David Crossley

Houston at 200

Jay Blazek Crossley, Aug 30, 10.

Tagged with health, happiness, prosperity

Quality of life, surprisingly, is often seen as a vague concept almost without meaning. But where I work, we think it’s pretty clear that quality of life is about the health, happiness, and prosperity of human beings. For 12 years, the mission of Houston Tomorrow has been to improve the quality of life of the people of the Houston region.

To support that mission, the board of Houston Tomorrow recently adopted a new vision for the year 2036: On its 200th birthday Houston will be home to the healthiest, happiest, most prosperous people in the United States.

To move in that direction, we have to find some measures - some indicators of health, happiness, and prosperity - that we can try to improve over time. We also need to either find existing sets of city by city indicators, or we have to create them. We’re doing the research now, and we’ll see what develops.

Certain drivers are known. Health, for example, is driven by genetics, input (air food water), and environment, both natural and built. We’re not likely to get into genetics, but we do research, education, and discussion about air, food, and water, as well as on the natural and built environments. The big health issues at the moment are obesity, stress, and injuries and deaths from car crashes (which are the leading cause of death for people under 30 - our future leaders).

An emerging cure for these ailments is what’s increasingly called “walkable urbanism.” Christopher Leinberger of the Brookings Institution divides metropolitan regions into walkable urbanism and drivable sub-urbanism. In walkable urbanism, people have the choice of living in neighborhoods that are easily and safely walkable, where there are many goods, services, and amenities, and if possible there is high-quality transit service. The need for cars is significantly diminished in such neighborhoods, and the research reveals profound improvements in health - even longevity - in walkable urbanism. Leinberger also points out that somewhere approaching 50% of Americans desire this lifestyle.

Happiness is a tougher issue. People see that as being really really vague. But there’s research on that, too, lots of it. One set of indicators comes from Karma Tshiteem, who is the Secretary of Gross National Happiness in the Kingdom of Bhutan. Bhutan has an official national priority: happiness. So he is the lead guy in that nation’s pursuit of its dreams.

Full Story: Houston at 200: healthy, happy, prosperous
Source: Chron.com’s The List, August 30, 09

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