Archive for Happiness
September 15, 2009 · Filed under Active Transportation, Cities from Scratch, Creative Cities, Fiction, Happiness
There’s an old joke that you know you’re in heaven if the cooks are Italian and the engineering is German. If it’s the other way around you’re in hell. In an attempt to conjure up a perfect city, I imagine a place that is a mash-up of the best qualities of a host of cities. The permutations are endless. Maybe I’d take the nightlife of New York in a setting like Sydney’s with bars like those in Barcelona and cuisine from Singapore served in outdoor restaurants like those in Mexico City. Or I could layer the sense of humor in Spain over the civic accommodation and elegance of Kyoto. Of course, it’s not really possible to cherry pick like this—mainly because a city’s qualities cannot thrive out of context. A place’s cuisine and architecture and language are all somehow interwoven. But one can dream.
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Popularity: 21% [?]
July 24, 2009 · Filed under Diversity, Families, Happiness, Infrastructure, Modernism, Place making, Public Life, Urban Structure
But perhaps – and here’s the upside – the city, having evolved through brutal modernism and gluggy postmodernism, is approaching its glorious collaborative apotheosis, where we can have the thrill of speed without its harshness and the buzz of being-there without its smugness.
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Popularity: 39% [?]
July 14, 2009 · Filed under Beauty, Happiness, Nature, Noise, Public Art, Transit
Chirpingbirds, rustling leaves, a burbling brook: not the first sounds that come to mind about the New York City subway.
But starting next year, the city’s subterranean soundtrack — a familiar overture of clanks, screeches, groans and beeps — is poised to add a few noises of a more verdant variety.
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Popularity: 33% [?]
July 14, 2009 · Filed under Creative Cities, Happiness, Health, Social Justice, Social Networks, Urban Actions, Urban Agriculture
Will Allen, a farmer of Bunyonesque proportions, ascended a berm of wood chips and brewer’s mash and gently probed it with a pitchfork. “Look at this,” he said, pleased with the treasure he unearthed. A writhing mass of red worms dangled from his tines. He bent over, raked another section with his fingers and palmed a few beauties.
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Popularity: 29% [?]
July 6, 2009 · Filed under Architecture, Density, Happiness, Pollution, Real Estate
Jayne Michaels, an interior designer who lives on East 57th Street in Manhattan, throws open her windows every chance she gets. “I need light and air in my life,” said Ms. Michaels, who favors gauzy fabrics in pale colors.
But breezes carry dirt, especially in New York, so once every six months Ms. Michaels pays about $400 to have her sofas, chairs, chaises and rugs shampooed.
It’s another price of living in New York: call it the dirt tax.
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Popularity: 19% [?]
July 3, 2009 · Filed under Happiness, Health, Noise, Pollution, Public Life, Urbanization
On numerous visits to Manhattan, I have found myself poking around the city trying to find a moment of quiet and once located a hint of it in Central Park during a windless, late-night snowfall. There I stood absolutely still in the lemon glow of the city, a sky full of snow. The city still roared from all sides, a thousand noises compressed down to just one. I counted that distant, mild roar as quiet, a welcome relief from the more pressing noises of the daytime city.
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Popularity: 33% [?]
July 2, 2009 · Filed under Happiness, Health, Retail, Tourism
After a visit to the bustling Pike Place Market in Seattle, a financial adviser for philanthropist Betty Noyce (the late, ex-wife of the Intel microchip founder) suggested that she fund a new public market in Portland, Maine, in order to revitalize the downtown. Noyce went on to finance the $9.4 million Portland Public Market, which opened in 1999 with 23 food vendors. Over the next seven years, farmers lodged complaints about poor access, the market struggled with a high vendor turnover rate, and two high-end restaurants there failed. In 2006, the market closed, after Noyce’s foundation reported annual losses of about $1 million.
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Popularity: 15% [?]
June 30, 2009 · Filed under Climate Change, EcoCities, Ecosystems, Families, Happiness, Health, Pollution, Revitalization
A while ago, I heard an American scientist address an audience in Oxford, England, about his work on the climate crisis. He was precise, unemotional, rigorous, and impersonal: all strengths of a scientist.
The next day, talking informally to a small group, he pulled out of his wallet a much-loved photo of his thirteen-year-old son. He spoke as carefully as he had before, but this time his voice was sad, worried, and fatherly. His son, he said, had become so frightened about climate change that he was debilitated, depressed, and disturbed. Some might have suggested therapy, Prozac, or baseball for the child. But in this group one voice said gently, “What about the Transition Initiative?”
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Popularity: 29% [?]
June 25, 2009 · Filed under Artificial Landscapes, Cities from Scratch, Creative Cities, Diversity, Families, Happiness, Mixed Use, Play, Visualization
The Lego ‘City Corner’ set happens to be a superb example of sound urban design. Notice first the mixed use development, where people can live and work in the same spot, in this case there is residential use above the pizzeria. Almost every truly vibrant place has a mix of land uses, as opposed to segregated uses where people live in one district, work in another, and shop in yet another, etc.
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Popularity: 54% [?]
June 2, 2009 · Filed under Beauty, Happiness
Where in the world do people feel most content with their lives?
According to a new report released by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), a Paris-based group of 30 countries with democratic governments that provides economic and social statistics and data, happiness levels are highest in northern European countries.
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Popularity: 9% [?]
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