Making Territory: Cultivating local happiness!

November 2024

Association Nationale des Pôles territoriaux et des Pays (ANPP - Territoires de projet)

To download : vademecum-anpp-bonheur-local.pdf (520 KiB), stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.pdf (80 KiB)

Local happiness: in concrete terms?

Confirmed by numerous economic, demographic and sociological studies, the principle that ‘money can’t buy happiness’ does not yet seem to have permeated everyone’s minds! Measuring people’s happiness is still too often approached using economic criteria alone, such as GDP, income or the sacrosanct ‘purchasing power’… These criteria do not do everything.

Changing the way we look at development

Beyond a reproduction of thinking linked to our history and our economic system, which tends to consider that the development of our territory (the environment we consider to be ‘ours’) is linked to its economic growth alone, it often seems simpler to measure factual elements to obtain answers considered to be ‘objective’ to a notion that is often (and wrongly) considered to be exclusively subjective. Happiness is variable and multi-dimensional There are, however, valid, tried and tested indicators for measuring the state of well-being and happiness of individuals, based not just on economic, monetary or mainly quantitative data, but also on qualitative data, drawn from the perceptions of individuals, taking account of their variability over time and thus making it possible to measure the impact of individual/collective events or the economic climate on the happiness of the French.

The quarterly Tableau de bord du bien-être des Français, produced by CEPREMAP since June 2016 via INSEE’s monthly household survey, regularly monitors the state of people’s fulfilment by asking them about the major dimensions that determine their well-being.

These dimensions, which were listed in 2008 as part of the report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (known as the Stiglitz Report), have no specific hierarchy and must be considered (both in terms of how they are achieved and how they are measured) in a concomitant and systemic manner:

1. Material living conditions (income, consumption and wealth)

2. Health

3. Education

4. Personal activities, including work

5. Political participation and governance

6. Social ties and relationships

7. The environment (present and future)

8. Security (both economic and physical)

Happiness, a ‘serious’ tool for steering policies

Well-being is defined as all the opportunities available to each person to meet their material and non-material needs, to develop fully as a human being and to be able to carry out a collective project that contributes to living together.

In this context, the role of the public authorities (and society as a whole) is to encourage the expansion of these opportunities for individuals in eleven areas.

To make the concept of well-being operational in public policy, the OECD has also defined a common framework for measuring and improving well-being, incorporating these key areas and measuring instruments from a dual perspective: knowing the state of and taking action to improve people’s current well-being; and identifying and measuring the resources needed for future well-being.

Local happiness: the right scale?

Are we happier in the south than in the north? In the countryside than in the city? In France than elsewhere? In concrete terms, are certain regions or countries more conducive to personal fulfilment than others?

Let’s all go to Finland!

In 2024, Finland ranked first in the World Happiness Report and France twenty-seventh. If we focus on the youngest generations (under 30), France falls to forty-eighth place, even though the youngest age groups are usually the happiest (a national phenomenon also observed in Canada, the USA and Germany). It’s only a short step from there to thinking that our quality of life is lower than in other countries… However, the criteria measured to produce this ranking (income, GDP per capita, life expectancy in good health, social support, freedom of choice in life, generosity and absence of corruption) remind us that the happiness of individuals depends more on a reliable institutional and human environment, driven by moral and humanist values (confidence in others and in the future, solidarity, generosity, probity, respect, etc.) than on material or geographical aspects. ) than on material or geographical aspects. So the answer lies not in the area itself, but rather in the way its community of inhabitants functions.

‘Misery would be less painful in the sun’, myth or reality?

Despite the heliotropism of some of our fellow citizens, in France we are no happier in sunny regions than in those deemed to be less well exposed, and we are not necessarily more unhappy in the city than in the country, despite the well-established popular beliefs.

Here again, studies6 show that the region and its amenities are not the only factors responsible for people’s happiness or unhappiness. Personal satisfaction with one’s own life (the feeling of having chosen one’s life, satisfaction with one’s life balance, one’s social life, the feeling of moral and material support from one’s entourage, or the way one views one’s personal career compared with that of one’s parents, etc.), as well as the ability to choose one’s region, to settle there, stay there or leave freely, also condition one’s perception of it. A measure of local happiness that did not take these factors of subjective well-being into account would not reflect a true picture of reality.

The region as a level of social cohesion, trust and a secure ‘home from home

On the basis of these observations, the local level undeniably has a key role to play in the happiness of its citizens, because it is at this level that two of the most important conditions for personal fulfilment are played out:

• social relations and links

• building a sense of confidence (and therefore security) in one’s material, physical and human environment.

It is also on this scale that we are generally best placed, individually and collectively, to determine what constitutes our common capital (natural, economic, human and social), and the measures we wish to take to preserve it, make it grow and ensure its sustainability for future generations.

Local happiness: are we all responsible?

The history of our country, its centralisation and its system of social protection have built and shaped France into a welfare state. We have become so accustomed to this that we have forgotten that, as stated in Article 1 of the Constitution of 1793: ‘The aim of society is common happiness’ and that it is therefore up to the individuals who make it up, and not just the institutions around which it is structured, to do their bit to contribute to collective happiness.

Citizen participation is at the heart of the process

Citizen involvement is the sine qua non for measuring local happiness or initiating a process of reflection on this subject. As well as assessing the degree of fulfilment, it is also a question of understanding what underpins the well-being of individuals and of a community, of collectively identifying the risks and opportunities likely to influence these factors of happiness and of determining together where the priorities for action lie.

Unlike ‘traditional’ approaches to local development, the focus is no longer solely on the challenges that the area could take up to ensure its growth and remain ‘competitive’, but rather on the ‘assets’ resulting from the combination between the area (its amenities) and its community (its values and how it maintains them), which constitute a capital to be preserved for the current and future well-being of all.

Mayors and local elected representatives are citizens like any others

In building a regional project based on collective happiness, it is important for elected representatives to be able to take their place as members of the community, to sit down again at the discussion table and express or listen, in the same way as their fellow citizens, to what constitutes the common heritage and the very foundations of local happiness.

The health crisis linked to COVID-19 put these same councillors on the front line in the face of the pandemic, providing administrative, medical and social organisation and emergency management. While citizens’ expectations of them had already risen sharply over the past decade, the result of this period is an inordinate sense that the mayor of a local authority has the power to change the world, and that it is his or her responsibility to do so!

The urgent need to rebuild local governance

By 2023, 513 mayors were resigning every year. Between lack of confidence, verbal aggression, acts of violence, the disengagement of the State, the weight of the administrative burden linked to the increase in legislation and the tendency of citizens to become ‘consumers of public services’, mayors are exhausted and throwing in the towel.

Faced with this worrying situation, it is becoming essential to regain a balance and the means to share social responsibilities once again, which ‘signi􀀁 e means accepting responsibility for the situation of others as well as for one’s own situation’ and, by extension, accepting responsibility for one’s own happiness as well as that of others.

Without being overly optimistic or naïve, asking your fellow citizens the question ‘What makes you (or would make you more) happy to live in our area?’ is the first step in (re)mobilising elected representatives and residents together and changing the way local policies are conceived, especially as it is not certain that the majority response will spontaneously be ‘more services or public facilities’.

Sources

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