Roadmap to Cities’ Happiness(1)
Dr Mahmoud AlBurai
I am on a mission...City Changer..Building Dubai PropTech Ecosystem..Leading Real estate FDI into Dubai
2700 years ago, Aristotle said “Whatever creates or increases happiness, or some part of happiness, we ought to do; whatever destroys or hampers happiness, or gives rise to its opposite, we ought not to do,”. Moreover, he said the highest purpose of every city is to help residents achieve happiness. Happiness cannot be achieved if we do not think of it as a system. This system is built on pillars of social, economic and environmental wellbeing. Totality of these pillars is called by late Secretary General of the UN Gross Global Happiness. Economic indicators are no longer the way we should measure wellbeing and happiness. As per Nobel Prize Economist, Joseph Stiglitz “GDP is not a good measure of economic performance; it's not a good measure of well-being". Robert Kennedy said “ Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile”. So when we say happy cities we need to focus on people. People centered cities. Whatever leads to their happiness should be enhanced and taken forward. William Shakespeare, who stated, “What is the city but the people”. H.H Sheikh Mohamad bin Rashid AlMaktoum, Vice President , Prime Minister of UAE, and Ruler of Dubai said” the government job is to create happiness”. Happiness is government job. But it is also our job as people to look for happiness and create it. Private sector should be involved. Happiness is beyond smart services; What we advocate here for is system happiness. To be continued
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6 年Dear Mahmoud, consider Institutional or Individual measurement of own 'Happiness' "You’d be wise to ditch the idea that happiness is an objective trait that can be compared across borders. And even measuring happiness within a single country over time may not yield much" ... IMHO Happiness Index in the context of City and Country remain fairly fake. (These are excerpts from NY Post Article) Here’s a problem: Happiness surveys don’t even agree with one another. Surveys are supposed to be reporting news, but how useful would your newspaper be if it gave conflicting reports for the numbers on the stock market, the weather and the Yankees box score? A 2012 Gallup survey on happiest countries had a completely different list, with Panama (!) first, followed by Paraguay, El Salvador, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Thailand, Guatemala, the Philippines, Ecuador and Costa Rica. These surveys depend on subjective self-reporting, not to mention eliding cultural differences. In Japan there is a cultural bias against boasting of one’s good fortune, and in East Asia the most common response, by far, is to report one’s happiness as average. In Scandinavia, meanwhile, there is immense societal pressure to tell everyone how happy you are, right up to the moment when you’re sticking your head in the oven. Longtime Scandinavian resident Michael Booth observes as much in his book on the subject, in which he points out that Danes and Icelanders ranked fourth and first in the world in use of antidepressants in an OECD survey. Booth, after living in Scandinavia for more than a decade, says that he’s never met a Dane who really believes Danes are among the happiest people. A Pew survey of 43 countries (which excluded most of Europe) had Mexico, Israel and Venezuela finishing first, second and third, with the US in the top 10 but barely beating Vietnam and Colombia. Huh? In that same survey, here are some of the other countries that beat healthy, wealthy Japan: Argentina, Peru, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa and Nicaragua. Does anyone seriously think Nicaragua is a happier place than Japan?
Counselor/Therapist at Emotional Freedom Counseling and Therapy Clinic
6 年insightful article.
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6 年Absolutely , Dubai is showing us how to make a happiest city and how happy people involve themselves into innovative work.