Curated Book on Urban Design

A close friend lent me the book Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery after a lengthy policy conversation. He told me I needed to read it; he was right. You should read it, too!

Note that Happy City is not written by social scientists so the objective of the book is not to prove or disprove a hypothesis. I loved and recommend Happy City because it is an exercise in out-of-the-box thinking. It is a catalyst for innovative problem-solving. It provides case studies of cities across the world, told as stories, and patched together for a wholistic and human-centered approach to the complex challenges of urban areas. Happy City highlights the successes of Vancouver, Canada, Bogota, Colombia, Siena, Italy, and Paris, France, and it uses history and exceptional scholarship to make arguments about what makes a city great and how to improve the quality of life for all city residents.

“And what are our needs for happiness?... We need to walk, just as birds need to fly. We need to be around other people. We need beauty. We need contact with nature. And most of all, we need not to be excluded. We need to feel some sort of equality." (pg. 6)

Montgomery introduces concepts like challenged thriving (pg. 37), the relationship between happiness, economists, and urban design, unintended negative consequences of urban sprawl (beyond the damage to the environment!), and on page 111 Montgomery references a relevant psychological study at the University of Rochester. 

We spend so much time reading about the challenges of the City of Rochester and perhaps you find yourselves talking about those challenges in your networks. Consider reading Happy City to catalyze more creative thought about what urban transformation could look like.

Consider Happy City for your brain food - it's high quality nutrition for healthy thought! 

Source: Montgomery, C. (2013). Happy city: Transforming our lives through urban design. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.

Interview with Robert Putnam

A friend of ACT Rochester passed along this interview with Robert Putnam and the associated article from The New York Times. (Thanks, Barb!) The interview talks about Putnam’s famed book Bowling Alone, rampant loneliness, and the social circumstances of our society. Dr. Putnam is a political scientist and social capital expert.  

Dr. Putnam is no stranger to our community, as he worked with RACF on a social capital survey in the 1990s. He thinks, talks, and writes a lot about “joining” and its opposite, social isolation. This topic is particularly relevant post-COVID and has many correlations to upward mobility. 

Consider this interview and Robert Putnam’s work as our political landscape lights up preparing for November elections.

2024 Paris Olympics

Is there a better way to CONNECT than as part of Olympics fandom? If we think about ACT Rochester’s 4 Cs - Curate, Communicate, Catalyze, Connect - we could probably tell an Olympics story for each of them. Connect, though, is an important and somewhat underutilized one.

The idea is to connect people to people, people/organizations with data, and people to organizations. This is important because information and resources travels through social networks, and inequities are born from certain networks being excluded. 

We are, admittedly, stretching a bit with this Olympics connection but there is an opportunity for authentic connection. The Olympics provide an easy common denominator - a platform to connect with people and sports that we would otherwise not gravitate toward. 

And honestly, we wanted to highlight the Olympics because witnessing excellence, sportsmanship, and competition is such a special experience. Most of the time we give brainfood here, and the Olympics has been such good heart-food! 

Social Capital

On a community level, we can use social capital to make sure that all social networks are engaged and that none are isolated. In this way, it becomes a key for advancing equity and economic mobility. Consider social networks… which networks are connected to resources, and which are isolated?

If we are intentional about identifying networks and isolated networks, unemployed or underemployed individuals can become connected and are then more likely to find job-training programs, mentors or new opportunities. Families can find quality after-school programs for their children or day programs for their elders or loved ones with special needs.