Blueprint for a happier city

By Ciaran Fox. This article first appeared in The Press on May 16 2016.

Ciaran Fox is a mental health promotion strategist for the All Right? campaign. He is a specialist in programme design for positive mental health at a population level with a background in arts and community development.

What if our aspirations and efforts following the earthquakes were focused on adapting instead of recovery and creating instead of re-creation? What if our city could actually make us happier?

Flourishing is a measure of mental wellbeing. It’s a state where people experience positive psychological and social functioning and positive emotions most of the time. Put simply, it’s feeling good and functioning well. But it does not mean being altogether free of hardship or distress.

When we flourish, we experience many related outcomes as a result of our wellbeing. We tend to have better physical health, and less chronic illness. We live longer, are more productive and creative, and experience more success at work and in relationships. Research has shown these outcomes are caused by higher levels of mental wellbeing. When we flourish we’re more pro-social, meaning we tend to put more into our communities, we’re more responsible for our environments, we volunteer more. We’re active citizens.

When author and champion of happy cities, Charles Montgomery visited Christchurch in 2015, he was acutely aware of the opportunity facing our city. His book Happy City is the definitive work on the link between psychological wellbeing and urban design. Montgomery is convinced that a happy city is also a prosperous city, a just city, and a sustainable city. He suggests social connection is the active ingredient, the one that binds us to our cities and makes us happy, engaged, and productive citizens. According to the science of happiness, social connection is a powerful contributor to flourishing and in turn creates better health, economic and social outcomes.

While genetics play a role in our default ability to feel good and function well, that ability is considerably influenced by our intentions, choices, experiences and attitudes, as well as our environment and our social context, including our access to opportunities.

Our physical environment can also shape our experiences, moods, and decision-making. For example, the width and contours of roads affect the speed at which we drive. Restaurants and bars don’t have clocks because they want you to relax and linger. Supermarkets conduct research into the shelf configurations, sounds, and odours that make you spend more money.

Compare your stress levels between walking into a mall during the school holidays and strolling through native forest. Imagine sitting in rush hour stop-start traffic, then imagine sitting on a beach gazing at the sea.

Even subtle changes to our environment can mean the difference between a space that causes us to linger, feel safe and interested in our surroundings, and one that makes us feel stressed, hurried, or unsafe. Green spaces such as parks help us to slow down and be calmer. Heart rates and stress responses decrease when we are immersed in nature. Nature is not just nice to look at; it’s good for our mental health. It recharges us, while easing the effects of stress mentally and physically.

Green spaces are not the only places that can recharge us. Spaces that engage and delight and where we can mingle with people make us feel good and function well. And they can do good business too — think Re:Start Mall.

The most popular developments in the city since the earthquakes have been the adaptive, human-scale projects and amenities exemplified by Gap Filler, Greening the Rubble and others. It is not surprising then that the hugely popular Margaret Mahy playground feels like one of those projects. A public amenity designed purely to generate joy is bringing thousands of people back to the central city. It is adaptive thinking. What is Christchurch for, if not for us, and our children, and our children’s children?

Since the 1920s, cities have been increasingly designed and planned for cars. Unfortunately environments conducive to cars are generally the opposite of environments that we find inviting and good for our wellbeing. Cars have no use for green spaces, beautiful architecture, or public art. Urban planners and traffic engineers have discovered a direct correlation between the speed of traffic and a loss of vibrancy in the surrounding streetscape in terms of decreased foot traffic and commerce. There is strong evidence to support the reduction of the speed limit in the central city. The move to reduce the speed limit to 30km/h is forward-thinking and should be celebrated.

Once we understand that the design of spaces and structures shape our mental environments, and that our surroundings can either contribute to happier, healthier and more successful communities or cause distress, disconnection and fail us all, then rebuilding our city takes on a new importance. Designing for and prioritising cars is old thinking. It does not make for a happy, successful city. The happy city is one that adapts, one that responds to the people participating in it.

The drive to recover has placed additional pressure on us all. The notion of recovery suggests returning to a previous state, the restoration of something lost. But what if we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of our past? Our city will never be the same — if we want to be better than before, we need to adapt our city so everyone can flourish.