More socializing, less driving
How a dispersed environment impacts our lives & happiness
If you were to break down your day and analyze it in bite-size chunks, can you think of which activities produce positive emotions and which produce negative emotions?
Princeton psychology professor Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues conducted experiments to answer this question. They wanted to see what made life pleasant or unpleasant for people in the real world. It was through these studies, that Kahneman established a link between happiness and urban life.
In one of his experiments, he asked over nine hundred working women in Texas to divide the day up into episodes, and then describe everything they did and how they felt at the time. Out of all the ways they passed their day, can you guess what made the women most happy?
I’ll give you a hint, it starts with S and ends with X.
I know, shocker….
But what I’m more interested in is what came close second… which was socializing.
You see, we humans are social beings, but in today’s world, most people correlate higher income to higher levels of happiness. Hence the hustle culture in the US.
In reality, studies show that when it comes to life satisfaction, our relationships with other people beat income, hands down.
Just going from being friendless to having one friend or family member to confide in had the same effect on life satisfaction as a tripling of income.
Now… any chance you can guess which activity gave the women the least satisfaction throughout their day?
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. Drumroll please - it was commuting to work.
I can relate, I remember waking up at the crack of dawn and sitting in my work truck for about an hour every day on my way to the job site. Even without traffic, it was brutal. It was around this time that I came across the book Walkable City.
The book completely changed my life and the way I look at the world around me.
It was my first peak into what good urban design looks like and how our external world shapes our internal world.
Our built environment has caused us to rely on cars for everything, this is not a recipe for happiness. Most people in the US wouldn’t bat an eye if you told them they needed to drive 45 minutes to get to their destination. Meanwhile, here in Barcelona, I can get just about anywhere in the city in 15 minutes by bicycle.
It’s a healthier option, it’s better for the environment, it decreases traffic congestion, and it leads to more serendipitous encounters.
It also means more time for sex and socializing, which according to Kahneman, are the activities that give us the most life satisfaction.
Now, I realize that most people don’t have the luxury of picking up and moving at the drop of a hat, but it’s surely something that deserves careful consideration.
If you do feel the nudge to start looking into other options, then I would recommend following City Nerd on YouTube. He regularly uploads videos like this one and this one where he explores affordable cities with a less car-centric focus.
May your days be filled with more socializing and less time on the road.
Your happiness and life satisfaction depends on it.
Until next time my friends.
<3 B
Urbanists & community activists often focus on the wrong metrics. People don't care about seconds-per-delay at the intersection, population density graphs, or statewide housing trends. Like you said, they care about getting places on time, getting fed, and getting laid. (And maybe a few other things sometimes.) For transportation, people will never opt out of a car if they don't have viable options to the car.
I'm glad you're able to be in a place where the healthy choice is the easy choice!
I wonder if Porsche owners feel the same way ? Hmmmmm