Happy City summary

How can you bring people closer together? Here’s an idea: create a space where they can all hang out. That’s what urban planners do when they create common spaces – but not all common spaces are created equal. Traffic and wear and tear can make that public park a lot less fun to visit.

Cars make a lot of noise, which leaves us feeling distracted, unsafe and unwilling to spend time outside. This is enough to keep people from getting in touch with their neighbors. A 1971 study of two San Francisco streets documented the behavior of the people who lived there. In the street with less traffic, each resident had, on average, three local friends and six local acquaintances. Those living in the street with heavy traffic typically only had one local friend and three local acquaintances.

Nature is an essential feature of every urban landscape. Even the smallest natural spaces can help city-dwellers feel better.

Improvised experiments at the BMW Guggenheim Lab in Manhattan captured the way people felt while walking the streets of the Big Apple in a tour group. According to participant reports, they felt most unhappy while passing the bare facade of a public housing project; but, just a little way down the road, there was a restaurant built in almost the same way as the housing project, but with a brown wall on which vines were growing. This small addition of nature led passersby to declare this the happiest spot on the tour.

Cities that make people happy must pull off a special balancing act. They need to be able to bring people closer together – without, of course, bringing them too close, like cities of the nineteenth century did.

Ever lived in a busy, lively city and found yourself craving more and more time alone? You might not be the only one. It’s been suggested that the crowdedness of large cities leads directly to isolation. Social psychologist Stanley Milgram pointed this out when comparing the behavior of people in small towns to that of people in big cities. People in small towns were much more willing than city-dwellers to help strangers, for instance.

There’s a whole host of psychological phenomena that can lead us to make terrible judgments about city planning. Whether you’re picking a new place to live or designing a future city, you should be on the lookout for biases and shoddy plans.

Let’s test this out with a simple question: Would you rather live in California or Ohio? If you’re like most people, you’d pick California hands down. After all, the California we imagine is a world of perfect weather and great surfing. Ohio, on the other hand, just makes us think of bleak winters.

It’s a shame that so few city-dwellers choose travel by bike or on foot. Cars, whether on the street or in parking lots, take up a disproportionate amount of public space. And, as you probably know, driving through a city is hardly ever a relaxing experience.

It makes sense, then, that people who ride a bike to work are happier than those who drive. In a traffic jam, our body releases stress hormones. When these hormones build up over time, they can weaken our blood vessels, bones and immune system – not a great thing to put yourself through before a long day at the office!

In the early 2000s, Enrique Peñalosa, the mayor of Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, made some radical changes to the lives of urban residents. He introduced car-free days, fast bus lanes, better bicycle paths and reduced traffic on central avenues – all of which made the people of Bogotá much happier, especially the less privileged.

The benefits of driving a car are great, but only if you can afford it. For others, cars take up a lot of private and public space. On the other hand, just about anyone can afford a bike or a public transport ticket. Both require a lot less space and also can help boost everyone’s well-being. Enrique Peñalosa knew this when he took public space away from cars and used it to make room for the TransMilenio, a fast bus system that every commuter could benefit from.