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4 Reasons why Leaving the City Will Make You Happier

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With so many people moving from the country to big cities, it almost doesn’t make sense that leaving the city will make you happier, yet the research overwhelmingly supports this notion.

The Coronavirus pandemic has meant that many of us have spent more time inside this year than any other time in our lives. Yet, even before Covid-19 hit, many people were spending more and more time inside buildings or commuting, and less time in the outdoors.  In fact, more than half the global population lives in an urban environment and doesn’t go outdoors much – most American’s spend 90 per cent of their time indoors! According to recent research, this could be impacting your happiness levels.

Now, I get it, you might not be able to go far because of COVID-19. That’s fair. But if you can get out of the city, it could have significant impacts on your happiness.

Here are 4 reasons why leaving the city will make you happier.

1. Spend Time by the Sea and in the Sun

A recent study by the London School of Economics and Political Science showed that spending time by the sea makes people happier. It also showed that just being outdoors makes you happier — preferably in a non-urban environment, but hey, we’ll take what we can get!

“People recorded the highest levels of happiness in marine and coastal locations, followed by mountains and moors, forests and farms,” said University of Sussex’s Dr George MacKerron, who undertook the study in conjunction with the LSE.

2. Plan a Holiday

Holidays are great, we all know that — take them whenever you can! But according researchers from the Netherlands, the biggest boost in your happiness comes not from the vacation itself, but from the act of planning the vacation. They studied the happiness levels of 1,530 Dutch adults and found that anticipation of a holiday boosted happiness levels for 8-weeks.

“Vacations do make people happy, but we found people who are anticipating holiday trips show signs of increased happiness, and afterward there is hardly an effect,” said the lead author, Jeroen Nawijn, tourism research lecturer at Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands.

3. Get out Into Nature and Find Some Trees

A study of 585 Japanese young adults found that being in nature for only 15-minutes can have a positive effect on our moods. The participants were divided into a forest or city group and instructed to go for 15-minute walks. Those who walked in the forest saw decreases in their negative feelings, such as anxiety, fatigue and depression. They also experiencing an increase in positive emotions.

“The psychological benefits of walking through forests are very significant, and forest environments are expected to have very important roles in promoting mental health in the future,” according to the authors. “The beneficial effects of nature suggest a simple, accessible, and cost-effective method to improve the quality of life and health of urban residents.”

4. Forest Bathing

In 1982, Japan launched a national program to encourage forest bathing – or shinrin-yoku. Forest bathing does not involve swimming naked in a forest (as I originally thought!). Instead it means walking through a forest mindfully and taking in all the sights, sounds, touch, smells and tastes of your environment. It’s about emerging yourself in your surrounds. And it has been proven to reduce stress levels and anxiety, while improving mood, memory, attention and positive outlook.

“Wherever there are trees, we are healthier and happier,” said medical doctor and researcher Qing Li, and author of

Finally, for those of you who truly can’t get out of your city in the current environment, Li says that infusing essential tree oils in your home can provide benefits.

Related reading: 5 Ways to Recharge When You’re too Stressed

Do you have ideas for leaving the city that make you happier? Tell us below in the comments!

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Enabling Happy Cities (E20)

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Happiness for Cynics podcast

In the second of this two-part series on happy cities, this week we explore the enablers of happy cities. We look at the research from the Global Happiness Council’s annual Global Happiness and Wellbeing Policy Report and discuss some great examples from around the world of cities which are getting it right.

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and speaker, focused on change and resilience [background laughter most of the way through] and we’ve already lost Pete today. 

P: [Laughing] My tummy was rumbling, on cue. [Still laughing.] We should have had pancakes first. 

M: [Laugh] It’s our treat for after we’ve recorded. 

P: So sorry. Hi, I’m Peter Furness, a mover and shaker, Covid[19] time baker, opportunity seeker and maker. Each week we will bring you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology known as happiness.  

M: You can find us at marieskelton.com, which is a site about how to find balance, happiness and resilience in your life. We talk about a lot of the same research we cover here on the podcast, including some really practical tips for bringing joy and happiness into your life. 

P: Bubbles for everyone.  

[Laughter] 

P: So on to today’s episode, which is part two of our series on Happy Cities.  

[Happy Intro Music] 

M: Okay, so welcome to today’s episode, which is part two on our series of Happy Cities. But before we get into that, Pete you had a really lovely interaction with one of our listeners.  

P: I did. It was really, really lovely, so we’ll call him James.  

M: Sure. 

P: So James and I had a very brief interaction and basically, I’ll just read that. I’ll just read what he said:  

We mentioned podcasts and he mentioned that he was podcast listener. And I said ‘oh I do a podcast called Happiness for Cynics.’  

