Happy City Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design [Paperback]

A globe-trotting, eye-opening exploration of how cities canand domake us happier people

Charles Montgomery'sHappy Cityis revolutionizing the way we think about 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 Montgomery finds answers to such questions at the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness, during an exhilarating journey through some of the world's most dynamic cities. He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a sexy bus to ease status anxiety in Bogot?; 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 hacked the design of their own streets and neighborhoods.
Rich with new insights from psychology, neuroscience, and Montgomery's own urban experiments,Happy Cityreveals how cities can shape our thoughts as well as our behavior. The message is ultimately as surprising as it is hopeful: by retrofitting cities and our own lives for happiness, we can tackle the urgent challenges of our age. The happy city can save the worldand we can all help build it.

Charles Montgomeryis an award-winning journalist and the author ofThe Shark God, which won the 2005 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction under its Canadian title,The Last Heathen.

Happy Cityis not only readable but stimulating. It raises issues most of us have avoided for too long. Do we live in neighborhoods that make us happy? That is not a silly question. Montgomery encourages us to ask it withol“‰