Better for Us:
Well-Being Science and Community Change
My
business, Community Renaissance, has been a member of LocalFirstAz for the past
three years. Why? Because for every $100
spent at a locally owned business, $73 remains in the local economy and $27
leaves. Compare that impact with the other choice: for every $100 spent on a non-locally owned
business, $43 remains in the local economy and $57 leaves. (from www.localfirstaz.com/learn).
In the
most recent Gallup-Healthways Well-being Index (2014), Arizona ranked 35 out of
the 50 states for overall financial well-being, with indicators that include
money spent on food and healthcare http://www.well-beingindex.com . Financial
well-being, also referred to as economic opportunity, is only one of the six
measurement dimensions in the Santa Monica California Well-being project http://wellbeing.smgov.net/projectresources
.
Awarded 1
million dollars by the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge, the City of
Santa Monica brought in the Rand Corporation, the U.K-based research institute
New Economics Foundation (nef) and additional 18 experts from other research
groups and universities to:
·
develop tools to
measure their city’s well-being, and
·
produce a
transferability guide for other cities, such as Tucson, to use.
The other
five areas measured in the Santa Monica data were: community, place, learning,
health and outlook, i.e. how individuals feel about their lives and day-to-day
emotions.
The
overall purpose of the Santa Monica Project and other resources that are
emerging as part of the field of Well-being Science is to provide cities
(regions, states and countries) “with targeted information to act on the causes
and conditions which improve quality of life.” Source: Summary Findings from
the Local Wellbeing Index, April 2015, The Wellbeing Project.
One
interesting finding from the Santa Monica Project is displayed in this
image:
In Tucson,
the University of Arizona’s MAP Dashboard found that over 1 in 3 share this
concern http://mapazdashboard.arizona.edu
.
Related to
this finding: The HUD designated Southwest Fair Housing Council--one of the
partners with Community Renaissance’s program, The Partnership for Equity and
Civic Engagement (PECE) and Do Happy Today--is conducting its first phase of an
Opportunity Map with assistance from University of Arizona students in
Geography. This first phase connects
affordability and employment to segregated housing patterns in Pima County http://www.swfhc.com .
Other
university faculty at the University of Arizona, Brian Meyer, and, Scott
Cloutier, at Arizona State University are studying community resiliency (Meyer)
and Sustainable Neighborhoods for Happiness (Cloutier). Also, local efforts such as Healthy Pima and
Tucson Mayor Rothschild’s Commission on Poverty (2014) and Commission on Food
Security, Heritage and Economy (2015) are part of the Well-being Science
research leaning our region forward to positive community change http://healthypima.org http://www.mayorrothschild.com/initiatives .
“Wellbeing science is valuable for three
reasons. First, it helps us focus on the
things that make the most difference in people’s lives…. Second, it helps us manage the trade-offs
between different objectives…. And
third, wellbeing science can help in identifying positive feedback loops and
the interventions that encourage them…. http://wellbeing.smgov.net/projectresources
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