Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design - Rilegato

Montgomery, Charles

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0385669127 ISBN 13: 9780385669122

Casa editrice: Doubleday Canada, 2013

Riassunto

Charles Montgomery’s Happy City will revolutionize 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 sprawl?

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 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 hacked the design of their own streets and neighborhoods.

Rich with new insights from psychology, neuroscience and Montgomery’s own urban experiments, Happy City reveals how our cities can shape our thoughts as well as our behavior. The message is 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 world--and all of us can help build it. 

Su questo libro

Recensione:

Finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction

"Such an instructive book." —Toronto Star "Montgomery is a talented raconteur. . . . In Happy City, the prose swings when he’s plunging us into the moment."
—National Post

"Montgomery should be praised for both the breadth of his research as well the virtues of most everything he argues."
—The Globe and Mail

"A copy of Charles Montgomery’s Happy City sits on newly elected Toronto mayor John Tory's desk. Here’s hoping he and every major reads it. The book is a builder’s guide to a modern and livable urban environment. . . . [containing] Malcolm Gladwell-worthy data mining."
—John Moore of Moore in the Mornings (via National Post)

“Lively and accessible. . . . In Montgomery’s hands, urban design proves not only exciting, but integral to our future.”
―Publishers Weekly

“Happy City is not only readable but stimulating. It raises issues most of us have avoided for too long. Do we live in neighbourhoods that make us happy? That is not a silly question. Montgomery encourages us to ask it without embarrassment, and to think intelligently about the answer.”
—The New York Times

“A brilliant, entertaining and vital book. Montgomery deftly leads us from our misplaced focus on money, cars and stuff to consider what makes us truly happy. Then everything changes - the way we live, work and play in humanity's major habitat, the city.”
—David Suzuki

“The place we live is key to our happiness. Charles Montgomery helps us understand why and provides a guidebook for living a happier, more fulfilling and meaningful life.” 
—Richard Florida, University of Toronto and NYU professor and author of The Rise of the Creative Class.

“A wonderful book . . . very thought provoking and inspiring.”
—Metro Morning

L'autore:

Charles Montgomery is a journalist and urban experimentalist whose writings on cities, psychology, culture, and history have appeared in magazines and journals around the world. His first book, The Last Heathen, won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction. Among his numerous awards is a Citation of Merit from the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society for outstanding contribution towards public understanding of climate change science. Montgomery was an original team member of the BMW Guggenheim Lab. At the Museum of Vancouver and elsewhere, he creates experiments that help citizens transform their relationships with each other and their cities. He has advised and lectured planners, students, and urban decision-makers across Canada, the USA and England. Find him at www.charlesmontgomery.ca and www.thehappycity.com

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Doubleday Canada
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0385669127
• ISBN 13: 9780385669122
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 368