Charles Montgomery (1)Critiques

This book takes you through the history of how urban design got so bad and strategies for how to turn things around, which would lead to both happier citizens and lower carbon impact.

A mind blowing book, full of logical conclusions that are both incredibly insightful, and incredibly obvious. Most of them boil down to the fact that a city based around cars is terrible and makes everyone miserable, and a city based around walkability and public transit benefits everyone's happiness and well being. To me, these are super obvious takeaways, but there was still a ton of value to the book.

It did make me realize that I think I'm missing a lot of life in a traditional suburban neighborhood, and I'm craving to live somewhere a bit more dense and walkable, even at the expense of lot size and privacy.

It also made me realize that I am fascinated by urban planning type policy decisions. I definitely want to read more books on the topic.

Excellent book with a hopeful attitude...about time! Well written and a fast read.

As someone who lives and works in a urban environment, I found this book fascinating. I have many friends involved in projects that address urban design, transportation, and city improvement, and this is a great introduction to the various trends and developments in the field.

It was close, but a few strong concluding chapters pulls this up to a 4. I'm not sure how much I buy into the general conceit of "happiness" as the guiding principle for urban design, even if the result of such happens to align pretty well with what should be standard planning. But it's undeniable that the toll we've wrought on our cities and towns by designing them for people and not cars has been catastrophic.

In many respects, reading this book was like listening to a sermon as a choir member, but that doesn't make it wrong. And where Montgomery is at his best is actually towards the end, where he begins to offer concrete suggestions for taking back our cities from a half-century of sprawl. It remains faint, but there might be a slight glimmer of hope for the way Americans live in the future. More accurately, this is presented as a matter of choice: while there is certainly a large swath of the population might choose single-family, detached-home suburbia, another portion is forced into such neighborhoods due to a critical lack of supply. It will be an uphill battle, but making it easier to live within walking distance of shops (and restoring mixed-use and adopting a form-based code etc. etc.) will go a long ways towards reshaping the ways we can choose to live, and for the better.

DUBLIN Office - shelved at: 05 : Urban design

Stay tuned for a full review. Thought provoking for sure, well written and thoroughly enjoyable and useful...

This book could easily have been a 5-star work, but it occasionally stumbles or loses focus. The title, for instance. I have a hard time imagining the persons who need to read this book the most, doing so, based on the title. Those folks aren't looking for "happy" cities. This isn't Disneyland. They're looking for fast, congestion-free commuting. There's nothing wrong with single-occupancy car driving that having everyone else take the bus or stay at home wouldn't cure. Or better yet, the ability to walk just a few steps to everything we need on a daily basis. As the author, himself, says, "In other words, we would like to have our cake and eat it, too, the ideal world being one in which we reap the benefits of OTHER PEOPLE choosing to live in apartments and town houses nearby, but not close enough to disturb our sleep [in our single family homes.]" The author does do an excellent job of providing ample and significant data plus colorful and insightful anecdotes to explain why modern cities tend to be the way they are, why that is often a problem for the cities' inhabitants, and concrete steps that could be taken to solve those same problems. However, he missteps to various degrees in areas, such as what seems an unfounded bias specifically against bus transportation, beyond the obvious. He recognizes that implementing solutions is often a tedious, thankless, and frequently unsuccessful endeavor, but, knowing how government works, as I do, I seldom see him show much appreciation for the level of negative reaction to the change he advocates, for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with rational thought. Perhaps, it is because the author is Canadian and not American. I've watched enough Canadian news media to know Canada has its own political squabbles and shenanigans, but I doubt they match the current America temperament for taking an opposing position for no other reason than that someone else who is not just like us in race, religion, and other demographic characteristics proposed it. In short, many folks will never read this book who should, but, fortunately, those who will read it, will find many ideas and much encouragement to implement them. Good luck to them.

