Toward eudaimonia: Building cities that make us flourish

Let us begin not with the city, but with the purpose of the city. For everything that exists, exists for the sake of some good. The flute is made for music, the ship for sailing, and the city — the polis — is formed for the good life.

- ANNA MAE YU LAMENTILLO

Yet modern cities seem to forget this. We build for speed, for capital, for expansion but rarely for virtue, rarely for happiness in its truest form.

If we wish to build happier cities, we must ask not what makes a city large, rich, or efficient, but what makes it good.

The city as a moral community

The city is not merely a place where people live. It is a community of citizens, organized not just to avoid injustice or satisfy needs, but to live well. The city exists to cultivate eudaimonia — a state of flourishing, of living according to reason and virtue.

A city designed only for trade or security is no better than a herd of animals kept together for protection. True cities educate the soul as much as they shelter the body. They are, in a word, political - in the highest sense: structured for the shared pursuit of the good.

Space shapes soul