It is my pleasure to now introduce Howard
from Ken and how he is also an incredible

leader in the connections between public
health and the built environment.

Also director of politics at the C.D.C.
and

but has really been doing amazing work
to change the standards of all of our

professional associations in the built
environment and since moving to Seattle.

He has now logged more miles on his
bike and his kayak then than in the car.

So welcome welcome to use this one.

Thanks very much.

Alan.
Let me get the May of the College of

Engineering Dean friends of the College
of Architecture whom I knew and

he was just plain old
Steve Professor De Rose.

Professor Dunham JONES It is a real
pleasure an honor to be here.

It's an honor to share the podium
with such distinguished speakers so

distinguished that I wasn't sure I
deserved a place on the agenda but

with a little reflection I think I
figured out why I was invited to be on

the agenda today.

And you can see the answer here.

I'd like to salute your idjit tech its
leaders and Michael and Jenny Messner for

the vision that led to today's symposium
in that will I am confident lead to hiring

a stellar in very lucky faculty member
is the here in the School of Civil and

Environmental Engineering into special
shout out to my old friends and

colleagues from Atlanta.

Many of whom are in the audience.

The worst part about having moved
from Atlanta to Seattle is that

I don't get to see you
all very much anymore.

Second worst thing is I'm not
allowed to see you all anymore and.

I'd like to begin my talk
with a multiple choice quiz.

So please listen carefully.

In choose the answer the best
completes the following since.

We hold these truths to be self-evident

that all men are created equal that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain

unalienable Rights that among these
are Life Liberty and the pursuit of.

Properties the first choice money health.

Sex happiness.

That's right.

It is the pursuit of happiness or

if you read the fine print carefully it
was actually the perfect of happy Neff

according to the authors of
the Declaration of Independence and

that will be my starting
point this morning happiness.

I know what you're thinking the guy
moved from Atlanta to Seattle and

promptly goes off the deep end he
wants to talk about happiness.

What is happiness have
to do with Olmstead or

with sustainable urban environments or
with your Ditech.

Well listen to Olmsted in his
famous eight hundred seventy S.

a public parks and the enlargement
of towns recalling that by eight

hundred seventy his resume included
both press back park and Central Park.

So he knew a thing or
two about the subject.

Consider that the New York
park in the Brooklyn Park.

Those were the names for a Central Park
in Prospect Park at the time are the only

places in those associated cities.

Where in this one thousand
nine hundred seventy.

If year after Christ you will find a body
of Christians coming together in with

an evident glee in the press
ticked of coming together.

All classes largely represented
with a common purpose.

Not at all intellectual
competitive with none disposing to

jealousy and spiritual or
intellectual pride toward none.

Each individual adding by his mere
presence to the pleasure of all others

all helping to the greater happiness
of each Their it is happiness and

almost that continues.

You made us often see vast numbers
of persons brought closely together.

Poor and rich young and
old Jew and Gentile

he stopped reciting at that point
a modern Olmstead might have said gay and

straight armed and
unarmed black and white.

I have seen one hundred
thousand thus congregated and

I have looked studiously but
vainly among them for a single face

completely unsympathetic with the
prevailing expression of good nature and

light heartedness you will agree
with me I am sure that convenient.

Attractive opportunity for

such a congregation is a very
good thing to provide for.

So in this short passage we hear omes
did making three profound claims

first that happiness is not only
a legitimate outcome to aim for

in place making but
a primary outcome second that social

connectedness is a key ingredient of
happiness and third that the design of

places in this case urban parks
can help achieve these outcomes.

So let's unpack almost
its claims one by one.

First on happiness is
happiness a serious and

legitimate topic for
serious well dressed adults to consider in

serious meetings like this one little loan
the legitimate goal for social policy.

Can we even define happiness.

Can we measure it.

Fortunately we know a fair amount
about happiness in recent years.

Happiness has been carefully studied in
fields as diverse as behavioral economics

positive psychology and neurobiology
there is a journal of happiness studies

a world happiness report is
published each year for better or

worse there are countless self-help
guides as well one thing we know is that

happiness can be measured in
the measurements stand up to scrutiny.

Surveys that simply ask people if they're
happy using questions like the ones shown

here have high internal consistency
reliability and validity.

They give consistent results over time.

And people's ratings track well with
the ratings of their friends and family by

interviewers and even with how much they
smile while they're being interviewed and

ratings of happiness also track well with
objective measurements such as brain scans

and when we measure happiness
some interesting findings emerge.

For instance happiness tracks very
differently than economic prosperity.

This graph shows a half century of U.S.
data on both happiness and

income the solid line shows per capita
income which rose spectacularly over

the last half century the dotted line
shows happiness which hasn't budged.

Psychologist.

David Meyers describes this
as the American paradox.