I wish I could force everyone to read this book. Those of us interested in urbanism have been schooled in the benefits of shaping our cities to a scale suited for humans rather than designing them to facilitate motorized traffic. Human-scaled cities, in which the tyranny of cars is minimized so that residents feel comfortable navigating public space, can reduce pollution, improve health, and save money. In Happy City, Canadian writer Charles Montgomery focuses on another benefit that is often overlooked: good urban design can make us happier.

Drawing on the findings of psychologists and sociologists as well as designers, architects, planners and philosophers, Montgomery considers both the large and small elements of design contributing to well-being. That happiness is increased when the view out the window is a lovely body of water rather than a cement wall will come as no surprise. But quite likely, very few people are aware that the arrangement of windows and doors in buildings will impact their comfort and enjoyment when walking by at street level, or that the height and layout of living spaces can influence residents' relationships with each other.

As in most books and articles touching on the movement known as New Urbanism, suburbia does not get much love in Happy City. However, Montgomery refrains from vilifying sprawl. He notes that some people enjoy suburban living and he does not condemn that preference. The family with the one-acre lot on a cul de sac in Rockville is just as entitled to their happiness as are the apartment denizens of Dupont Circle (my example). However, as other writers have argued, Montgomery agrees that urban dwellers should not be subsidizing the inefficiencies of sprawl, and the gap between supply and demand of housing in walkable communities needs to be reduced so that this choice is available to more who want it.

Montgomery travels the world to highlight places where human-scaled design interventions have met with utilitarian success such as Bogota, Vancouver, Portland, London, and, of course, Copenhagen [note to self: must stop googling Danish immigration policies]. Ultimately, this is a call for citizen activism (with a supporting website), to inspire neighbors and "citadins" that the road to happiness is more easily walked together.

A book briefly exploring what makes us happy and then shows how our cities as presently configured, particularly in the dispersed city, does not foster happiness. Plans and examples of how the city can be made happier make up the second half of the book. It is good and further supports the prescriptions of Jane Jacobs and her followers.

Following in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, a missionary to the Melanesian islands, Montgomery embarks on his own journey of discovery. In an attempt to find the deep faith of his ancestor, he treks to remote villages of indigenous peoples to witness their secret ceremonies, black magic, totems and superstitions. The lines between myth and miracle become blurred as Montgomery learns to define his own beliefs.

I read this book as part of the First Look program of Harper Collins. I cannot begin to even express how very very good it is; it is nonfiction, travel but not yet travel, and incorporates history, mythology, religion, spirituality, anthropology and an insight gleaned from the author that is truly unbelievable.

Inspired by his find of an envelope of sand in the library at Oxford, the author, Charles Montgomery decides that he will follow the route taken in 1892 by his great-grandfather, Henry Montgomery, and Anglican missionary and bishop. Henry had gone on the mission ship Southern Cross with the mission of bringing "the One True God to the heathens of the Melanesian archipelago". Charles Montgomery's tracing of his ancestor's footsteps is only part of the journey, though. It's what he finds along the way that comprises the meat of this story.

In a nutshell: the first missionaries reported back that the inhabitants of the Melanesian island chain practiced cannibalism, headhunting, magic, and had a lust for blood. The Melanesians also had literally thousands of spirits inhabiting the islands, and if someone knew the right techniques, then it was possible to "harness the power of curses, magic cures and helpful spirits." (12) But as Christianity began to move into the islands and the writings of the missionaries began to tout their successes, these gods and spirits, as noted by the author, "receded into the shadow of the new god..." (13) The author sets out in his grandfather's shadow to find where these spirits had gone and to find any vestiges of "heathens," and to discover the old knowledge from "someone very old and wise." (17) What he expects to find and what he finds make up the very heart and soul of this story.

It is an incredible journey; I was literally mesmerized from cover to cover. I highly recommend this book. My only critique is that it needs pictures! This would have more fully fleshed out the author's adventures. Maybe there are no pictures because it's an ARC. Please do NOT miss this book.