The Mixed-Use Neighborhood: Creating a Sense of Place
explains how ordinary people can create nice places to live-neighborhoods without destructive zoning, neighborhoods free from highspeed traffic, and neighborhoods of mixed land uses focused on happiness.
Euclydian zoning, the zoning used in most urban areas, destroys neighborhoods by mindlessly separating land uses by arbitrary categories-residential, commercial, industrial, etc. Zoning does nothing to create a sense of community or personal happiness.
We need to return to preindustrial urban design that evolved over centuries to serve human needs, not just provide factory labor to feed machines.
With rapidly falling birth rates, rising education levels, and cybernation, the industrial city no longer needs to drive urban design.
Aristotle said happiness is the goal of life because a good life is a happy life and vice versa.