He wrote that is the prosperous last half
century came to an end we found ourselves

as a nation and here I'm quoting with big
houses and broken homes high incomes and

low morale secured rights and
diminished civility.

We excelled at making a living but
too often failed at making a life.

We celebrated our prosperity but
you're in for purpose.

We cherished our freedom but longed for
connection in an age of plenty who

were feeling spiritual hunger these facts
of life lead us to a startling conclusion

are becoming better off materially has
not made us better off psychologically.

This is of course up in the standard
economic assumptions and raises lots of

interesting questions about what leads to
happiness more about that in a moment.

Also when we measure happiness we can
compare countries on their average levels

of happiness this chart from the latest
World Happiness Report shows such

a comparison Northern European
nations score highest the U.S.

scores seventeenth just behind Mexico and
Panama.

That raises interesting questions too.

And I don't want to tip
my hand too much but

since our topic today is
the built environment in.

As long as we have this chart up on
the screen look at what happens when we

map the top national rankings for

per capita bicycle ownership
on to happiness rankings.

Stay with me all this talk of happiness
will get us back to sustainable urban ism

second happiness has entered
the public policy arena.

You may be familiar with a gross
national happiness an idea

introduced by the king of Bhutan
in one thousand nine hundred two.

The idea was that conventional
economic indicators such as the G.D.P.

would not fully measure national progress.

As shown in this diagram the gross
national happiness includes such important

parameters as how much sleep
everybody gets social support.

Emotional balance and time spent walking
three years ago a UN General Assembly

resolution invited countries to develop
quote measures that better capture

the importance of the pursuit of happiness
and well being in development with a view

toward guiding national policies more and
more happiness is a mainstream topic

third happiness is good for your health
happy people have better immune function

lower levels of stress hormones in
lower levels of inflammatory markers

they choose healthier behaviors they
have lower rates of heart disease and

other ailments and when they do get
sick they suffer less disability.

They live longer.

So as a guy who cares about health.

I'm glad happiness is
a focus of policy discussion

forth we know something about
what predicts happiness

a decade ago Nobel laureate Daniel
Kahneman in some colleagues devised what

they called the day reconstruction
method a brilliantly simple idea.

They asked people to keep track of how
they spend their time during the course of

the day and how happy various activities
make them hear the results from

their first study of nine hundred nine
women no big surprises here Sex topped

the list socialising came next
commuting place dead last.

Architects and planners we're starting to
see some design specifications here and

no I don't mean cruise ships on commuter
trains in longer term studies using

a variety of survey methods meaningful
work not being poor being educated and

being healthy all are predictors of
greater happiness and again and again.

Studies show that social connections
bonds with family and friends community

engagement civic participation are among
the strongest predictors of happiness and

this brings us to Olmsted second
point social connectedness.

Olmstead believed that the benefits of
communing with nature were rooted in

an intensely social process based on
his observations in parks he identified

two kinds of social interactions which
he called gregarious and neighborly

the gregarious mode involves large numbers
of diverse strangers gathering and

being seen together while the neighborly
mode involves small numbers of friends and

family joining in ways that
facilitate what he called Personal

friendliness modern social scientists
might equate these to bridging and

bonding social capital.

As with happiness we know quite
a bit about social capital.

First as I mentioned it's
a strong predictor of happiness.

This seems to be true no matter how you
measure social capital rates of voting or

belonging to community associations
the numbers of friends and

neighbors people feel they can count
on levels of trust and reciprocity.

One interesting indicator
is the lost wallet.

You may have heard of the series of
studies in which investigators drop

wallets on city streets around the world
that while it's contained the equivalent

of fifty dollars in cash a family photo
in the cell phone number of the supposed

owner the observed outcome is whether
strangers return the wallets to their

owner's cities vary by the probability
that the while it will

be returned from Helsinki where
nearly every Well it is returned.

To Mumbai Budapest in New York or
about three and four.

While it's a return down to Prague Lisbon
and Madrid where nearly none is returned.

This lead to a question on the Gen On
the A Gallup World Poll asking people to

estimate the probability that
if they lost their wallet.

A neighbor or a stranger or
a police officer would return it.

So this is a measure of social trust
you can probably guess the result

the higher people's estimates that is
the higher their level of social trust

in their particular city the happier
they are with life in general such

findings emerge with great regularity
in the words of John Helliwell and

Robert Putnam two top researchers
in this area marriage and

family ties to friends and
neighbors workplace ties

civic engagement both individually and
collectively trustworthiness and

trust all appear to be independently and
robustly related to happiness and

life satisfaction social capital is
also a strong predictor of health.

If you have a strong social network.

You're less likely to be depressed
less likely to catch the common cold

less likely to have
a heart attack more likely

to survive if you do have a heart attack
a strong social network doubles your

survival from breast cancer overall
your life expectancy is longer.

