the lived-in city | happiness in urban form.

by Dominic Weilminster, AIA LEED AP BD+C, Points West Design Works

We’ve all experienced it, though it can be difficult to pin down in words: a lived-in space. Growing up, I can remember spending childhood summers at a family ranch near Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The modest ranch house and the agrarian structures, each well-worn with age and use. Everything had accumulated as a function of purpose at some time — no corner was left too sharp, no surface too pristine. The imprint of inhabitants was everywhere and, therefore, we felt welcome everywhere. As it turns out, some of the world’s most livable (aka happiest) places capture this same sense at an urban scale.

If understood, we can define the recipe to craft humanistic habitats that support our natural happiness.

Within the German city of Freiburg, the neighborhood of Vauban is a somewhat experimental residential mixed-use community that exemplifies the simple values of happiness: of being connected, of being yourself, of slowing down and enjoying life. In Vauban, the importance of creating a city that feels rich in investment from its residents and that is authentically reflective of its community—what one of my colleagues termed “messiness”—becomes apparent. When a house feels lived in, you see that the kitchen is used daily for cooking. Books and magazines lay across the coffee table— not just for looks, but with the expectation of being dog-eared. The yard is a constant experiment in urban farming. Vauban is an entire neighborhood that feels this way.

In terms of happiness, Vauban creates an almost campus-like atmosphere of colorful structures, plazas, and paseos. Cars are part of the mix, but are relegated to second or third-class status, behind pedestrians and bikes. On-street parking is the only option and there are a significant number of streets—likely 40 percent—that is organized for a strictly temporary car presence and are otherwise designed as places for pedestrian activity.

Understanding the relationship between urban design, transit, open space and social factors is key to building better spaces and communities in the future.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Vauban is the organic nature of the public realm and the lived-in quality of the residential developments. Although much of the architecture is not very old, maxing at around 15 to 20 years, the housing has been imbued with significant personality, giving it the sense of being occupied much longer than it has in reality. What this tells the casual observer is that people in Vauban have a considerable association with their place of residence. It also implies a certain social cohesion within the community; people aren’t just manicuring their lawns to show that they can keep up with the Joneses, they are comfortable expressing themselves.

Vauban, with its quiet play streets and its cohesive and calm residential developments, provides almost familial neighbor to neighbor interaction—providing social stimulus, but also privacy. Connecting everything is a strong bike network which is linked to comfortable walking spaces and a high-frequency streetcar system. Together, these elements simplify and increase the speed of travel between Vauban and greater Freiburg, while promoting social interaction.

Understanding the relationship between urban design, transit, open space, and social factors is key to building better spaces and communities in the future. This seems logical enough but, more often than not, the intangible pursuit of happiness is not a part of our design, planning, and development dialogues. Typically, expansion of the built environment is focused on marketdriven growth, which responds to land use planning that serves a type of functional and organized logic. The design of these spaces is then heavily biased by desires for convenience, security, and familiarity. But what about if we also thought about what makes us happy?

People are both social and contemplative: too much isolation or over-stimulation can both result in discomfort. Our physical environments are never homogenous (at least they shouldn’t be) and designing for happiness centers shaping experiences to provide a balance of dynamic engagement and comfort to meet both sides of human nature Think about your own experience with happiness – there are scales. We are not necessarily speaking about that fleeting sense of being overjoyed. A better target for happiness is perhaps a sense of fulfillment, satisfaction, and consistent connectedness. A form of happiness in which you are comfortable in your own skin and feel a sense of openness, empathy, and even kinship with those in your community. This is the baseline we likely all want for our lives, so how does it translate to the physical environment around us?

The notion of a city form that promotes day-to-day human happiness relates to the ability of a city to provide a living and working environment that affords people both the time and freedom to pursue their own happiness, either in a private or social manner. This is a simple statement, but it has a number of implications for urban form. A city that affords individuals with time is one that is connected, which implies a certain degree of density. A city that allows people to engage socially is one that contains open-ended public spaces for organic human interaction, offering a diversity of uses and providing flexibility to users as to how they would like to engage. This ultimately opens the door for people to function and participate in a long-term community. However, just as a city needs to provide spaces for interaction, it also needs to afford privacy. Humans may be social but are often most comfortably social in smaller numbers. Urban spaces that break an overall experience down into bite-size use clusters provide for a greater sense of ownership over smaller-scale public or semi-public spaces. By designing for smaller-use clusters in cities, we support people by providing opportunities for more open social engagement, while also

Image Credit - www.vienncouver.com offering them the ability to feel more secure in their surroundings. When spaces are designed to encourage people to be openly social and also secure, we can quiet the fight or flight instincts and encourage residents are more to feel more positive and reflective.

Amazing things happen when places are designed around happiness: We are better connected with others and we play more often. A trip to Copenhagen’s waterfront on a warm weekend expresses this perfectly. With rolling sculpted piers of varying sizes, the water’s edge through the heart of the city becomes a playground for kids and adults alike. No special event or cost of admission required. The design of spaces to invite whimsy and exploration provide an unspoken permission (not to mention a draw) for the community to claim the waterfront—and to have a great time doing so.

So what does all of this mean? Really, for a city to work well, it needs to provide opportunities for human investment and support that investment. The term human investment does not necessarily mean monetary investment, although that may be required. It refers to people being able to really ‘live’ in a community, and to call it their own. Our cities need amenitized infrastructure which is appropriately sized for the human pace of the population that it serves. It does not need to be glamorous or refined, but it does need to be easily accessed through resident-propelled, convenient mobility strategies.

When spaces are designed to encourage people to be openly social and also secure, we can quiet the fight or flight instincts and encourage residents are more to feel more positive and reflective.

Once people have access, the spaces need to provide them with social and physical comfort via scale, a sense of ownership in the relationship they hold with the common spaces in which they live and work, and at best, an experience of discovery or delight which invites all members of the community to make those spaces more memorable. Happy cities are fundamentally places where each member of the local population is a participant (and ultimately becomes) the foundation of the city’s viability. It is not a strategy about making a destination; it is working simply with what (and who) we have to create a place that feels ‘lived in’.