Inside Vancouver
Sad City - continued
By Charles Montgomery published Sep 2, 2008
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Ours is one of the most beautiful, vibrant, and livable cities in the world. Why aren’t we happy?
The Olympic Village project sits on some of the most expensive real estate in the country, and promises all Vancouver’s aspirational hallmarks. The showroom banners belt them out: Parks. Water. Technology. Transportation. Luxury. A world address! All the things marketers think we want. What better place to examine Vancouver’s happiness deficit?
While salespeople fluttered among quartzite countertops and “eco-wood” cabinets, Barrington-Leigh huddled on a bench with his brow furrowed and his laptop aglow. The graphs on his screen offered two remarkable insights: first, there is a clear, inverse relationship between civic wealth and happiness in Canada. The richer the city, the less happy its citizens claimed to be. Second, the most powerful correlate of happiness is trust. The more people said they trusted their neighbours, the more satisfied they were with life in general.
When it comes to influencing happiness, trust beats money hands down, Barrington-Leigh explained, because trust is a marker for a web of social connections and relationships that fuel good feelings. Most people overestimate the benefits of status and wealth—and quartzite countertops—and underestimate the power of these social connections. This is the happiness Catch-22: Rich cities offer high-status jobs and wealth, something most of us are inclined to pursue. But the harder we work, the more we end up sacrificing time with friends, family, and neighbours.
We were interrupted by a Millennium Water marketer. She wanted to show us a scale model of the new neighbourhood. “Look,” she said. “World-class views. Gorgeous.” She’s right, and what’s more, pretty views can actually be good for your health. Prison inmates get sick less often when their cells face farmland or trees. (And a rather gruesome study reported that the simple act of viewing a nature scene helped bronchoscopy patients reduce the agony of having a tube shoved down their throats into their lungs.)
“ So will a condo on False Creek help make me happy?” I asked.
“ Of course!” she said.
“ Maybe not, if you have to work longer hours to pay for it.” Barrington-Leigh said. His numbers show that more expensive homes just don’t boost happiness. They reveal a few other wrinkles, too. Despite the gorgeous views, people who live in mid- and high-rise towers tend to be less happy than those who live in houses and townhouses. They also happen to be less trusting. Even trailer-home residents rate their happiness higher than do people in towers, which suggests that there’s something about living in the sky that brings people down.
