Tag Archives: Brussels

The Social Progress Index: is your region better than its peers?

One of the common themes in my explorations on this blog has been in ‘alternative indicators’, or tools that are better equipped to measure quality of life than Gross Domestic Product (GDP). One of the most prominent ‘beyond GDP’ tools is the Social Progress Index, which I labelled “a better way to measure a good society”. And the SPI has seen a lot of development since my post of last year.

Let me start with a recap: the Social Progress Index (SPI) is developed as a broader notion of progress than GDP. It consists of 53 indicators, under the headings ‘basic human needs’ (shelter, access to clean water), ‘foundations of well-being (health, internet access) and ‘opportunity’ (human rights, social tolerance). Typically, countries tend to score higher on  basic human needs, as these often are met in high and middle income countries, even if they don’t meet the same standards on the social issues. Roughly speaking, performance for opportunity is lower, even in the richest countries. The exercise has been conducted for a couple of years now. In the 2016 update released this June, the list is topped by Finland, Canada and Denmark.

Better than your peers?

The aim of the index is similar to other beyond GDP tools I discussed like the OECD’s Better Live Index. Namely, to identify the areas of ‘progress’ or well-being in which a country is doing well, and those where it is underperforming peers. The concept of peer group is an important facet: the strengths and weaknesses are listed in comparison to a 15-country group of peers with similar levels of GDP.

This type of screening tool, in theory, could be used to help countries identify in which policy areas they could invest. The thought is that by learning from over-performing peers’ best practices, countries can use their limited resources in the most efficient way, namely by generating the highest additional well-being. The SPI has expanded a lot in the last year, starting projects with the US State of Minnesota, Reykjavik, Iceland, in the capital Bogota, other cities in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America.

This is how the world is doing in social progress in 2016 (darker shades means higher SPI score). Source: SPI

This is how the world is doing in social progress in 2016 (darker shades means higher SPI score; grey means no data). Source: SPI

Digging down to regional level

In practice, indeed, the differences within countries are more important than between countries. More granular data at the regional and local indeed provides a lot more hands-on information to policy makers on where, and how exactly, they can do better. And the Brussels capital region may be better compared to another large city, like Hamburg, then to the province of Belgian Limburg, which in turn could learn more from a region of similar GDP as East Anglia.

That’s why both the OECD and the SPI have been complemented with data on regional level. In 2016, the SPI launched a pilot overview of the 272 regions in the EU. The Commission has released the data of the exercise in February, and an updated version is due to come out in October. And where OECD uses only 11 indicators, the European regional data provide 50 out of the original 53 of the SPI. They also built in the peer group comparison in the methodology.

Once we start comparing regions with each other in Europe, very quickly the next question comes: will the unprivileged regions get more money to bridge gap?Conceptually, one could argue that using the SPI data to address specific low performance areas is a good way to aiming investment at the area where progress can be made. But money is sensitive, and in presenting the data, the Commission has been crystal clear that it doesn’t want to revise this funding policy. Nonetheless, the granular data can provide what is necessary: a better way to measure a good, regional, society.

How is Brussels doing? A bit of under-performance compared to Hamburg, Prague, Vienna, and similar regions. Source: European Commission/Social Progress Imperative

How is Brussels doing? A bit of under-performance compared to Hamburg, Prague, Vienna, and similar regions. Source: European Commission/Social Progress Imperative

Bruxelles ma belle

Brussels. You have kindly hosted me for over five years now.

Over time, I’ve gotten to know the multicultural areas of Anderlecht, the studentesque St Gillis, the upbeat Ixelles and the cosmopolitan Etterbeek – and above all the Eurocrat heaven of the European district.

Like many, I’ve complained about your many faults. Your built-in complexity that convinced some Belgium is a failed state, your ability in providing bad public service in either French or in bad Dutch, the poor infrastructure that makes me battle cars on my bike on a daily basis, the saddening climate where any day can be grey. Still, all this is wrapped in a layer of joie de vivre, exciting European multiculturalism and top class gastronomy (the best beers and fries of the world – and restaurants, too).

Despite her faults, Brussels is a place where I am happy. And even when you don’t love Brussels, you’ll love to hate it.

Bloody terrorists, do not touch Bruxelles ma belle. Do not take my happiness away.