James: ‘Cool. I listened to the 1st 2 episodes of your podcast today. I think it was just what I needed to hear. Thank you for putting me on to it.’  

P: ‘Oh, that’s bloody lovely.’  

James: ‘No, thank you.’  

P: And he goes on to say.  

James: ‘Thanks, Pete. I’m naturally cynical, but also believe that it’s up to me to be happy and only I can choose my reactions to things. I still have bad days, and I have to remind myself that that’s okay. But overall, I think I’m mostly optimistic. I’m going to try get to more episodes of your podcast today.  

M: That’s so lovely to hear, it really is.  

P: It was really reassuring that what we do actually is reaching [people].  

M: Yes, and I think that’s the whole premise of the podcast. It took a major trauma for me to reassess my life. I don’t want everyone have to have a major trauma in their life in order to discover that this stuff actually works. 

P: Well I just knew.  

M: of course… 

P: I just bought in from the beginning. 

M: Uh, huh.  

P: Does that make me better than you?  

M: What evs… Happy Cities, Pete.  

[Laughter] 

P: So let’s just recap what we went through on the last episode, Part one was all about the design. Just to recap. We had six major points: 

  1. Urban design in place making so a city plan and design …of connected space;  
  2. The next was access to Nature;  
  3. Third was Mobility, how we move around, how we get around a city and having access to the parts of the city;  
  4. Sustainability and Partnership. Sustainable change and putting things in place that make a city more changeable for the next few generations;  
  5. Culture, Arts and what a city’s culture is; and
  6. The Quality of Services that are accessible to all the population of that city.  

M: You flew through those Pete. 

P: Yes cause I hogged the podcast last week so I’m trying to be really, really good this week. 

M: [Laugh] so, they were all the design elements of Happy Cities.  

This week we’re going to talk more about Enablers of Happy Cities. And enablers are the intangible policy outcomes. So there’s two types of policy outcomes those requiring active engagement from citizens and those that are sensed passively, so they just kind of happen or don’t. As we mentioned in the last episode Australia really is a lucky country when you look at it –  

P: Is it still? 

M: It still is, we are not dealing with slums with huge poverty or famine, war; The infrastructure that we have here, the opportunity that we have here is still, it’s not perfect. I can see you’re looking me! 

P: No, no, no, I’m asking the question. 

M: It’s not perfect. It is not perfect. But we are so much further advanced than so many other countries. We are one of the lucky countries. 

P: And sometimes we may forget that. 

M: Oh, absolutely. 

P: Because I think there’s a lot of things that are different about Australian lifestyle… when you put it in a global context, we’re doing all right. 

M: And back when, even we’ve come in leaps and bounds. The quality of life that we have compared to our parents or our grandparents is it’s so much better. It is not simpler and it comes with its own challenges, but yes, but I’d argue better. Anyway, again, we’ve gone off track, so Australia is lucky. Well, just not perfect, not the best. But we are lucky and so what I want to do is quickly go through the first 4 areas that just aren’t as relevant for our society and then we can spend a bit more time deep diving into the other. 

So first one is Safety and Security.  

And you mentioned American psychologist Abraham Maslow. We mentioned it a few episodes ago, but also he’s famous for coming up with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And it’s a way of showing that some needs more important to humans than others. And he displays this by using a pyramid with things like air, food and water at the bottom. I think we can all agree air, food and water are absolutely critical.  

P: Absolutely. It’s a necessity. 

M: The second layer is about Safety and Security, and that comes before things like love and belonging, friends and family and esteem, respect and definitely before self- actualisation. 

P: [laugh] before we get into the fluffy stuff. 

M: Yeah, but in short, people don’t care so much about a vibrant nightlife when it’s not safe to walk the streets. 

P: Yep 

M: So I think that we’re pretty lucky and as a female in this country. I feel very safe to walk nearly any streets in this country. I can’t think of any that I don’t feel safe walking at night, right? So we’re going to move on, safety and security really important for a happy city. We’ll go tick in Australia. 

The next one is Affordability.  

Shelter is another item on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but it’s in the first tier. Alright, you can’t feel safe if you don’t have a home. And you can’t feel secure if you’re constantly worried about losing that home.  

P: True.  

M: So if you’re sleeping in the streets, it’s a very vulnerable position to be in.  

P: Yeah, definitely. 

