Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery

For our next meetup, we'll be discussing Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery.

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Charles Montgomery, an urban planner, traveled the world’s cities in search of a relation between human happiness and the urban landscape. From Vancouver, Hong Kong, Paris, New York, Copenhagen, to as far south as Bogota, Colombia's capital, where the most radical of the “Happy City” experiment is taking place, a global revolution is churning - redefining who the city is for and how we share it.

Understanding that a city's urban planning (its systems and forms) is tantamount to emotional infrastructure can change the way we design. It has the ability to shift power, change attitudes, and even create culture. It can facilitate freedom and trust or generate oppression and anxiety. It can make a city sustainable, resilient, and elastic as it responds to changes to the global economy and market trends.

As Designers, recognizing that good design is universal and studying other fields years ahead of our own can give us incredible insight in our own work. If Bogota, a city of 7 million, with one of the world’s highest in crime, violence, drugs, inequality, and corruption can be transformed to increase happiness, what is possible if we change the “urban landscape” of an an app with one-hundred million users?

Preview: TED Talks The Happy City Experiment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=256&v=7WiQUzOnA5w

You can find copies of the book at VPL, on Amazon, or Chapters Indigo: https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/happy-city-transforming-our-lives/9780385669146-item.html?ikwid=happy+city&ikwsec=Home&ikwidx=0

Please come prepared to discuss the book. This isn't a presentation, but rather a discussion about the book and how we can use it to improve our work as Designers/UXers. Please only RSVP if you intend on reading the book and attending the event. All backgrounds and levels of experience in the industry are welcome - it's great to have people with varied interests and experience.

We're very grateful to IGG for providing the space, as well as pizza and beer for this event!

A preview of IGG's space and view:

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