What would cities look like if they were designed not just for efficiency, but for joy? That is the question at the heart of The Joy Experiments, a new book by Paul Kalbfleisch and Scott Higgins looks at how private developers and community leaders can take risks that city halls often cannot.
Kalbfleisch is a marketing consultant who works with clients in city building, urban development, and cultural planning.
His focus is on helping city builders become society builders by prioritizing joy in how communities grow.
“If I would put a creative brief on most of the projects that I try to get involved in, the objective is to create a space where strangers can become friends,” Kalbfleisch said.
He said municipal governments are risk-averse when it comes to experimenting because of the demands for them to manage day-to-day issues.
“For a real estate developer, they can experiment more. They can be bolder,” he said.
“Once people see it being created, once they see it being successful, once citizens see it, experience it, then it becomes easier for city halls to start entertaining those types of spaces,” Kalbfleisch said.
The concept for The Joy Experiments originated from Kablfleisch’s work with Higgins and HIP Developments, which involves creating spaces within cities to make them more vibrant.
“One day, Scott said he really needed a manifesto so that local stakeholders and city builders understood what was motivating him to do more than what was being asked. Nothing makes people more suspicious of a real estate developer when they do start doing more than they’re being asked to do,” Kablfleisch said.
Inspired by former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s The Nation City: Why Mayors Are Now Running the World, Kalbfleisch suggested Higgins write a book about why he was pushing forward projects like the Gaslight District, rather than what had been done in the past.
“The idea of it is to explain to people why HIP Developments was so interested in creating spaces that connect citizens to each other. We wrote it consciously so that it could be a book that could speak to the world using Waterloo Region as a backdrop for the story,” he said.
“We’re at the early stages of acknowledging that community doesn’t just exist. It has to be built. It has to be shaped. We have to find a way of taking people from isolation and division and create infrastructure that brings people together, that gives them some sense of optimism and collective joy,” Kalbfleisch said.
The 224-page book is divided into 15 chapters with stories and strategies that Kalbfleisch said are a starting point, not a step-by-step guide.
He added that the book was written to create a common language and a common goal for politicians, architects, community leaders, and everyday citizens.
“That’s one of the reasons why we use the word, ‘joy’. We define joy as a feeling you get when you feel connected to something or someone, where you don’t feel completely alone, and it’s a collective feeling,” he said.
To illustrate his point, Kalbfleisch used a typical neighbourhood park as an example of an amenity that brings people together, but is limited to people who live within walking distance.
“We need to stretch beyond that and create places where strangers can connect with each other and become neighbours and friends, where the only commonality you have is the city you live in. To me, that’s the Holy Grail,” Kalbfleisch said.
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