M: That’s for the small percentage of our population that are homeless but also going back to what we mentioned before. For the 20, 30, 40% of Australians who are low income earners, there is a true week to week struggle to pay your bills and not be evicted from your home, whether it’s a mortgage that you’re paying or just rent, right. And so I would argue that affordability, traditionally 20 years ago, wasn’t so much of an issue. But it’s starting to creep into, well it has crept into our concerns in our country of late.  

P: Oh, for sure, especially in cities like Sydney. Absolutely. The affordability of rent is huge.  

M: All right, we will move on  

Tolerance and Inclusivity.  

So this is about equity, tolerance and justice for all, and some of you might have started noticing that we’re using the word equity rather than equality lately and I really love that we’re evolving our understanding of equality and now focusing instead of equality on equity. And so equality is all about everyone having the same opportunity. And that’s really noble and a great first step. And I will say that a lot of countries and various groups are still fighting for that equal right.

We’re still not there as a society, but the next evolution of that argument or thinking is equity. And that acknowledges that everyone’s different has different needs, and therefore you shouldn’t provide one product or service to everyone. You should aim to provide a tailored product or service to people so that they end up in the same place. And there’s a great video online where they’re talking about white privilege and they get everyone to start at the beginning of a race. 

P: Yeah, I’ve seen this. 

M: Yeah, there’s a great video there, but another way of looking at it is if you have a really tall kid and a really short kid, and they both want to peek over the fence to watch the baseball game and you give them both a box to stand and the tall kid will see over the fence and will watch the game and be really happy. The short kid is still staring smack bang at the fence posts and can’t see a thing, so it’s about giving each of them a box to stand on. But the box for the short kid needs to be taller so they can both see the baseball game.  

P: Right, that’s a great analogy. That’s what equity is about, right? It’s about different solutions based on your needs rather than one solution for all. And I love that that’s the next evolution and that’s what people are starting to talk about here with tolerance and inclusivity. And then the last one is 

Trust.  

Last one I’m going to talk about then I’ll hand to you Pete. [Laugh] It’s definitely not the last one. So, the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] defines trust as a person’s belief that another person or institution will act consistently with their expectations of positive behaviour. And corporates have failed dismally at this in recent years. There is such a lack of trust now between people and large organisations, to the point that organisations are now just as bad as politicians in our minds. 

P: Oh! Yeah. I’ll give you that. 

M: And we used to trust banks with our money, we used to trust big corporations to give us jobs and security. That is no longer the case. And the really interesting part off that quote is that it’s about our expectations of positive behaviour and expectations change over time. And I think what we’ve seen with corporate is that they haven’t kept up with our changing expectations, right? 

P: [Tentative] OK. 

M: And the second thing there is as far as Happy Cities goes, trust is about government’s doing what we think they should do and not being caught out. So no corruption is the big one. But the second thing is opening up your doors, and this is a change management 101 principle co-create and we’re going to come to a few examples that you’ll talk about soon Pete, where governments have opened their doors up and worked with their citizens to co-create solutions and get such better results in the end. But you also get trust and that’s a big one. 

P: Yep, it’s transparency to see what people are doing, what the processes are which gives you empowerment as an individual.  

M: Absolutely. All right, so I’m going to hand to you for the next one. I think you’re going to start with  

Health and Life Balance.  

P: Health and Life, this is right up my alley. A holistic view of city life and activities promoting balance, physical and mental health. We need both for making sure that Happy Cities occur and I want to use a couple of examples here. One is in Bogota, in South America. Ciclovia it’s called, [Chi-clo-veea] I’m not sure about the accent there. Reclaiming the streets and opening them up to millions of cyclists of all walks and abilities, much like running festivals in Sydney. It’s about people custodians of the city, creating the capacity for the population to engage within the streets. 

So what something like Ciclovia does is it lets families, it lets children, it lets senior citizens come out and enjoy car free areas. Now this movement is actually this event actually sparked a movement in other countries around the world where regularly closing down city streets just for cyclists became a huge way for the communities to come out and interact, so that created a sense of meaning and belonging and sociality. It ticks all these lovely little boxes for us. Also looking at things in terms of work hours.

Now, very topical at the moment is the 4 to 5 working week, four weeks in five weeks or the four day working week on. We’ll come back to that at another time, but it has a huge involvement on being allowed people to manage their own time. This creates more balance because you can choose when you’re going to go and pick the kids up from day care or when you’re going to fit in your three mile walk that you might have to do just to get your own exercise and that creates huge health benefits along with your productivity, which we know since the year 2000 in Scandinavian countries, it goes up, 20%, 30% increase in productivity, downgrading of health services, less sick leave all these benefits from allowing people to manage their time better. It’s a huge marker for happy cities.  

M: Yep 

P: Okay, moving along. So 

Sociality

…is that how you say this word?  

