Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

by Charles Montgomery

June 19, 2022 — July 15, 2022

Los Angeles, CA

Recommended by Ashley Atkinson, my mentor, former professor, and one of my biggest supporters and role models. Current Performance Manager of the City of LA, President of APA California, and Vice Chair of the Housing Council of ULI Los Angeles, and the former Director of APA Los Angeles.

The book really emphasizes on urban design more than the other books I’ve read which focus on the planning aspect, it does a great job on highlighting how social interactions, well-being, and economics are all pre-determined by design. In summary, our design should produce cities that strive to maximize joy and minimize hardship, increase health, provide freedom of mobility and accessibility, build resilience against economic and environmental shocks, strengthen our social bonds, and enable empathy and cooperation. Everything is possible with meaningful and sincere design.

While every urban planner and urban designer knows that automobiles (cars specifically) are a liability to urban development; I have never read a book that emphasizes it as much as this book, it’s fair to say that almost a majority of this book is targeting how horrendous cars are to urban health economically, structurally, socially, physically, and culturally. I was conceived from the first 25 examples and arguments against cars, I started getting bored about how repetitive it was for the remaining 25. However, how the book really fascinated me was presenting real-life examples of city and inhabitant transformation through decisions made regarding designs and recoveries or reforms created by redesign. Pages 216 to 226 (Mobilicities) beautifully presented redesigning’s impact on people, it inspired me to the point I began drafting an essay that I’d potentially want to publish as an article regarding how we can design an eco-friendly city that people will actually want to build for themselves and live in, with an ironic comparison to consumers adopting Tesla as the car of their choice.

To summarize, when we design for people and align the physical designs with their psychology then they will be happier.