If social connectedness were
a medicine we would all be taking it

in social connectedness yields
another benefit resiliency.

Daniel Aldrich analyzing
the post Katrina recovery

focused on the Vietnamese community in
villages the list in east New Orleans.

Despite poverty extensive flooding in low
levels of formal education nine in ten

businesses in households had returned to
this neighborhood within a year far more

than in other New Orleans neighborhoods
residents had launched a charter school

built in urban farm an established
a new medical clinic the secret sauce.

The community's social capital in
Eric Klinenberg definitive book

on the Chicago heat wave we read that one
of the strongest predictors of survival

was the strength of social
networks at the neighborhood level

resilience is an important goal for all of
us from design professionals to engineers

to health professionals at a time when
climate change and other mega trends will

confront us with more and
more disasters social capital is key.

So instead second point that social
connectedness is a core component of

happiness was not only true but
an understatement social connectedness

offers a range of other important benefits
as well including health and resilience.

So I've talked about two concepts that
were central to Olmsted happiness and

social connectedness in being a doctor
if not going to third which is health.

These have a lot to do with each
other the causal arrows that connect

each to the other probably run in
both directions in every case.

And this brings us to Olmsted third point
the one that I want to end with is there

a role for the built environment in
optimizing these precious parts of life in

helping make people happier more connected
with each other and even healthier.

Well there is a growing literature that
suggests there is that there is what some

have called a geography of happiness an
approach to place making that aims to make

people happy to connect them to each
other to promote good health and

to help them thrive.

Let's consider a few examples in
addition to the waterway example that

Dick Jackson just shared with us.

Clean air makes people happy and polluted
air makes them unhappy surveys on several

continents show an impressive correlation
between air quality and life satisfaction.

If you want to make people happy.

Therefore design for clean air
excessive noise makes people unhappy.

Unless of course they're twenty
something single and clubbing.

Traffic noise airport noise.

Each back system noise should all be
minimized in designing human habitat

long commutes make most people unhappy
although as Professor Mokhtari and

has pointed out some
people actually like them.

Car commuting seems to be worse than other
modes and car commuters are in worse moods

in the evenings than other kinds of
commuters a recent study in Sweden

actually found that the longer the commute
the higher the probability of divorce.

If you want to make people happy design
for short commutes preferably not by car.

People love contact with nature in
the words of environmental psychologist

Rachel Kaplan nature matters
to people big trees and

small trees glistening water birds
budding bushes colorful flowers.

These are important elements in a good
life to make people happy provide them

with nature contect biofilm like elements
in buildings views of greenery access

to parks and green spaces urban tree
canopies we are a social species.

If you want to make people happy.

Give them third places places that are
neither home or work where they can mix

and mingle plazas sidewalks cafes
Olmsted's insights and this point.

Don't just apply to Parks

finally beauty this one is more
elusive as well and the book.

Tony wrote in his wonderful book
The Architecture of Happiness beautiful

architecture has none of the unambiguous
advantages of a vaccine or a bowl of race.

What's beautiful to you may be ugly to
me but to the architects in the room

I'd respectfully suggest buildings that
are beautiful rather than provocative

buildings that are more pleasing
than edgy buildings that inspire

rather than challenge these may be
elements in the Architecture of Happiness.

This is a symposium on
urban sustainability but

I started with a focus on happiness linked
it to social capital and health and

suggested that individually and
together they.

They offer an invaluable lens through
which to design the built environment but

that's not all but stick it up a level.

Here's another three ring diagram this
one the familiar triple bottom line of

sustainability social environmental and
economic everything I've talked about so

far fits neatly within
the social realm but

that social realm isn't an isolated
Siloam remember the first law of ecology.

Everything is connected to everything
else optimizing that social realm

optimizing happiness and social capital
and health and very importantly equity.

Not always but more often than not

yields collateral benefits it optimizes
the other two realms as well.

In other words human wellbeing
can serve as the North Star

on our journey toward sustainability.

The urban tree canopy
that makes people happy.

Also cools cities helps
manage storm water and

increases property values and
therefore municipal revenues.

The walkable breakable neighborhoods
that make people happy and

build social capital also reduce
travel demand energy use and

air pollution the clean air that makes
people happy requires less driving and

cleaner energy sources
including renewables Civil and

Environmental Engineering is a modern
name for an academic discipline but

I believe that almost dead if you could
join us today would heartily approve

the word civil comes from the Latin
civill ists relating to public life.

Be fitting the citizen the word
environmental has as its root the old

French word on the run for circling or

surrounding yours is a field
fundamentally about people and

as a corollary about the surroundings
we create for people him and

wellbeing offers an exciting even
transformative framework for

the Frederick Law Olmstead cheer and
be made in French.

Professor to roast
Professor Dunham JONES Mr and

Mrs Misner as you launch the search.

I wish you happiness.

Well being and great success.

Thank you.