M: Yep 

P: Sociality? Sociality? People need people. Battling loneliness. We need other people, we know that having those social interactions really helps with their levels of happiness. There’s a city in Western Denmark that actually initiated counselling services for parents and parents of teenagers if they were having trouble and also for divorced couples. Now this was a free service that they offered and what they found was not only did divorces drop by 17% but they were clocking issues of teenage angst and issue from becoming problems later on and by providing those, those services free of charge, people were less engaged in conflict. They, they were able to manage their lifestyles a little bit better, which makes a huge difference to happiness.  

M: I think this also goes back to what we’ve mentioned multiple times. It’s about understanding yourself. And I think it’s giving teenagers and parents an opportunity to know themselves better and to talk through their emotions in a far more proactive and positive way and therefore it’s created stronger social ties within the family unit. 

P: Which makes the happiness.  

M: Such a great, great initiative. 

P: That and the adopt a grandma. 

M: Oh, I love this one! 

P: [Laugh] So the Dragør, is that how you would say it? in east of Copenhagen in Denmark has the ‘bonus grandma’ or ‘adopt a grandma scheme’. So there’s these ladies who are sitting around in their nursing homes and so forth. They may not have families around them, and people who need a little bit of help can adopt a grandma. Who doesn’t want an extra grandma? I mean, my grandma’s gone. She’s been gone for 10 years, actually. So, it’s great to have that sort of person around if you’ve got kids and you need a bit of help or you need that that maternal figure. 

M: Yep, in particular in today’s day and age, when you have two people out earning an income and people are more likely to move away from their parents. And it’s, it’s really tough to balance full time work and raising kids nowadays, yes, and maintain your sanity and happiness. 

P: [Laughter] Definitely, so we’ll move on to  

Economy and Skills  

A primary reason for people to move to a city is the economic opportunity that this allows. There’s a wonderful example in Vancouver in Canada, of the Vancouver Binners.  

M: I’m going to jump into that, maybe so what was happening was that people were taking their recyclables to the recycling centre to get their five cents or 10 cents per bottle. But these were generally homeless people or people that had been looked down upon by others in society as being a nuisance. And so they called them binners and they weren’t great to have around your neighbourhood. They looked bad. They might have smelled. You know, that’s the general consensus that society had of these people. 

But some great organisation had a look at the good they were doing, saving all of that plastic from going into landfill and said, ‘How do we change people’s perception of these people as a pest to instead show the good that they’re doing for our society and also help them to do it more efficiently and better so that we can again have less plastics going into a landfill.’ Such a great little initiative. 

P: Yeah, utilising the labour force.  

M: Absolutely. So these people were seen as a pest were doing such a service. So really cute little story there. 

P: It reminds me of a story actually, when you came back from Thailand after your accident, Marie and you made the comment to me about you were in hospital and you had like a team of ladies washing you. 

M: Oh, they were fabulous. 

P: [Laugh] You made the point that it was utilising the labour force. So these women who may not have had training and skills and all that sort of stuff. It was washing patients in the hospital and they were utilising that cheap labour force, giving them an occupation, giving them purpose, giving the meaning tick, tick, tick for the happiness counter. 

M: Yep, yep absolutely. 

P: Roman Deguchi is the director off the ‘Inner West Neighbour Aid’ garden in Concord, west of Sydney. And I came across this on an episode of Gardening Australia. 

M: Of course you did. 

P: Because that’s what you do when you’re in isolation. You watch Gardening Australia. It was about utilising the talent within the community and bringing the local community together in a garden setting. Now, one of the first things they did was they had paths that go through the garden and these were all wide enough for wheelchairs. Now, I know this is something that’s close to your experience Marie, as well. 

M: Uh, huh. Yeah  

P: You don’t realise how inaccessible the city is until you’re in a wheelchair and you’ve got to get around. So that was one of the first things that they did. And they also found that there was a disconnection between the elder community and the youth community and this garden brought it together. They brought school kids in to start doing the planting and stuff, and they were bringing elderly people in to direct them and say, look we can’t get down on our knees but you can, plant that over here and do that and there was contact between the generations. 

M: All right, last one;  

Meaning and Belonging. 

P: Ooh, this is a big one, a shared meaning and belonging and a sense of purpose that involves a community.  

M: I think a lot of the things you talked about have covered meaning and purpose. So I think it’s enough on this one to almost say it is really important to create spaces and activities that give people meaning and belonging. But the great thing about the items on this list they’re not mutually exclusive. And you can create a lot of places and activities that give not only meaning and belong belonging, but also economy and skills and sociality and health and life balance. 

