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Build and make someone happy

25/2/2010

Sustainability should consider well-being as well as environmental sustainability, says report.

Built environment professionals could be making residents and communities a whole lot happier if they knew how to assess, value and deliver the factors that generate a sense of well-being. A report published this week looks at the connection between people's well-being and their built environment, and considers how better account could be given to these linkages through policy development and professional practice.

The report's recommendations include:

• incorporating well-being and sustainability issues into the curriculum of future built environment professionals
• creating an accreditation scheme that sets a standard for buildings and developments that works across social, environmental, and economic outcomes to achieve sustainable well-being
• piloting a programme that brings together the two principal objectives of pH (place happiness) and pS (place sustainability)
• local authorities should embed sustainable well-being in tools such as Local Area Agreements.

The Happold Trust commissioned the New Economics Foundation (NEF) to carry out the research for the report, Good foundations: towards a low carbon, high well-being built environment. NEF is now looking at how the principles outlined in its report would work in practice. NEF executive director Stewart Wallis called for a change in thinking on the built environment, saying: "communities are an indicator of the values we live by. The tale now is not necessarily the most positive one."

Policymakers are showing a growing interest in how to generate a sense of well-being among citizens, and have looked at notable examples such as the kingdom of Bhutan, which has integrated ‘gross national happiness' into policy.  Wallis said that NEF's report, The happy planet index is its most popular download.

Good foundations and The happy planet index can be downloaded at www.neweconomics.org.