@deekinstow We're more than a week into August, so you know what that means? It's time to start book club.
Follow this thread if you want to join in the conversation.
This month, we're reading Happy City
@deekinstow Let's start at the beginning -- chapter 1. We're talking about happiness and the city.
Specifically, with this idea from Christopher Alexander et. al. that our surroundings are just as responsible for our wellbeing as our internal lives.
Does that ring true to you?
@deekinstow No one is a bigger champion of this idea than @EnriquePenalosa -- urbanist darling and the (twice) former mayor of Bogota.
Peñalosa is so special because he truly believed the design of a city could improve the happiness of those who lived there.
@deekinstow@EnriquePenalosa When it came to Bogota, Peñalosa believed the city had been screwed over. First, from being reoriented around cars - which most citizens couldn't afford (sound familiar?)
Secondly, from the privatisation of public places - leaving no places for residents to walk, play, or linger
@deekinstow@EnriquePenalosa So Peñalosa chucked out the city's plan to build a load of highways and instead invested in cycle lanes, parks, rapid transit and pedestrian plazas instead. One day a year, private cars were banned from the city.
Now, it looks like this
@deekinstow@EnriquePenalosa Peñalosa's philosophy was this one. He knew we couldn't have our cake and eat it too. We had to make a choice. Cities for cars, or cities for people -- which was it going to be?
We know which we'd go for, how about you?
@deekinstow@EnriquePenalosa At the end of Chapter 1 we're left with a question -- what does a happy city look like to you?
Join the conversation by replying below. ⬇️⬇️⬇️
(Don't worry, we're a lazy book club, you can join the conversation even if you haven't read the book).
And it turns out the Beatles were right -- money can't by happiness.
Income matters, of course, but it's not the whole park of the story...
@deekinstow@EnriquePenalosa If you live in a poor country then getting richer does go hand in hand with feeling happier.
But if you live in a wealthy country, like the UK, then every dollar you earn beyond the average income mark gives less and less satisfaction.
@deekinstow@EnriquePenalosa So if it's not money, what is it? Surprise, surprise -- location as a lot to do with our happiness.
Odds are -- if you live in a small town or by the sea you're likely to be happier with your life than those who live by a garbage dump or under a flight path.
@deekinstow@EnriquePenalosa But if small towns and the seaside will make us happier, then why are we all living in South London?
It's because happiness isn't all about hedonism. It's also about reaching your full potential, meeting a challenge and overcoming it.
@deekinstow@EnriquePenalosa The ideal happiness state is what scientists call "challenged thriving" where a meaningful, connected life is mixed in with a little bit of heroic struggle.
Struggle like overcoming the grit, noise, chaos and expense of a big city like London.
@deekinstow@EnriquePenalosa And overcoming this struggle is a shared venture. In this chapter, Montgomery challenges us all to remember that the city is a shared good -- one where we create a common good that we could not build alone.
@deekinstow@EnriquePenalosa In the end of this chapter, Montgomery outlines a seven step goal for what a city should try to accomplish after it has successfully catered for the needs of food, shelter and security.
5. It should be fair in the way it apportions space, services, mobility, joys, hardships and costs.
@deekinstow@EnriquePenalosa 6. Most of all, it should enable us to build and strengthen the bonds between friends, families and strangers that give meaning, bonds that represent the city's greatest achievement and opportunity.
@deekinstow@EnriquePenalosa 7. The city that acknowledges and celebrates our common fate, that opens doors to empathy and cooperation, will help us tackle the great challenges of this century.
QUESTION: "I'm a progressive councillor who wants to support the shift from private cars to a healthy city, what parking policy should I be pushing for?"
This THREAD tries to answer in three parts:
- WHY the need to change
- WHAT to change to
- HOW to help achieve it as a cllr
WHY: Firstly, let's be clear that cut-price parking is a subsidy. If a petrostate charges $1/L for fuel where market rate is $20/L, it's a subsidy of $19/L.
Market rate for a Lambeth parking space is £1200ish per year. The council charges £300, so the subsidy is £900pa per car
LTNs you either love 'em or you hate 'em (for the record, we love them).
But what if one of the reasons you'd been convinced to hate them, turned out not to be true?
Here's a THREAD on new research on LTNs and inequality.
Before we begin, there are a few folks we should introduce.
First up is @RachelAldred -- genius and all round goddess of active travel. She's the Director of the prestigious @Active_ATA.
@RachelAldred@Active_ATA Then there's @ersilia_v -- she's also a part of the wonderful ATA -- focussing on issues of equity and health in transport. She is, put simply, *literally* an expert on equality and transport schemes
If you’ve been paying even slight attention to the debate around low traffic neighbourhoods, you’ll probably have heard something about the argument of traffic on main and residential roads.
This THREAD explains what this means in the contexts of LTNs.
Those in favour of low traffic neighbourhood schemes point out that, over the past 10 years traffic on main roads (A or B roads) has decreased, whereas traffic on residential roads has gone up 70%
They say that this is a result of apps like Google Maps disrupting the ways the roads were designed to be used.
Technology has displaced traffic and the first step in taking control is putting it back on the roads that were designed to handle it. thetimes.co.uk/article/sat-na…
THREAD: These days it's all the rage to talk about getting people out of their cars and onto the street to walk and cycle to their chosen destination.
That conversation is important, but it's also important to understand our baseline.
Luckily, folks (🤓) have found the data...
Let's start with walking.
On average, a person in the UK spends 4250 minutes a year walking.
Don't worry, we did the math (🤓) -- that's almost three full days of their lives!
And if you're a woman between the ages of 30-50 then odds are you walk even more than that. This cohort of our population take the most walks out of all of us.