Tintin

 

 

Where the life is good: the OECD’s Regional Well-Being index

[Gross Domestic Product] measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile

Robert F. Kennedy, 1968

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has taken Kennedy’s words to heart. Through its Better Life Index, it is conducting an impressive work programme to analyse quality of life in the 34 developed countries that constitute its membership. The OECD index provides a broad overview of quality life, measuring the performance of countries on various important issues, from housing to environment and from civic engagement to life satisfaction. Like  the Gross National Happiness (GNH) concept, the Better Life Index indicates what the good places to live are in a much broader sense than the mere economic data of GDP could do. Wealth’s correlation with happiness is limited at best, scientists have shown time and again.

But there remains a problem with this kind of national indices: they provide national averages – and do not say anything about the extremes and the equality of the data. California differs from Vermont. Sicily is not the same as Südtirol, the German-speaking part of Italy. To take account of regional differences in quality of life, the OECD has now released a similar website on regional well-being.

Some of the observations:

  • The balance varies a lot across regions. In California, income, jobs and education are at higher levels then in Vermont, but for safety and civic engagement the golden state is a lot worse off than Vermont.
  • Brussels is performing a lot worse on jobs (1.5 points out of 10) and environment (1.6) then I would think, but apparently has a high level of civic engagement (8.6).
  • Across the board, Dutch regions reach high scores, except for income and environment. All over the Netherlands, safety and access to services are close to perfect 10s.
  • Südtirol (or province of Bolzano) is indeed a different world from Sicily. The differences are most striking in the rate for jobs (8.8 vs 0.5). Italy’s figures confirm the large divide in incomes between North and South, whilst incomes are most equal in Austria.
  • Czech regions, to my mind, score surprisingly bad in health but almost all have full scores of 10 for education, here defined as the level of people with secondary education or higher.
  • The Mexican region of Jalisco has adopted well-being as a guiding principle in its policies. Still, it has a lot of space for improvement when compared with regions of richer OECD countries. The region already scores well on jobs and environment. And as a survey from a local NGO suggest, the comparable low scores do not mean that people perceive a low level of well-being. According to their figures, 67% in the region feels prosperous.
Picture 1

Brussels Capital Region, the region where I live, scores well on civic engagement and access to services, but has a lot to improve for jobs and environment. Source: OECD

So What?

Lists and rankings have a broader use than providing bloggers something to browse through on a Sunday night. They can bring order to life – be it by classifying which celebrities are hot and which are not lists, listing the best goals of the World Cup so far (no surprise, Flying Dutchman van Persie tops the list), or of countries which provide the most creative ideas (Ireland is first according to TED).

The OECD list, similarly, provides a benchmark of how regions performance. Seeing where you outperform peers or lag behind gives a motivation to improve. The index can help regions to decide where to focus their resources, and thus make better-informed decision how to spend civil servants’ time and money. As our representatives, politicians and administration should learn from these data. The data can help our administration to perform their duty: continuous improvement of our collective well-being.

Examples of well-being projects in some regions are already included on the OECD site.

Happy International Day of Happiness to all!

The United Nations has chosen special days to celebrate all small parts of life. There is a World Radio Day (13 February). An International Day of Forests and the Tree (21 March). The UN calendar also marks something called Vesak, or the Day of the Full Moon in Buddhist traditions.

And since 2012, we finally have a UN International Day of Happiness.

The decision to establish an International Day of Happiness has been set out in a formal UN resolution. As the laws of diplomacy-speak require, the text is somewhat swollen (“conscious that the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental goal just means: everybody would like to be happy), the text is quite short.

The text recognises the need for “a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes sustainable development, poverty eradication and the well-being of all peoples“. Music to my ears, as I’m convinced that governments have a role to play via well-being policies.

20 March was chosen, because on this day, the sun is on the same plane as the earth’s equator. Day and night are of equal length, creating balance in the earth’s celestial coordinate systems. The idea to have an international day of happiness was raised by Bhutan, which bases its policies on the concept of Gross National Happiness.

Though these days can be criticised (should I only care about women on 8 March), it can be a good way to raise awareness and let people think of their own happiness. In a way, the UN recognition is the culmination of years of work that have been done to convince states and international organisation to take happiness seriously. It builds upon Gross National Happiness in Bhutan, but also on comparable initiatives by France, the UK, the EU and the OECD.

Happiness to the People!

But enough about official celebration. This is a day for the people.

