Emma Avery & Leah Karlberg • The Power of Placemaking: Creating Happier Cities from the Ground Up

For too long, we have built homes and neighbourhoods that fail to connect neighbours. The result: growing social isolation and loneliness, lower trust, and worsened physical and mental health.

How do we reverse these trends to build happier, healthier, more inclusive communities? Some of the most immediately impactful solutions are also the easiest, and closest to home. This presentation will explore what happens when community members come together to shape shared spaces—something we call the power of placemaking.
Drawing from research and conversations with 100+ placemakers across Canada and beyond, we'll uncover the benefits of community-led initiatives for improving social connection, trust, sense of belonging, climate resilience, economic vibrancy, and more. And we'll share innovative tools for measuring how urban design impacts wellbeing in your community.

Emma Avery:
Emma is an urban planner, storyteller, and designer at Happy Cities, a Vancouver- and Halifax-based consultancy that uses the science of wellbeing to create healthier, happier, more inclusive communities. Emma leads communications at Happy Cities, translating research and best practices into compelling stories that show the power of urban design in influencing human wellbeing. She has worked with cities, academic researchers, nonprofits, and more to conduct research and create design guidelines on how homes and neighbourhoods can strengthen social ties, belonging, inclusion, and resilience. She completed her masters in urban geography at McGill University, with a multidisciplinary background in anthropology, journalism, and bicycle infrastructure planning.

Leah Karlberg

Leah leads a variety of policy, community engagement, and placemaking work as an urban planner & designer at Happy Cities and as a co-founder of Neighbour Lab. This work has included the development of policies such as placemaking action plans (for neighbourhoods and a university campus), design guidelines for social wellbeing in multi-unit housing, and research on the power of placemaking. Leah is passionate about using placemaking to spark dialogue and strengthen social connections, leading to more resilient outcomes day to day and in the face of the climate crisis. In her spare time, Leah likes to talk about earthquakes and explore new places on her bicycle.