I spent the week mostly reading Happy City, which I felt was a really good introduction to the topic that I’m working with. I learned a lot of interesting information about how much urban design is connected with people’s happiness and wellbeing. The book put a huge emphasis on the importance of public space, and how creating easily accessible good spaces can have a tremendous effect on people’s lives. These effects range from people being fitter from walking more to having better mental health from building strong communities through public space. Before, I was mostly focused on isolated elements that I can include in my project, but now I am thinking about how can these elements be combined to bring people together.
Katherine, when you think about public spaces that increase your happiness/well being what are some of the design elements that contribute to this? Do you have any sense that the impact of these particular elements are unique to you or rather do they seem to have some generalizable qualities that make them impactful for many people? If their appeal is broader, how might we capture/identify the underlying qualities that this design is appealing to? What do these elements ultimately say about us? Do you think that happiness/well being is a fundamental force in driving most of the design of our public spaces? What are the other needs that may push happiness/ well being to the side?