Tag Archives: Cities

Happiness & the City

How can growing cities ensure the well-being of their citizens isn’t sacrificed in their growth? That was one of the questions I had in mind when delivering a guest lecture on happiness to a group of students from Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The students, enrolled in a programme on city development, were specialising in ‘Urban Development, Wealth and Well-Being’. Studies of happiness seem to have gotten a lot more common in the few years I’ve been out of university!

My presentation was centred on the argument that the well-being and happiness of citizens should be a leading objective in urban planning and city development. Politicians and policy-makers should use existing regional indicators, such as the OECD Better Life Index or the Social Progress Index (SPI), to monitor their performance. Comparing scores with benchmarks of their peer group can help spot weaknesses.

For instance, the Brussels region has a high GDP, but is doing worse on many other progress indicators, as the slides in the deck below show. The South Holland region of Rotterdam and The Hague ranks highly in the SPI, but shows weaknesses in education, environmental quality, and some health and safety indicators.

Students in the group seems to see the arguments, but also had critical questions: can you objectively measure what happiness or well-being is? Can you decide for someone else how much education or the environment counts for their happiness? And can we trust politicians using well-being data fairly? Or would they simply use it as a narrative to get support, without doing the actual work?

I ended the workshop with several case studies, asking the students how they would advise mayors to resolve policy issues. They had some creative solutions: for instance, one of the case studies described a dynamic city that attracts so many people that house prices saw massive increases. One, admittedly complicated, suggestion was to cap rent prices so normal people could afford to live there. This case study was meant to be similar to London. Another creative idea by the group was to build a satellite city at a reasonable distance. In this way, people could enjoy well-being in their place of residence, while also enjoying the dynamic life that London has to offer. One thing became clear: the next generation of urban planners will be thinking about happiness in their cities.

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).

Happiness. Curated by you.

Nowadays, when you have a blog, you don’t call yourself a blogger. No way. Your title at least is editor, or, to take it a step further, curator. A long time ago, only museums had curators. Then, theatre groups followed. Nowadays, the organisor of a conference is called a curator, and the catering manager curates food.

Anyway. One of the good things of this blog, apart from the fact that it makes me happy, is that friends are regularly sending me great articles about happiness. There are so many great stories of happiness that deserve to be shared, and I can’t always keep up with weekly posts… Therefore, this post brings some of those together: happiness. Curated by you.

 

Happiness and education – curated by Kasia.

Logan LaPlante is not your typical 13-year-old. He has long hair and a hat, loves skiing, and confidently says profound things on the TEDx stage. His argument is very simple: real learning comes from a radically different approach, far beyond the traditional education system. By creating a lot more space for discovery – ‘hackschooling’, as he calls it – we can learn how to make ourselves happy. Why doesn’t our education system teach us that?

 

Material mass unhappiness – curated by Maria.

Materialism promises satisfaction. It delivers despair.

That is the main message of a great piece by Guardian writer George Monbiot under the title ‘One Rolex Short of Contentment‘. The sarcastic remarks are illustrated with unintendedly hilarious pictures from the Tumblr ‘Rich Kids of Instragram‘. Customised car seats, tiny dogs, ridiculously expensive watches, that kind of stuff.

Citing several studies, Monbiot also has a serious message: research demonstrates that there is a causal link between materialism and lower levels of happiness. One example are the developments in Iceland after the crisis researched by Tim Kasser. After the financial crisis, some people focused on material goods to recover lost incomes; others dedicated themselves to family and community values. The well-being of the second group increased. Monbiot’s conclusion is simple: material aspiration is a formula for mass unhappiness.

Image found in Monbiot's article; original source Rick Kids of Instagram.

Image found in Monbiot’s article; original source Rick Kids of Instagram.

 

How to build a happy city – curated by Eva.

Some time ago, I already stumbled upon a piece by Charles Montgomery, author of Happy City. Very comforting to a Dutchman, his article seemed to back my claim that cycling to work brings happiness. Montgomery stated that for a single person, exchanging a long commute for a short walk to work has the same effect on happiness as finding a new love.

On the BBC Future blog, Daniele Quercia takes it a step further. Architects are trying to build smart and efficient cities. But they are functional people and interested in how people use space. What would their design look like if instead, they’d wonder how their work makes people feel? Quercia cites the case of Bogota, where residents felt more optimistic on the day the mayor decided to ban cars from the streets for 24 hours. She also mentions work by Yahoo Labs, concluding that cars are associated with sadness. But smart cities are  not just walkable. It’s about identifying the happiest places in a city, and creating routes to connect them.

 

Time for some well-deserved Christmas holidays! I’ll be back on the first Monday of the New Year.