P: Yeah definitely, they tick many boxes. 

M: Yeah, All right, well, we should probably wrap that up so. 

P: [Laugh] Way too much information.  

M: So, in conclusion, Happy Cities. Firstly, it’s a choice. It’s about opting in, definitely. And then the other part of this is about the effectiveness of empowering people to take responsibility and get involved in their cities. 

P: The processes. 

M: Exactly. 

P: How do you get people involved?  

M: Yeah, and it’s not just because you want to see the outcome be good or right for your society. It’s because the process of going through it is beneficial to you and your happiness. So getting involved in that garden isn’t just about there being a nice garden in your neighbourhood. It’s about planting herbs with the local kids and the benefits that you get from that.  

P: Exactly.  

M: All right. Okay, well, thank you for joining us. And, as always, you can find us at marieskelton.com, where you can ask us a question, recommended topic or suggest someone to interview, and we hope you’ll join us again next week and over the coming weeks, we’ve got a couple of really great interviews lined up, which will revisit the topic of Happy Cities. And we’ve got some experts who are going to cover various elements.  

P: Very exciting. 

M: What makes space and the places that we move in happy for us? What makes us happy when you’re in them? So I hope you’ll join us for that.  

P: No worries folks, buy into happiness. 

[Happy exit Music] 

Related content: Read Moving On article Podcast: Wellbeing and Your Environment (E21), listen to our Podcast: Designing Happy Cities (E19)

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Designing Happy Cities (E19)

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Happiness for Cynics podcast

In the first of this two-part series on happy cities, this week we explore how to design happy cities. We look at the research from the Global Happiness Council’s annual Global Happiness and Wellbeing Policy Report, and discuss some great examples from around the world of cities which are getting it right.

Episode notes

In this week’s episode, Pete talked about how bicycle lanes are great for city living. This is the book he mentioned.

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and speaker focused on change and resilience.  

P: And I am Peter Furness, a banana bread maker, wall art hanger and occasional wedgie applicator. Each week we will bring you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.  

M: You can find us at marieskelton.com, which is a site about how to find balance, happiness and resilience in your life. We talk about a lot of the same research we cover here on the podcast, including some really practical tips for bringing joy and happiness into your life. 

P: So on to today’s episode, which is all about Happy Cities.  

[Happy intro Music] 

P: So Marie, Happy Cities. What are we talking about?  

M: This is such a hot topic right now. I’m so happy that we’re doing this. So there’s two things that are converging to macro level.  

P: Convergence, we like convergence were converging. 

M: And macro, that’s important. So firstly, we’re seeing huge advancements in technologies in particular the Internet of things, and that’s allowing us to know so much more data and know so much more about what our people are doing and how they’re moving in, how they’re living than we’ve ever had before. 

P: So “big brother” is a good thing.  

M: It can be. I’m not 100% sold, but I think- 

P: There’s a practical application of the “big brother” [concept]. It’s actually working for us.  

M: Yes, exactly. And then the second thing that’s happening is there’s an increasing understanding that human well-being matters, and we’ve mentioned it before. But people are saying to come to the realisation that economic prosperity without well-being is a bit hollow.  

So this really started picking up steam in 2015 when the UN announced its 2030 agenda for sustainable development and that was adopted by all UN member states. And in it, there’s 17 sustainable development goals which aim to bring peace and prosperity to all the world and its people. Now amongst those 17 goals, there’s two that in particular apply to happy cities.  

The first is goal number three, which is good health and well-being. And then there’s also number 11 which is sustainable cities and communities. And when it comes to cities and communities, a lot of the UN plan focuses on getting the basics right, like proper waste management, eradicating slums and providing clean air. But it does also touch on some of the topics we’re going to cover today, like access to green spaces and good public transport, which are key to happy cities. 

So for today’s episode, rather than focusing on the UN sustainable development goals, we have taken a different document, which is a bit more relevant for us in Australia because we have done some really good work to get those basics right. And now we’re talking about what’s next. So the report we’re looking at is the Global Happiness Council’s annual global happiness and well-being policy report.  

So Pete, maybe you can start with why we should be focusing on Happy Cities, not just happy people?  

P: I love that we’re focusing on Happy Cities. I think this is a really interesting segway in global awareness, really, that we’re no longer just talking about economic development and GDP and stuff this whole movement around ‘let’s create good things for people and for all people’, which I think is really important. That’s a point we will come back to later.  

If we’re looking at Happy Cities, what makes a happy city just a bit of background; we’re using cities more. So the human population on a global scale is now becoming more urbanised. Since 2007 we actually have more urbanised population globally than we do rural. So we’ve hit 55% of global population in 2007, live in cities.  

