Charles Montgomery is about to launch his new book “Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design.” Here’s a related event.
The Happy City Machine: A public design laboratory
Come experience a laboratory full of art and design created specifically to make you feel good.
Date: November 23, 2013
Time: 1:00pm-4:00pm
Location: Museum of Vancouver
What is the link between human happiness and design? Can art and design make us kinder? Can we design more trust or altruism into the city?
This fall, the Museum of Vancouver challenged students from CityStudio, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Kwantlen Polytechnic University and SFUs School of Interactive Art and Technology to create experiments and designs to test or boost feelings of trust and connection among total strangers.
Come experience their creations for one day only at the Happy City Machine design laboratory! Test imaginative designs, installations and social experiments that reveal new insights about ourselves and the city around us. Willing participants will have their responses measured by neuroscientist Dr. Colin Ellard. Then, after an afternoon of experiments and fun, we will share what weve learned.
Admission: With regular admission. Includes access to Play House: the architecture of Daniel Evan White
MOV Members free | Free for participating student designers and partner institution faculty.
Space is limited. Order tickets via Eventbrite.
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While this is not the book launch itself, “Happy City” is starting to generate buzz. Ken Hardie, for instance, is hoping people will pick up on the this excerpt in Salon: Wal-Mart: An economic cancer on our cities.
Those who saw a similar critique by Charles Marohn at the recent City Program lecture will appreciate the conclusion:
By investing in downtowns rather than dispersal, cities can boost jobs and local tax revenues while spending less on far-flung infrastructure and services. In Asheville, North Carolina (above), Public Interest Projects found that a six- story mixed-use building produced more than thirteen times the tax revenue and twelve times the jobs per acre of land than the Walmart on the edge of town. …
By paying attention to the relationship between land, distance, scale, and cash flow—in other words, by building more connected, complex places—the city regained its soul and its good health.
