The happy city.

Yesterday I went to the Guggenheim Lab to listen to Charles Montgomery (Canadian writer and Guggenheim team member in New York) talk about The happy city.
Nanna and Rose introduced me to the Guggenheim Lab when they started to go to work shops and other lectures there. I was a bit sad that I didn't know about it earlier and that I work, so I can't be there all the time. There are so many things going on that I would have liked to take part of. The Lab is open until the 28th of July.


This week is all about emotions and the city. Read more about the week here and here.
Charles Montgomery talked for an hour about how to design a city that would make people meet more though that be happier, because he means that people that are more equitable are more trusting and he gave many examples in different cities. Like Bogota, where the plan was to pave modern roads for cars, even if only 20% of the people living in Bogota had a car. So instead of making paved roads to for cars, they made paved roads for people walking. The car roads are still bad but there aren't that many cars either so it works out.
Montgomery also talked about living alone and together and how clean or dirty a city is, and how this makes feel in other situations of our life. He talked about the more social time, time with other people we get the less stressed we are.

This lecture went on for an hour, so I will not write about all that he said, but what really stuck to me was he's talk about Oxytocin (his and mine favorite hormone). The easiest to explain oxytocin is that hormone that is send out in our bodies when we hug. Not only when we hug, but also when we're in social situations, when we collaborate and have a connection with other people. When we get more oxytocin, we become more trusting and can handle other things in our lives better, like stress for example.

I think oxytocin is a way to handle things, and sometime long ago me and some friends in Sweden had T-shirts made with the oxytocin (see picture above) made and where hugging each other like crazy.


I really enjoyed myself listing to Charles Montgomery, talking notes and laughing with and to some of the examples he took up. I found it super interesting that architects and city planers can make cities where people meet naturarally and how green parts are impotent parts in our towns, not just to look at or see when passning but that people could stop and slow down in the green parts of town. All this I'm really glad I spent some time listening to and I will be back at the Lab soon again.