Paul Kalbfleisch. Provided photo.

On March 11, Architecture Sarasota hosted Paul Kalbfleisch as part of their lecture series, Downtown Sarasota: Beyond Our Borders. Kalbfleisch is a multi-disciplined speaker and writer and is the co-author of The Joy Experiments: Reimagining Mid-Sized Cities as a Tool to Heal Our Divided Society. Below is an excerpt from the full Q&A interview that will appear in the May/June 2025 issue of SRQ Magazine.

SRQ: You’ve talked about creating a sense of collective joy. What do you mean by that?

Kalbfleisch: To me, joy is not a reward for having a great life. Joy consists of the moments where you feel connected to something bigger than yourself, whether it's a community, an idea, a feeling or a person and it’s an outburst of joyful optimism that comes out of everyday experiences. These are the things that give individuals and cultures and communities the resilience to carry on. Joy is a tool of resilience. It’s not a reward for getting somewhere, it’s a tool to help us work to get into a better world and a better life. Joy is something that we all need, it is something that binds us together. Big cities have these moments of serendipity, these moments of collective joy all the time.

We’ve gone through a period of time where we thought the future is all about growth and then the future is all about technology. I think now that the future is societal. The deciding factor in whether our future is going to be better or worse is on what we do and how we divide or unite society. Cities are this place where we can actually make that difference.

I heard someone give a talk not too long ago where he said that cities are serendipity machines. I thought it was an amazing idea, because it questions how we’re going about building our cities. You can say let’s create bike lanes and better parks and more interesting architecture, but what’s the point of it? What’s it leading to? What’s our why? Maybe our why is to build cities that prioritize the connection of citizens because that will make them vibrant and economically viable in the innovation era. Until we find a way of bringing people together a little better than we are currently, the big, complex challenges facing society in the future are going to be hard to overcome.

Paul Kalbfleisch. Provided photo.

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