The question posed to us by a selected review on the front cover of Happy City is "Do we live in neighbourhoods that make us happy?”. 

But this isn't a book about living in an environment where you are well-watered, fed or housed. And it's certainly not about complaining that your area is too chilly, or even too hilly. 

No, Happy City instead takes you on an eye-opening journey through the last century of urban design, and it’s effect on human beings, which will leave you wandering around your own neighborhood viewing it through a new lens. 

Be warned, this is both a blessing and a curse (we are now forever frustrated at having to wait for un-pedestrian-friendly traffic lights delaying us). Was our previous ignorance bliss? Perhaps. But, as Montgomery shows, unlocking this new vision for our cities future isn't just about happiness - it can help save the planet too. 

And so, without any further ado here are our 5 takeaways from Happy City.

1. The automobile was there to save us from the ills of the urban world…

Soho might be a tourist hotspot now. But this street was once disease-ridden and spurned by Victorian society!

While the centres of many modern cities are becoming increasingly desired, the Victorians saw inner city living as something to be avoided at all costs. Full of disease, pollution and moral decay, cities were not entities which enhanced culture, but instead “threatened to destroy society itself”. Indeed, Soho in the centre of London might now be a tourist trendy tourist hotspot, but less than 400 yards from our Soho cycle parking Hub is a water pump where John Snow discovered that chlorea was a water-borne disease.

So, what was the Victorian solution to escape the threat of the out-of-control-city? Firstly, it was thought that separating the city into distinct grids for work, pleasure and housing would allow a (richer) segment of the population to access the functions of the city they needed, whilst avoiding the less sightly elements of city living.

Secondly, freedom from the perils of the city was solved by speed. Simply put,the quicker you could escape the city, the freer you were. Luckily for the upper class Victorians of the day, the car appeared, and was the right technology at the right time to provide the speed needed for an escape from urbanism.

2. Instead, mass automobile ownership has created problems all of its own

Everyday, cities around the world go through the same ritual: the traffic jam. 

However, fast forward to the modern day, and while the car might have been useful for the small element of Victorian society that could afford it, mass car ownership has created a whole new set of problems.

Montgomery spends a great deal of the early part of the book making you question exactly why American suburbia is a good thing. Does a world where you need a car for every trip create freedom for you, your pre-car children, or your post-car aging parents? Is a daily long drive that leaves you with higher blood pressure, more headaches and an increased financial burden worth spending years of your life doing?

While he focuses somewhat on extreme scenarios (who on earth would be happy driving a two hour commute to work – a total of 20 hours a week sitting in the car in traffic!), many of his points still hit home. One of the most eye-catching is that exchanging a long commute for a 20 minute walk to work has the same effect on happiness as finding new love. Or that, if the person you sit by in the office walks to work, and you commute for an hour, you'd have to earn 40% more than them to match their happiness. 

Now, as pants as that sounds, we took some solace in that many of his arguments could be dismissed as problems for the sprawling cities of North America, rather than here in Northern Europe. But as we read through the book, we saw increasing examples of the effects of car-centric design Montgomery mentions on our own commutes. Drivers will drive as a fast as road design tells them, which means that “drivers kill four times as many pedestrians on spacious suburban residential streets than on the narrow streets of traditional neighborhoods”. You only have to commute home on newly but wider roads located in the outskirts of a city to experience a couple of close passes before that point makes sense.

There's a reason nobody's dream cycling commute involves a busy road. 

So, now that Montgomery has armed us with the knowledge that designing cities around cars, not people, makes us unhappy – the question is “why would we design cities like this?”. One answer might be that the age of the car is directly tied to one of unprecedented GDP growth. But is designing our environments to maximise GDP, not happiness logical? Or true?...

3. The Happy City is not one governed by the desire of GDP…

Safe, efficient and fun; Bogotá' is an example of a city which choose a different path. 

Happy City opens with the evocative, infamous tale of Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who inspired his citizens not to aspire for American style wealth – something that typically displayed through automobile ownership – but instead reject that paradigm and aspire for other riches.

We won’t spoil the full story for you here (although it’s certainly worth checking out), but Bogotá's subsequent focus on prioritising public transport infrastructure, building green spaces and reducing the tyranny of the car should provide inspiration for many others around the world.

Peñalosa’s track record also poses a deeper philosophical question that many Western cities are only just beginning to grapple with. While the city of suburbia has been the prime unit of economic activity in the 20th century, is this model sustainable and frankly, is it worthwhile continuing if the model makes its citizens unhappy? We aren’t subjective wellbeing experts, but Montgomery tackles this debate early in the book and it’s one that is continuously returned too.

Of course, whether our cities are built for people, or cars, or for happiness, or GDP, is irrelevant if the city is not fit for our environment.

4. … But the happy city is a green city

Parks, offices and housing in one zone - the Victorians didn't plan for this, but we should.

It’s around 100 pages into Happy City that Montgomery finally unleashes the books manifesto. His book is not only about designing a city which is human centric – it’s communicating that the human centric city will also be one that is an environmentally friendly city.

This point is somewhat obvious. We evolved not alongside nature, but within nature, and therefore nature is hardwired into our long-term happiness. That doesn’t just mean creating parks. That means allowing untamed nature and freedom, true freedom.

The concept of hedonistic sustainability is further outlined later on in the book. As an example, Bogotá received many environmental accolades for its initiatives. But improving bicycle routes, parks, and adding widely popular car free days were not environmental initiatives. Indeed, “the green city, the low-carbon city and happy city might be the same destination”.

Why is this all important? Montgomery’s assessment is that if we are to change individuals enough to escape the climate emergency, guilt tripping won’t be enough. Instead, the onus is on us to create an aspirational world in which our future behaviors will not only generate less emissions, but make us happier than we currently are.

We need to create cities of hedonism, fun and freedom. Which, incidentally, is exactly how moving around on a bike makes us feel.

5. This will be a challenge for America

"Need a lift?". Redesigning a half century of one-size-fits-all design will be a challenge. 

This all sounds simple enough in principle, but how will it work in practice? As the home of the automobile explosion, Montgomery naturally focuses a lot on the experience of the United States throughout the journey he takes us on.

The U.S was not always so pro-automobile. Montgomery notes that in the 1920s, cars were “feared and despised by the majority of urbanites”, and that citizens of all classes initially banded together to protect the freedom of the shared street. However, the car lobby – or Motordom as it was known – invested heavily in changing first hearts, minds and culture, before changing physical infrastructure itself.

Before long, the land of the free had created laws (such as jaywalking) which made it illegal for pedestrians to cross the street, less than stop the automobile from moving at it’s desired speed.

How deep was Motordom’s penetration into the American statute book? Montgomery frequently returns to this topic, with a section devoted to the very coding of the zonal laws that dictate how, and where, types of housing can be built within the U.S. Almost a century after the automobile burst onto the scene, it changed the fabric of U.S. cities design – and stopped potential alternative visions of cities from being created.

Of course, there’s some promising green shoots where these restrictive codes have been replaced, but this ultimately shows the challenge that lies ahead.

Conclusion

Who doesn't want to see more of these?

However, the book finishes on a positive note. There are some small scale, easy to implement things you can do right now to help reduce the epidemic of loneliness in our neighborhoods, such as opening a book exchange, adding green space to your front garden and building networks with others in your local community. Or perhaps a guerrilla sidewalk?

Ultimately, Happy City is an accessible book that should help many open their eyes to the car-centric design of our cities over the last century or so. And if that helps some of other make our neighbourhoods a little happier, well, that has to be worth a read. Even if you'll never look at that traffic light in the same way.