why americans love japan + euro summer // explained by a british-japanese girl in the US

hello how do you do? what's the new American dream? id argue it's sunny cobble stone farmers markets in Athens, Greece and neon-lit cyber cities like Seoul and Tokyo let me talk about a topic I've been thinking about for a while! also yes, this is episode three of my 1% happier series! find the full playlist on my profile at first I wanted to relate this to third spaces...but then after moving to LA I started thinking about really there's no point of having abundant (and often artificial) third spaces if they're all located so far apart, in such difficult to access locations (and usually in LA it's a super expensive pilates studio). my idea is more that the whole city/town/village needs to be built cohesively, not just a cafe and a park here and there. third spaces can be something as small as a few steps outside a library for people to sit. I'm drawing a lot of this from a cool design class I took a couple semesters ago. in that class we also talked about how design choices have historically been used to subtly shape behaviours -- eg, building low bridges. you can Google about Robert Moses, an urban planner who deliberately built low bridges to prevent public transport access to ethnic minority-dense areas. in the same way design choices can have negative results, I thought abt how they could be used for good: better health, education, more social interactions, the list goes on...(big recommend Jeff Speck's ted talk on walkable cities!!) it's super interesting to read about and something I wanted to put my own spin on after I've been living in Tokyo aka walkable heaven and seeing Paris, also a walkable heaven (European version) and link that all to the "new American dream" which seems to be...leaving america? life in Los Angeles has been beautifully sunny but also a little underwhelming. I want to fall in love with the city while I'm here and if you have any suggestions or recommendations, I'd love to chat in the comments or thru my Instagram @the_mini_minimalist talk to you soon! ruby