The last months many of our days have been lightened up by the hymn of happiness. Last November, you might have seen the 24 video clip on his website. It is amazing to see how big the song has become since. As I wrote about before, the idea has been taken aboard by people all around the globe, who’ve created their own versions.

Tomorrow, the song will be everywhere. Pharrell teamed up with the UN for another ’24 hours of Happy’, based on videos submitted all around the world.

Watch this page tomorrow to celebrate the International Day of Happiness!

But for now, some of the local versions:

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

I’ve been hoping for a guest appearance of my friend, alas!

Brussels, Belgium

My very own host city has at least ten versions on youtube. This one seems the funniest:

http://youtu.be/ShfqLUutyC4

Vilnius, Lithuania

People in Vilnius aren’t as glum as the word has it!

Tahiti

Tahiti seems the happiest place of all! I need a holiday now…

The Happy City

What makes a city happy? What can local politicians and urban planners can do to promote a city’s happiness or well-being? These were the key questions at the talk show Stadsleven’s (‘City Life’) session on ‘The Happy City’ in Amsterdam. The talk show higlighted lessons for cities worldwide. The speakers had a four different answers to the question “what makes a city happy?”: compactness, connection, trust, and design!

Utrecht, a happy compact city

The first speaker was Paul Schnabel, a well-known sociologist. He commented on a BBC article labelling Utrecht as the happiest city in the Netherlands. Schnabel agreed that happiness levels in Utrecht would be high and attributed this to the fact that it is a compact city with a large variety of people and activities. All elements important to city life, like shopping, culture and nightlife, are available within its small inner city. Utrecht’s inner city is under pressure though: it hosts 30,000 inhabitants and serves as the primary city centre for several hundreds of thousands of people from the surrounding areas. But why would Utrecht be happier than Amsterdam, which offers even more of the same? It’s not scale: it’s the fact that Amsterdam is perpetually flooded with tourists. (This is no surprise if you’ve ever heard an Amsterdammer complain about the non-existing cycling skills of ordinary tourists). Brussels, in practice, is composed of compact neighbourhoods, like Etterbeek, Ixelles and St. Gilles – a recipe for happiness?

Cities, connecting people

Interestingly, beauty was not a factor mentioned by Schnabel. Charles Montgomery, a journalist and the author of The Happy City, didn’t focus on this aspect either. He emphasised the importance of connections. Not only the personal connections to other people which are so determining for happiness, but also the physical connection between areas of the city. He cited the example of Enrique Penalosa, a former mayor of Bogota, which I mentioned in a previous post. Penalosa tackled challenges in Bogota, such as crime, social inequality and lack of education, by changing the transport system. A car-based system that separated the haves from the have-nots was replaced by a well-established bus system. This allowed all citizens, regardless of their wealth, to connect to every part of the city, and to go to schools, hospitals and parks in other areas. Montgomery saw a task for urban planners to design spaces for human interaction. He even mentioned what the ideal depth of a front yard is to facilitate the shallow conversations with strangers about the weather: three meters. If it’s more, people hide behind their fences; if it’s less, they don’t feel at ease sitting in their gardens too close to passers-by.

Trusted strangers in the copy shop

If meeting people is so important, is there a role for government to create meeting places or to actively bring people together? There might or there might not. Host Tracy Metz highlighted the importance of the ‘trusted stranger’: the person you  encounter in a non-descript place like a  copy shop, but hardly talk to. However, seeing the same person around somewhat regularly creates a level of familiarity. (At the second thought, I could maybe use a copy shop or two in Ixelles). This establishes a basic level of trust needed to feel comfortable in an area. Indeed, happiness is often associated with trust. Denmark’s high happiness levels may come as “we hate our politicians but we trust them”, as a business man says in this investigation in Copenhagen’s happiness.

Design

Compactness, connection and trust all count, but doesn’t beauty have a role to play? ‘Positive design’ professor Pieter Desmet of the TU Delft believes that designing beautiful products can help. But products have to appeal to the emotions of the consumers. At the same time, they have to take into account that the material goods lose their powers quickly, as consumers adapt to them. Products can never be a source of continued happiness. But design can create new positive experiences in the city’s architecture. That is what Desmet teaches his students.

Image: Delft Institute of Positive Design

Image: Delft Institute of Positive Design

And let’s end with a great experience in a happy city:

Wish to read more about ‘the Happy City’? Sanne van der Beek, the editor of the talk show, has compiled an amazing dossier with articles, images, videos and links about the Happy City (including a guest post by undersigned).