Books for Brains

I'm currently enjoying a book that's telling me my choice to live in a city periphery is probably not great for my health. In many modern cities and suburbs, interactions have been reduced and privatised - happening less in public spaces or with other people. Online shopping, home entertainment, cars, home based working, even refrigeration all enable us to spend longer alone. Which sucks for mental well-being. The harm of pollution, distance from nature and sedentary behaviour etc are all well known too. 

In the 1960s Copenhagen, pictured above, pedestrianised some streets and transformed the culture. "We're Danes, not Italians, and we're not going to sit around in outdoor cafes drinking cappuccinos in the middle of freezing winter!" people said at the time. Au contraire my friends. I can't imagine a soul who prefers the look of the city as it was in the left image. And as more and more of us are choosing to live in cities, we have to use every trick in the book to make them work better for us. Create more public spaces, use reflective paints to reduce environmental footprint, have green roofs and walls, plant trees, prioritise parks and nature not roads, encourage people to interact with the world rather than close them off from it.  

A PhD student at Kings recently proposed a legislative change banning anti-bacterial soaps from public retail because we even need interaction with germs to maintain good health and natural immunities. But you can walk around a city without touching a door, a light switch, a tap, a natural thing or another person.

It's really interesting how we can improve cities and our experience of living in them through clever design and smart planning decisions - keeping in mind the way you want the end user to feel and go about their day, and the impact of us on the planet.

It's a few years old, but Happy City by Charles Montgomery (where the above quote and image are from) is a powerful reminder of this for engineers and built environment professionals. So for everyone on LinkedIn today looking for a book recommendation No one right?), there one is.