M: I think that’s a really, really good stat to show how, as a society or society’s globally, we’re evolving from an agrarian, hunter/gatherer/farmer to industrial, which did bring a lot more people into the cities and made the need for cities greater. To a service economy now, where definitely everyone is in the city for right now because we haven’t quite gotten there yet, But it’ll be really interesting to see if gig economy and, you know, especially post Covid[19], where we know now that we can work from home and a lot of industries whether we will still need cities as much in the future. 

P: It’s interesting because the predictions are that in 2050 we’re going to have 2/3 of the world’s population in cities, seven billion people as opposed to right now, which is just 4.1 billion people. These are the predictions we’re using cities more and that, the attraction of living in the city is greater. So, interestingly enough, and I found this this odd that as we grow older and as we grow wealthier, we tend to gravitate towards cities. I would have thought the opposite, but it’s not the case. We like being in cities. Cities provide opportunity. They provide better health systems support and all that sort of stuff. So we’re more drawn towards them. 

M: And also more leisure activities. You can always go to the beach or go somewhere quiet for a weekend. I think that on a day to day basis, having access to more people and cultural activities when you’re retired becomes more important. 

P: It comes into the, into the factoring of what makes a happy city actually. When we- 

M: Tell us! Do tell us. 

P: Well actually, there are lots of different things. There’s, there’s the infrastructure. There’s things like parks, cycle paths, piazzas, green and blue spaces, culture. So the art culture, HUGE, massive, so big!  

M: For you the art culture is huge. But for others it can make a break a city, the culture, and it’s not necessarily art, but it is the culture of a city.  

P: Definitely but art plays a big part in that. I’ll come back to that later. So these are all in addition to services such as waste management, sewerage and public transport, which is another big one. 

M: Public transport’s important. 

P: Yeah, it’s a huge one. In terms of the global happiness report, there’s two aspects of this report that come out really, really strongly.  One is that there is a design element of city, so things that we put in place to create happy cities. And then there’s the enablers of city happiness. So I think for this podcaster we are actually going to separate into two different podcasts. 

M: Yes, you’re listening to part one today.  

P: Today we’re gonna talk about the design. So what goes into the designing of a good city and how to create that. And in the report they come up with six different areas of [what a] city needs to create a happy city.  

M: All right, well, how about you start us off with the 1st 3 Pete?  

P: All right. So we’ll talk about: 

1. Urban design and place making 

This is city planning, connected spaces and places that create a good city. Creating and using functional space as well. Now I’m going to launch right into this one with an example. Bike lanes, bike lanes, they’re the new black. It’s the thing that everybody is being measured by in terms of their city ability is, do you have a bike lane concept and our bikes able to operate within your city? And it’s a big one because bicycle riding connects communities, so it makes people able to get around. Now, in terms of a city that doesn’t have good public transport, doesn’t have good access. If you can ride somewhere, to get to the grocery shop, to go and see friends, to hang out in the park, it makes a big difference to how you use a city.  

M: Let me add, if you can safely ride somewhere, no one would let their kid’s ride around Sydney, even though we have a bike lane or two every now and then, the bike lanes through the city are like, if you want death, go ride through Sydney CBD. 

P: [Laugh] that’s such a good point Marie, because there’s some gurus out there and there’s this couple Melissa and Chris Bruntlett, who come from Vancouver and they actually wrote a book on ‘Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality’ and they actually talk about the safety of bike riding and how safe it is for a city to be bike riding in and of course, we all know Amsterdam has the best record. 

M: And Nordic, it’s the Nordic countries again.  

P: That do it well, yep. And it really makes a community come together. It provides accessibility, and, as you say, it brings people together because it’s safe and you could take families. 

M: So that was an example of, what was it? 

P: Design and place making. Designing a city. Examples of how to design a city to create good community interaction.  

The next one we look at.

2. Nature 

Huge, connecting with nature, contact with nature, easily accessible green and blue spaces. And when we talk about green and blue spaces, we’re talking about green spaces, which are obviously the parks, your centennial parks, your Hyde Park’s, you’re access to green spaces at the end of your street. 

M: And your natural bush land and forest areas depending on what country you’re in. 

P: Yep, all that sort of stuff. When we talk about blue spaces, I had to look this one up.  

M: Water.  

P: I know I didn’t think. I was just like what’s a blue space?  

M: [Laugh] It’s not a blue zone! 

P: That’s what I thought.  

M: It’s a bunch of old people… 

P: all hanging out in their bikinis.  

[Laughter] 

M: That would be Florida. 

