Recipes for Urban Happiness Design for Community Well-being

The experiences we enjoy, endure, or miss out on are influenced by what our surroundings allow and invite us to do. Just like our food diet, our experience diet influences our health and so our chances of finding happiness and fulfilling our potential. A healthy experience diet offers inspiration, reassurance, delight, and play. It nurtures physical, cognitive, and emotional health, builds resilience, and fosters confidence and self-esteem. An unhealthy experience diet lacks these things and consigns people to lives diminished in quantity and quality. Recipes for Urban Happiness offers an innovative way of looking at the relationship between people and place and redefines what good urban design is. The book outlines what designers and non-designers can do to create urban places where nurturing behaviours are both possible and preferable. Recipes for Urban Happiness will be relevant to public health, community development, and design practitioners, as well as students and academics.

1. Introduction 2. The philosophy behind this book 3. Human needs 4. Our experience diet and experience menu 5. Our motivational compass 6. Needs fulfilling experiences 7. Feeling secure 8. Moving 9. Belonging and connecting 10. Fun and expression 11. Hoping 12. Experiencing nature and green space 13. Understanding and awareness 14. Downstream vital experiences 15. Needs denying experiences 16. Challenges in balancing experience diets 17. Changing the menu 18. Recipes for a nurturing experience diet 19. Emotional capital(ism) 20. Epilogue

Jenny Donovan is the Program Manager-Regional Planning at the Cradle Coast Authority in Tasmania. Her experience spans urban and landscape design, social and environmental planning, community development and neighbourhood renewal in Australia, Afghanistan, the UK, Palestine, Ireland, Ethiopia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Sri Lanka.