Happy city : transforming our lives through urban design / Charles Montgomery.
Publisher: London : Penguin Books, 2015Copyright date: ©2013Description: 389 pages : illustrations (black and white), maps ; 20 cmContent type: text | still image Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volume001: 020154907ISBN: 9780141047546Subject(s): City planning -- Social aspects | Happiness | City Planning | Urban Health | HappinessDDC classification: 307.1216Item type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
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Book | MAIN LIBRARY Book | 307.1216 MON (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 112257 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Happy City is the story of how the solutions to this century's problems lie in unlocking the secrets to great city living
This is going to be the century of the city. But what actually makes a good city? Why are some cities a joy to live in?
As Charles Montgomery reveals, it's not how much money your neighbours earn, or how pleasant the climate is that makes the most difference. Journeying to dozens of cities - from Atlanta to Bogotá to Vancouver - he talks to the new champions of the happy city to explore the urban innovations already transforming people's lives. He meets the visionary Colombian mayor who turned some of the world's most dangerous roads into an urban cycling haven; the Danish architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan towns to modern-day Copenhagen; and the New York City transport commissioner who turned the gridlock of Times Square into a place to lounge in the sun.
Drawing on the lessons from their stories, from brain science, and from the fascinating realm of urban experimentation, Happy City offers solutions we can all use to improve our livesandshows that simple changes can make all the difference.
'Do we live in neighbourhoods that make us happy? Montgomery encourages us to ask without embarrassment, and to think intelligently about the answer' The New York Times Book Review
'Excellent . . . Montgomery believes in the importance of smart town planning and Happy City is a compendium of its major ideas' Will Dean, Independent
Charles Montgomery is a journalist and urban experimentalist from Vancouver, Canada. His writings on urban planning, psychology, culture, and history have appeared in magazines and journals on three continents. He is the author of one previous book, and was an original member of the BMW Guggenheim Lab.
Originally published: 2013.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Publishers Weekly Review
Can cities make us better people? Is the suburban American Dream really a nightmare? In this lively and accessible book, journalist Montgomery (The Shark God) marshals decades of interdisciplinary research into an effective argument against what he calls the "dispersed city"-the modern city/suburb designed around the automobile. The result is a succession of arguments meant to debunk individualism and show how citizens thrive on contact with others. In Montgomery's hands, urban design proves not only exciting, but integral to our future. He persuasively demonstrates that designing cities with social beings in mind can make them more pleasant places to live, and shows why suburbs are experiencing higher crime, as well as a significant happiness deficit. Furthermore, this passionate jeremiad argues that urban design often reinforces inequality, and Montgomery includes useful prescriptions for creating what he calls "the fair city," as well as addressing issues like gentrification. For Montgomery, the city is a "happiness project" that exists in part to corral our conviviality and channel it productively. Though Montgomery's argument may seem strange at first, the book will likely make you a believer. 68 b&w illus. Agent: Rebecca Gradinger, Fletcher & Co. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.CHOICE Review
Through the combination of neuroscience, behavioral economics, architecture, and the relatively new "science of happiness," Montgomery, a journalist, issues a call to action for how the 21st-century metropolis can reclaim well-being for its citizens. He asserts that the primary decline in quality of life in the urban setting is directly linked to the infrastructure supporting aggressive suburban sprawl and car culture. In fact, the first half of the book focuses on the unhappy city in consideration of social survey data, interdisciplinary case studies, and the author's anecdotal experiences--ranging from "Repo Tours" of foreclosed homes in the exurbs of the Bay Area to participation in the BMW Guggenheim Lab urban space project. But the second half follows up quickly with concrete examples of measures taken in different megacities to improve upon and sustain a healthy, humane civic structure. For professionals or academics in urban planning, architecture, or sustainable design, this book proposes nothing particularly new or groundbreaking. However, Happy City will greatly benefit those new to thinking holistically about the built environment as an entity vulnerable to illness but capable of prosperity and good fortune for its residents. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-level undergraduates; general readers. H. B. Bennett Princeton UniversityBooklist Review
What is considered the happiest city on earth? Improbably, it just might be Bogota, Colombia, where drug lords ruled, bicycles now roll, and pedestrians stroll in a city with a mayor committed to transforming his town's image and its people's lives. What's the secret to his success? Not surprisingly, restricting traffic plays a huge part in Bogota's livability, but banning cars isn't the be-all and end-all to urban bliss. As Montgomery illustrates through vibrant discussions of the physics, physiology, and psychology of urban, suburban, and exurban dwellers, multiple factors must coalesce before a city, large or small, can achieve perfection. All of which may become terribly muddled as climate change and resource depletion stress urban centers to an untenable tipping point. Touting extensive research tempered by anecdotal examples, Montgomery enumerates the mistakes made not only by the people who plan and govern cities but also by the people who live in them, and he offers cautious reassurance that it's not too late to turn things around for all cities.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2010 BooklistKirkus Book Review
Canadian journalist Montgomery (The Shark God: Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in the South Pacific, 2006) explores the many ideas and movements seeking to change the structures and souls of our cities to make them more meaningful, heart-gladdening places. Even the most die-hard urban fans will admit to aspects of city life that grate and stress: the frequent lack of neighborhood conviviality, the hateful commutes, the in-your-face lack of social justice, the absence of trust and security. This could go on and on, for we each have our pet peeves, just as we each could enumerate urban-design elements that would make us happy, considering our "unique set of abilities, weaknesses, and desires": good education, jobs, health; serious engagement with nature and public spaces; comfortable opportunities to socialize; a sense of equality, challenge, civic duty and purpose. Thus, each individual will have a perfect city, but any of the above positives would spark an uptick in our lives. Montgomery's bugbear--and many will share his preoccupation with the issue--is the unbridled sovereignty of the motor vehicle, from inner city to exurbia. The author presents a wide array of urban-design features that ameliorate many of the negatives of city life. He examines various modes of transport other than the automobile and seeks out the ideal population density for a "happy city." He finds and describes hundreds of examples of urban redesign that are not only imaginative and affordable, but inspiring, design elements for the common good that can be done--in fact, that have been done. An elegant charting of the intersection of urban design and the ever-shifting conception and appreciation of happiness.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.There are no comments on this title.