Richard Florida has a new thought provoking piece on what makes cities happy. Since cities are inanimate and cannot really be happy or sad, he seems to be referring to the aggregate mood of the people.
He and his colleagues look at the positive correlations between happiness and such things as income and having higher education levels. And they note the negative correlation to lower education levels.
This made me think about political revolution theory. More specifically the theory that societies are most prone to revolution when rising expectations fail to meet reality. (This is the J-Curve model.) The reverse also generally holds: revolutions are least likely when reality is matching rising expectations — because people are happy if their expectations for life are being met, or exceeded.
So, therefore, if a city is able to meet the rising expectations of people who live there, the citizens will appear to be happy by most measures. I think this partially fits with Florida’s observations.
For example, he found that cities with high numbers of citizens with advanced education levels tend to be happier. We could assume that these individuals have higher expectations for themselves, and also tend to meet them. But we should probably watch out for situations in which those with higher education are not succeeding.
Florida also notes the lower levels of happiness among metro areas associated with the working class — their expectations for life have likely been dashed.
For political leaders a key issue may be to manage expectations. For those of us just trying to understand cities, we may need to look beyond comparing such things as housing prices, average wages, and even education levels across cities. For example, it may not matter to happiness if one city’s citizens have a lower living standard because of high costs; it matters more whether they expect something different.
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If I remember my comparative government’s course in college, the salient point of the J-curve model is the unrest and revolution that follows the shock to expectations. What American cities are most likely to feel this? I feel like it isnt likely in the midwest and Northeast simply because expectations for urban centers has been so low for so long
Great question. Will we see what amounts to revolutionary unrest in any US cities. You’re right that the most depressed places are not likely to be hotbeds because they’ve been down for so long (think of M. Moore’s Flint MI)
Maybe I’ll try to take a look at the same data as R. Florida used or created to see where there is a disconnect: for example, which cities might have rising education levels, but continued unemployment or worsening unemployment. Or places where living standards are falling, while so many other indicators are not.
In places where the J-Curve applies, there has also tended to be a sizable youthful population that feels disconnected. So maybe you look for a city with a larger 20-something population who also tend to have college-level education.
Do any US cities stand out to you as having these characteristics?
the unemployment rate on our country is growing bigger and bigger due to government mismanagement;`.
unemployment is always a problem with any nation .:”