Richard Florida, professor of Business and Creativity at the University of Toronto, and the author of ‘Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life‘, was on NPR Talk of the Nation yesterday. Richard Florida had a lot to say about a wide range of fascinating topics. Most interesting to me were the results of his Gallup Survey on Place and Happiness.
What makes people happy?:
- A job they love
- Social connections and relationships
- A good place to live
Richard Florida added some observations:
- Beyond a minimum threshold, income does not make a difference.
- People are suffering from fewer and fewer close social connections (with one the average)
- Good places to live all share the following five factors: 1) safety and good schools, 2) economic and social opportunities, 3) good mayoral and business leadership, 4) good across the board for a variety of people, 5) physically good in term of aesthetics, pleasant to live in.
What I find especially encouraging about this research, is that it supports visions for a more sustainable world as well. This includes the need for strengthened communities, and some ideas such as David Holmgren’s permaculture that could be adapted to living in the big cities. Note that accumulating more stuff, driving more, living in bigger houses, and more generally engaging in activities with a big footprint, are not part of this ‘make you happy’ list.
“A job they love, Social connections and relationships, a good place to live ”
You should read Dave Pollard’s thoughts about combining “intentional community” with “natural enterprise”. Put that in a jacket of western luxury (e.g. not living in autarky, and not being ashamed to have taxis waiting for you in front of the door) and you’ve got a luxurious hotel/resort which doubles as a co-working facility for creative people who just love to work, be it virtual or with each other. No need to drive to work, restaurant, cleaning, laundry, fitness center, swimming pool, tennis court – all included. Add solar panels, small wind turbines and geothermal heat-pumps, and you might be a net energy producer at some points of the day, at some days of the year. The cook can buy food consciously, some portions could be produced on-site, can’t be any fresher, and we just wouldn’t serve meat – might be the only downside for potential customers, until they realize how good life is as a vegetarian.
That’s in short is the vision I’m developing.
What do you think?
The great thing about it is that it’s not mere talk, but probably a very profitable business model.
In fact, the model goes a little further. I want it to be a social business, with everybody living there as employees (or co-entrepreneurs), where profits are invested solely with the goal of spreading this model of living and working – utopia.
I’m personally sold.
The biggest thing I still need to figure out is how to work with children and elderly. because I want my children to grow up there, and I want to live there for life.
It’s still little long for an elevator-pitch though.
Your comment made me think about intentional vs. organic community. Probably the reality is a mix of the two.
Also, the Gallup Survey stresses the importance of the role of business and city leaders, in facilitating good work and living environments. Of course citizens do have their share of personal responsibility. It reminds me of the old social work principle of ‘person in its environment’, and how the two are interrelated.
The statistic of one significant connection on average points to the pitiful state of communities. No wonder virtual social networks are going crazy. I see those as a desperate plea for more real connection and true friendship. What we are discovering is that there are no substitute for friendships formed as a result of time spent together in real life situations. We are also paying a heavy price for our mobility.
Let us take a moment to identify global challenges to a sustainable world that are emerging and converging in our planetary home. Of course, the following is a partial list to which other threats to human and environmental health can be added.
1. Unregulated human overpopulation of Earth
2. Unwelcome human-induced effects of global warming in particular and climate change in general
3. Human-driven pollution of Earth’s environs
4. Reckless dissipation of Earth’s resources by the human species, with particular attention to the challenges posed by peak oil and peak soil.
5. Relentless expansion of the unbridled global political economy.
These distinctly human activities appear to be overspreading the surface of Earth on such a gigantic scale and at so astounding a growth rate that scientists can make projections indicating a noticeable risk to life as we know it and to the integrity of Earth, perhaps in these early years of Century XXI. That is to say, Earth cannot much longer sustain unrestrained human population growth, unrestricted per human consumption and unchecked economic globalization without running the risk of precipitating some kind of global ecological catastrophe.