A book by Charles Montgomery about how some people are happier in cities than others. A lot of it boils down to what seems like common sense now and generally goes against what the general knowledge of cities were after WW2 and about 2015 when this book was published. This is slowly changing in modern times with planners more focusing on higher density and better public transport
There’s a few central ideas that are throughout the book but generally it can be summarised as suburban low-density car-dependent neighbourhoods are bad for our health and the environment. The book focuses more on the human impact than the environmental one.
However ultra-high density is not something to aim for either. In-between neighbourhoods or what is now known as a 15-minute city. He tells how someone who used to live in a luxury high-rise Vancouver apartment with magnificent views is now much happier that they moved to a terraced home just below the apartment tower they previously lived. The change in happiness could be traced back to the sense of community amongst neighbours.
Car dependence
Although it is not a widely held belief nowadays there is increasing evidence that our car dependence was a bad thing. Cities that are overly dependent on cars produce unhappier unhealthier people in almost every way. Those people often need to commute far longer which means they have less time to spend with their families and this results in weaker family ties. To do anything means driving long distances which in itself is bad for multiple reasons. Overall the community ties are worse off in the end. The dependence of our societies on cars took decades to take hold and started in the early days of the automobile. Before this city streets had many users like streetcars, pedestrians and the occasional horse drawn carriage but the advent of the automobile caused that to shift. In the name of safety streets were redesigned to ensure everyone was segregated and in the name of speed automobiles were given the most space.
Thoughts
If you care about your built environment then this can be a frustrating book at times. You know things can be much better in your local area but they are not due to a lot of reasons. When I walk around the streets around where I live I pick out countless things that could be improved for those not in cars. Even for those in cars the city is awful, consistently ranking amongst the worst in Europe for congestion. Life could be so much better if we prioritised other modes of transport the same way we did for cars.
The realisation that a technology that was once hailed as a saviour of everything has quietly and stealthily transformed a lot of things for the worse at least where cities are concerned makes me think what modern day technologies will be looked back on with a similar regard. Phones and social media seem like an obvious candidate with our attention spans and in person interactions being deeply affected. There’s probably a lot of other things that we do nowadays that will be looked back on and questioned why did they pick that way.
The fact that cars became so big does lead to the question as to why. It seems to have been a mixture of cars offering a superior experience over the alternative and of rewards being shifted to favour cars. This is at the start at least, right now the experience driving a car has become so much worse but the alternatives have often become worse to a similar degree. Most cities have torn up their streetcar lines and the busses that have replaced them are often a mixture of unreliable and infrequent.
Overall the book is good if you have any interest in how your urban environment is and does impact where you might consider a good place to buy a home. Even if you have no interest, it is a good primer to why you should care about the area you live.