Read Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design for Free Online Page A

people feel good or bad.
    That project found its modern-day champion in the Princeton psychology professor Daniel Kahneman, the only noneconomist who has ever won a Nobel Prize in Economics.
    Rather than modeling human decisions and satisfaction through simplified mathematical equations—as economists had done for decades—Kahneman and his colleagues conducted experiments to see what made life pleasant or unpleasant for people in the real world. They called their new science “hedonic psychology.” Much like Bentham, they argued that the best way to judge happiness was to conduct a thorough account of life’s good and bad moments. One of Kahneman’s early studies established a link between happiness and urban life. He asked more than nine hundred working women in Texas to divide the previous day up into episodes, like scenes in a movie, and then to describe everything they did and how they felt at the time. Of all the ways they passed their days, having sex made the women happiest of all, with socializing coming a close second. What made them least happy? Commuting to work.
    A purely hedonic approach to urban happiness would determine how the city affects our mood, then would boost the good stuff and stamp out the bad. Environmental psychology has found plenty of raw material for such a task. Researchers have proved, for example, that we are bothered by snakes, spiders, sharp edges, loud, unpredictable noises, darkness, and dead-end alleys, but we enjoy novelty, soft edges, nice scents, gentle surprises, and pleasant memories.
    There is a place that has sought to deliver these things, in part by blotting out any sign of the discomforts and ugliness of the modern city. If you have kids, chances are they have begged you to take them there. Officially branded “The Happiest Place on Earth” when it opened its gates in 1955, Disneyland was conceived as a pay-per-visit alternative to the freeways and sprawl that were just beginning to dominate Southern California.
    Inside Disneyland, even today, every architectural detail, every view, every transportation experience, every sensation—right down to the texture of the pavement and the scent of the air—was designed with the express purpose of tipping the hedonic scale. Cinderella’s Castle, a reminder of childhood fantasies, marks the center of the perfect universe. A lush garden or forest is always just around the corner. The stomach-churning spins and drops of Space Mountain last just long enough to give riders a shared experience of danger, but not long enough for induced stress hormones to start compromising our immune systems. It’s no accident that every Disneyland visit begins and ends with a walk along Main Street U.S.A., a parade of cartoon-cute shops and unhurried bustle that simulates the perfect small town that films, television, and the Disney entertainment machine itself have imprinted on all our memories. By turning the spigot on those memories, Disneyland can give you the sense that you have come home, no matter where in the world you grew up. It is a lovely feeling for all but the most diligent skeptic.
    If ephemeral pleasures are all there is to happiness, then Disneyland really would be the happiest city on earth. Architects and town planners have copied its forms in shopping centers, downtowns, and neighborhoods around the world. Neuroscientists marvel at the virtuosity of its designs (and I’ll explain some of its successes later in this book). But like Disney’s films, the happiness of Disneyland requires a suspension of disbelief. You must pretend along with cheery shopkeepers and mascots whose job title—“cast member”—belies a contractual obligation to maintain their smiles. You must not ponder the hard work and grit of daily life that are hidden so skillfully behind Main Street U.S.A.’s facades and the berm that separates the park from the sprawl of Southern California. When the street artist Banksy propped an inflatable Guantánamo Bay