Upcoming LECTUREs

IS BEND BUILDING A "HAPPY CITY"?

A Presentation and Discussion with Mitchell Reardon,
Director of Happy Cities in Vancouver Canada

Thursday May 7, 2026
6pm at
Ray Hall at OSU Cascades

Is the key to happiness found in the living room?

Mitchell will share insights and lessons from inspiring case studies from across the US and Canada to help us consider:

  • Should Bend have central "urban living rooms" like town squares, plazas and piazzas that anchor community life across the rest of the globe?
  • Should our new districts and neighborhood commercial centers be designed around public spaces that invite social life, play and discovery?
  • How can public-private partnerships (P3s) help us acheive more of these special places?​
  • As we build Bend, are we building for happiness?
  • Isolation and loneliness are epidemics in America - and COVID, social media, AI, our work-from-home lifestyle are isolating us even further. Can great public plazas, festival streets, and signature parks be an antidote to loneliness and actually build community?

Can the science & Design Secrets of Happy cities help bend as we reshape our center city?

This discussion is at a pivotal time as Bend is planning transformative projects that will reshape "the heart" of our community:
  • Bend is planning transformative projects that will reshape the "heart" of our community—from the future of the City Hall site and the Bend Central District (BCD), to the new Korpine site near Crux.  How could public-private partnerships integrate public spaces with private creativity to help Bend “build Happy”?

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Mitchell Reardon
Director of Urban Planning AT ​Happy Cities

Mitchell is an award-winning community builder specializing in healthy urban planning, design, research, and engagement.

Grounded in the Happy Cities wellbeing framework and over a decade of research, he transforms unloved and overlooked spaces into dynamic places where health, connection, and belonging thrive. He has pioneered public space wellbeing assessments, led deep community engagement processes,and designed bold experiments on social trust. Alongside the incredible Happy Cities team, he’s helped spark smiles from Park City to Klamath County, and Denver to Rotterdam.

Mitchell received his Masters of Science in Urban and Regional Planning at Stockholm University in Sweden. Mitchell’s work and insights have been featured by Next City, BBC World, Wired, and more.
The Happy Cities team works in communities across Canada  and the US helping residents imagine, design, and build the “hearts” of their communities. These redesigned main streets, plazas, and other special public spaces that become the beating heart of cultural life, civic conversations, and community celebration.

These “urban living rooms” are an important element of Happy Cities and a powerful antidote to our increasingly isolated and lonely cityscapes.

HAPPY CITIES: the BOOK
by cO-founder charles montgomery

Charles investigates the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness, during an exhilarating journey through some of the world’s most dynamic cities.
​
The science and design principles Charles uncovered while researching and writing his book have shaped the firm’s approach to planning and design.

He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a “sexy” lipstick-red bus to ease status anxiety in Bogotá; the architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan hill towns to modern-day New York City; the activist who turned Paris’s urban freeways into beaches; and an army of American suburbanites who have transformed their lives by hacking the design of their streets and neighbourhoods.
Thank you to our generous sponsors in making our 2026 lecture series a possibility.
​Interested in sponsoring this work? Email [email protected] for sponsorship information.
Proudly powered by Weebly