Happy City, Charles Montgomery
Happy City, Charles Montgomery
1 Rating(s)
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Happy City
Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

Author: Charles Montgomery

Narrator: Patrick Lawlor

Unabridged: 12 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/08/2015


Synopsis

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 tower dwelling an improvement on the car-dependence of sprawl?

Award-winning journalist Charles Montgomery finds answers to such questions at the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness, and during an exhilarating journey through some of the world's most dynamic cities. He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a "sexy" lipstick-red bus to ease status anxiety in Bogotá; the architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan hill towns to modern-day New York City; the activist who turned Paris's urban freeways into beaches; and an army of American suburbanites who have transformed their lives by hacking the design of their streets and neighborhoods.

Full of rich historical detail and new insights from psychologists and Montgomery's own urban experiments, Happy City is an essential tool for understanding and improving our own communities.

About Charles Montgomery

Charles Montgomery is an award-winning author, urbanist, and leader of transformative experiments, research, and conversations about wellbeing in cities. Collaborating with the Guggenheim Museum, Futurewise, Laboratorio para la Ciudad, and other entities, Charles has created experiments and design methods that help participants alter their relationships with their cities and with each other. His many honors include a Citation of Merit from the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society for outstanding contribution towards the public's understanding of climate change science.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jud on February 14, 2014

When I carry a book's ideas around in my head and, day after day, look at my surroundings through the eyes of those ideas, that's when I have to think that a book has had an impact on me. Such is the case with this book. I didn't zip through it, enthralled, but I engaged it every day--mostly in nibb......more

Goodreads review by Mireille Duval on August 19, 2016

This book delighted me and made me angry at the same time. Delighted at every happy city described - particularly Copenhagen, now I just must visit Denmark and stare at all the Bjarke Ingels buildings forever (or I could just go to New York, I guess, but I did that already!). And of course, angry at......more

Goodreads review by TS on May 20, 2018

As much as I enjoy my non-fiction reads, this was not a topic that I ever thought I'll find myself reading. I was browsing the wonderful bookshops in London, specifically Foyles at Charing Cross when the book's cover design and title caught my attention on one of the themed-display tables. After rea......more

Goodreads review by Brady on April 03, 2025

One of those books that will have you observing the world that has been designed around you in all new ways......more

Goodreads review by Res on February 14, 2024

My feelings about this were energetic but not always positive. I think I’d rather use the table of contents to guide a good conversation with a smart person. Premises that I like and find interesting: Low-density single-use car-oriented city planning is bad for us in a variety of ways. Physical healt......more