Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

we can design the city to give people dignity, to make them feel rich. The city can make them happier.”

The treadmill theory suggests that the richer you get, the more you compare yourself to other rich people and the faster the wheel of desire spins beneath your feet, so that you end up feeling as though you haven’t made any progress.

To test the idea, you would have to decide what you meant by happiness, and you would need a way to measure it. You would have to understand how a road, a bus, a park, or a building might contribute to good feelings.