P: Or Hampstead Heath in London.  

But blue space is access to water, which is hugely important and I actually did a lot of research into this in terms of water being included in a city scape. So water is really beneficial for inspiring awe, inspiration. It has a calming effect, has a white noise effect, and it actually brings down traffic noise.  

M: Yes  

P: I thought that was a really interesting point. So in a city scape water is hugely important for creating not only a visual area of interaction, but also auditory, so you can actually dull down the sounds of the city. And the other thing is it cools, and this is something that comes back to medieval times, in the 13th century in Spain, they used water to cool the streets of the city and having water features and there’s beautiful Andalusian fountains in the middle of the piazza or something. They weren’t just pretty, they were there for a function. But I thought that was an interesting aspect, that it has a function that’s not just pretty.  

M: Yeah, yeah.  

P: Really benefits us.  

Okay, moving on to number three. Let’s look at this one:  

3. Mobility 

And that is the ability to get around. So again, bike lanes as being bike lanes are the new black but we’re also looking in here, we’re looking at public transport, diversity of transport and this is a huge one in terms of the development of electronic vehicles and also automated vehicles, which- 

M: I can’t wait for flying cars!  

P: [Laugh] It’s all back to the future, and the future is here people [laugh]. 

M: It is! They exist! They’re being tested right now. 

P: They’re getting better and this is the funny thing, we had this conversation about a year ago. I Remember Marie, you were all pro automated vehicles. No way it’s going to cause accidents. People, I was wrong. 

M: Yes! 

P: The science says that the ability for automated vehicles to prevent accidents is much greater than human error. 

M: Uh huh, computers win again.  

P: Unfortunately… So in 2011 to 2015 electronic vehicle rates soared by 800 percent. Huge increases, and this is only going to get bigger. Technology is improving in the expansion of public transit networks, along with autonomous vehicles and electronic vehicles, is going. It’s going to be a thing of the future. Infrastructure is going to support that so shared public transport, variable transport, in terms of lane ways and arterial roads, which we’re seeing in Sydney at the moment with this whole West connects drama that we’ve all been going through. It’s the way of the future, unfortunately, and the future of mobility is going to be a massive indicator of smart cities and how a city can increase its happiness.  

M: And I think that newer cities are definitely much better placed because they’ve got wider roads and wider lane ways. So it is really tough in cities like Paris. We were there last year. They can’t put lifts in for people with disabilities into their subway systems because they’re underground is like Swiss cheese, right? And the whole thing is going to come falling down if they keep drilling too many holes in there. 

P: Sydney’s suffers from that a little bit as well. 

M: A little bit but we’ve definitely got accessibility down pat compared to a lot of other countries, but you’re really stuck with the age of the infrastructure that you’ve inherited. It’s like older companies right now that have a tech debt with stuff that they’ve been building on top of and on top of and on top of since the seventies compared to new entrants to the market, who come with fresh, clean technology that is only six months old, right? So for, for cities that are really old, this mobility piece becomes so much more costly and difficult to implement. 

P: But it’s going to make a difference to how people can use the city. That’s the whole point.  

M: Yeah, absolutely.  

P: Getting around a city and arterial roads are a really simple introduction to that. You can bypass the busy area of the city so that you can get across town.  

M: Absolutely. All right, we’re going to keep moving on and we’ll power through these last three in our last three minutes.  

So number four on the list of design elements that lead to Happy Cities is: 

4. Sustainability and partnerships.  

So this is one of the things I really liked about the UN sustainability goals is that Number 17 the last one on their list, talks about the need for partnership, and it’s a concept that’s definitely picked up steam over the last five years or so. The government can’t do it all, and there’s been some great examples of where government, academia, corporations and citizens are all coming together now to change our cities and to plan for the future and its, I think the only way that you get true innovation is in coming out of your bubble and your sector and what you know and partnering with other organisations that bring their worldview and they’re different perspectives to drive towards one common goal. So partnership is so key and there’s a great example in Halifax in Canada of some city councillors there and they get $94,000 a year to spend on city infrastructure projects and instead of just deciding that they’re gonna spend it on fountain’s because they’ve got water. 

P: [Laugh] they’re pretty. 

M: I mean, they’d freeze up in Halifax, or whatever it is, instead of sitting in a room with a bunch of councillors and deciding where to spend their money; each year, they have community organisations come in and set up a booth and the residents come in and they walk around and get a little pitch from each of the organisations and then they vote on their top five and so the community is then invested in whatever is developed. The community organisations get to meet the residents and government get to put money into things that the residents want. And it’s just a great little simple example of how you can bring three different communities together to achieve a common goal. 

