Happy City: Transforming our Lives
through Urban Design (2013)
By Charles Montgomery
Reviewed by Pongpisit Huyakorn
Book review by one of our founders, Pongpisit Huyakorn, featured in the Biannual academic paper of the Faculty of Social Sciences, CMU.
Happy City, Transforming our Lives through Urban Design (2013) By Charles Montgomery
Despite that the review is in Thai, we want to provide everyone with the glimpse of this book, and shorten the essay here.
The review summarised the book by addressing the car-centric urban planning and design as the main contributor to the wicked cycle of the city. It also briefly introduced cases of successful projects that enhanced happiness in the five cities: Bogota, Copenhagen, Paris, Portland and Vancouver. However, these cases are from the West, or developed countries, so they might not be entirely applicable to our region. The takeaway idea from this book might be that "encouraging constructive relationships" for people in the city is the key to design a happy city, so a human-centric urban design should be prioritised!
Enjoy reading!
