Are you a happy city hero?

Can we use our cities to boost happiness? Ten years ago, this question led me on a search for answers in cities around the world — and in the minds of scientists, designers and city-builders. I learned that the answer is an emphatic“Yes!”

Yes, our cities influence the way we feel.

Yes, our cities influence the ways we move.

Yes, our cities influence how we treat other people — in ways most of us never imagine.

The book, Happy City, has made its way to many countries, cultures and city-builders around the world.

In the book, Happy City, I described how unhappy cities ravage social relations, shorten people’s lives, and harden the divisions between rich and poor. But I also explored the tremendous life-giving potential of happier urban forms and systems.

My hope was that the people who build our cities would read the book and change their ways. I didn’t expect them to ask for my help.

But they did. The requests came from mayors, health departments and transportation engineers. They came from architects, activists and regular citizens. I also got emotional calls from property developers, those entrepreneurs who take big risks and sometimes make big profits creating the places that shape our lives.

These people all cared deeply about their cities. They all wanted to build better places. But they needed more than a book: if they really wanted to turn ideas into action, they needed a team of wellbeing specialists.

So Happy City (now Happy Cities), the urban design and planning consultancy, was born. We’ve come together as an interdisciplinary crew of designers, planners, architects, communicators and wellbeing nerds. Our mission: to make cities happier, healthier and more inclusive.

Fixing cities together

Cities all over the world are failing on happiness. Commuters are stuck in gruelling traffic. Neighbourhoods are bland and unfriendly. Children have lost the freedom to leave their homes and explore. Too many people are dying early due to pollution, inactivity and car crashes. Too many people feel lonely, isolated and disconnected from each other. Too many people have been totally excluded from the rich opportunities that should come with city life. And troubling trends are showing up in urban data — such as the fact that black Americans are more likely to get hit by cars, or the way that so-called “vasectomy zoning” excludes children from cities.

The problem is not that the designers and policymakers who shape our cities don’t care about people’s happiness. They do. The issue is that most of them just don’t have access to the evidence that links design and planning to wellbeing. They need this evidence to convince decision-makers to fund and support good design. They need it to educate the public on how smarter urban design can make their lives better.

They also need it for themselves: they need tools that translate the evidence into better design. Not many know, for example, that shallow front yards actually boost neighbourliness, or that narrower roads can be safer and more efficient at the same time.

The problem is not that the designers and policymakers who shape our cities don’t care about people’s happiness. They do. The issue is that most of them just don’t have access to the evidence that links design and planning to wellbeing.

The truth is, the science can be hard to understand, and hard to find. Much of the research sits in underread academic papers that are gathering dust on library shelves—like this fascinating paper showing that air pollution has the same effect on happiness as divorce or widowhood.

This is where Happy City comes in. We help city builders and urban advocates understand the evidence on urban wellbeing. We help them translate this evidence into pragmatic policies and strategies. And we work with them to design places, neighbourhoods, communities and systems that maximize health, happiness and social inclusion — while simultaneously reducing their environmental footprint.

In short, we help city builders become happy city heroes.

Happy City heroes

A new generation of city builders has risen to this challenge.

With our help, British Land, the UK’s biggest property developer, launched a wellbeing strategy that has made them global leaders in the design and management of healthy, happy places. You can see the results in Paddington Central, where a glum thoroughfare has been transformed into a nature-infused oasis where people actually connect.

Paddington Central has been transformed to foster happiness, health and inclusion.

We worked with the government of the United Arab Emirates to create a national strategy for building happier, healthier communities.

We partnered with the Denver Arts District on innovative research that showed the relationship between people’s commute mode and their level of generosity.

Out of many insights, this fun experiment in Denver found that cyclists were more likely to be generous than commuters of other modes.

Working with a collaborative team and the Government of Canada, we helped create a new plan to ensure that Granville Island, one of the worlds greatest public spaces, continues to nurture social wellbeing.

Along the way, we’ve realized that we can’t build happy cities without also understanding how to build happy buildings. So now the architects on our team help developers boost social relationships in multi-unit housing.

Tomo House, a co-housing ‘lite’ development in Vancouver. (Image courtesy TOMO Spaces/MA+HG Architects).

Tools for change

The planners, developers, designers and civic leaders we have collaborated with on these projects are our happy city heroes. Together we’re creating places that nurture healthy behaviour, draw people together, advance social inclusion and spark moments of joy.

But they’re not the only ones. Every day, thousands of unheralded happy city champions are working to nurture better cities. We’re talking about citizens who show up to public consultations and events. Activists who speak out at council meetings and town halls. And people who work tirelessly with businesses and community organizations to gather support for projects that could transform lives.

Whether you’re already a happy city hero, or just beginning your journey, we want to help you. By sharing knowledge on the design-wellbeing connection, we believe we can empower everyone to join the movement.

Take our Happy Homes Toolkit for example — no really, take it! We created this free online card deck to pair the evidence on social wellbeing in multifamily housing with practical actions that architects, developers and policy makers can use on their own projects.

Now we want to take this knowledge sharing further. Here on Medium we are launching a series of articles that will help you understand the science of urban wellbeing, and how you can harness it to nurture healthier, happier and more inclusive places in your own practice.

Here’s what you can expect:

• An introduction to our urban wellbeing framework

• Guides that link happiness science to urban design, planning and architecture

• Success stories from around the world

We invite you to share this knowledge and help grow the movement for happy cities. And we’d love to hear how you are using it in your own work.

If you need help, let us know. We are always looking for new happy city heroes, folks who are ready to use the power of evidence-based design to foster happiness and health around the world.

Sign up to our mailing list to be the first to know.

Or fire us an email if you need help.

We can’t wait to see how many more happy city heroes are out there in the world.