P: And it’s also giving an empowerment to the people who occupy the city. They’re in charge of their future. And they’re making conscious decisions on it.  

M: Yes, and they’re more likely to use the end outcome.  

All right, so moving on: 

5. Culture. 

We mentioned culture. 

P: The artists have it.  

M: So this is about a city having a sense of uniqueness and having a soul. It is the soul of the city-  

P: and identity that is unique to that city.  

M: Yeah, definitely. So what we’re talking about here is everything from visuals, lights, arts, sounds, climate and people’s behaviour and attitude as well as their physical structures. So all of those things can contribute to a city’s culture. And you’ve been over, you’ve been to Vancouver, haven’t you?  

P: Not yet! I was supposed to go this year.  

M: OH! You were meant to go. 

P: Bloody Covid[19] My Canadian holiday has been cancelled. 

M: All right, I’m going to tell you about a great place called Granville Island from Vancouver. So in the seventies, it was, a dilapidated, industrial area, and the Vancouver government has taken it back and since then, invested a lot of money and I love their mission statement. So it’s “The most inspiring public place in the world.” Is their mission statement, and today it’s a fabulous, artistic and cultural hub. And it’s got public markets about 50 independent restaurants and also got about 300 businesses employing about 3000 people. And arguably many of Canada’s best artists and designers have their works displayed there or they’re selling there, and we went there a couple of years ago. It’s such a great place, such a great place. Now that is a great example of people coming together to create a space that Vancouver’s now so well known for. All tourists go there now and locals love it. Yes, so culture definitely matters. 

P: And I’m going to throw some stats in there. This is where I find a lot of information from the UK coming through. They’re very good at actually evaluating statistics for arts inclusion and there is an arts on prescription project, which comes from Cambridge in the UK. [Arts on Prescription program is based on a model developed in the UK whereby health professionals, including GPs, write prescriptions for their patients to participate in the arts.]  

They found that for an arts community that was actively involved out there in a cityscape:  

  • 71% decrease in feelings of anxiety,  
  • 73% falling depression and  
  • 76% of participants said their wellbeing was increased and they felt more socially included in a city. 

M: Alright, I’m sold. 

P: That’s 3/4 of the city population going ‘yeah, we like artistic spaces.’ You’ve only got to look at the Instagram accounts of people going around taking photos of the graffiti wings that are on all these buildings around. People interact with art on a street level. It isn’t something to be helping museums. I’m getting on my soapbox here [laugh].  

M: All right, we are going to move on. Oh, we are over time already. So we’ll get to the last one and then we’re going to have to wrap up. So last one is: 

6. Quality of service. 

Okay, So it’s making genuinely citizen centred services easier and accessible. And this one is so important. If you’ve ever been to the DMV in the States or if you’ve ever tried to complete a simple tax return in America, you will know the pain that comes with poorly designed, customer centric or non-customer centric services. And we like to complain here in Australia. But our government has digitised most services, and it does lead to a far easier way of doing those day to day things like renewing your licence or paying your fines.  

P: Okay. I’ll concede to you, they’re on their way Marie.  

M: And not that I’m paying fines on a day to day basis. But what I will also say that is in here is accessibility. And when I had my accident after I got out of hospitals in a wheelchair for 6 to 9 months while I was getting on to my feet consistently and it’s lonely, it really is lonely. And it’s not lonely because I had less friends. It’s lonely because I couldn’t do many of the activities that they were doing. I couldn’t get to a bar and feel safe doing that. I couldn’t get to public transport. It just isolates you. And there are so many people in our community who have disabilities or who are elderly and aren’t stable on their feet and they’re ah… 

P: They don’t do things because they’re too scared.  

M: Exactly, exactly. And that’s what I mean by accessibility. So having accessible public transport in accessible spaces is so critical to a large portion of our population.  

P: It’s interesting the Australian environmental Grant Makers Network chimes in here, saying that Australian cities are failing with social inequalities.  

M: Yep. 

P: Do you agree? 

M: Look, I think we’re better than a lot of other countries. I wouldn’t say, I don’t think we’re there yet. Still a long way to go. But we’re doing a lot better than a lot of other countries.  

P: So if we’re going to wrap this up because we’ve gone over time as we always tend to do, this was such a big topic to try and condense into 20 minutes. I mean, we could go on and on.  

M: Maybe, all right. Well, on that note. Thank you for joining us today If you want to hear more please remember to subscribe and like this podcast. 

P: Stay happy people. 

[Happy exit Music] 

Related content: Listen to our Podcast: Enabling Happy Cities (E20)

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