء البيئات الحضرية التي تساعد على تطوير التفاعل الاجتماعي والمجتمع. وكما أكدنا في كتابنا الأول معا، والحياة العامة في "الأماكن الحضرية"، "سكان المدن في كل مكان يبدو أن هف
Being translated, please wait..
