Urban happiness and policies: the approach of Bristol (UK)

Nowadays GDP is not sufficient to represent the wellbeing of a Country, so there are attempts to complement it with new indicators also related to happiness, well-being and quality of life. The new approach to happiness is interdisciplinary and pays growing attention at urban level, using wellbeing measures to direct the policy development, to monitor policy progress and evaluate their results. This paper intends to give a contribution by analyzing the connections between happiness and urban policies, through the exploratory investigation on the approach used in Bristol. The city uses a mix of 'subjective' together with the more conventional 'objective' measure in order to compare the level of subjective well-being with indicators and socio-economic data. The approach allows on one hand to measure and track the well-being of citizens to guide and support policies, on the other to make citizens more involved in and aware of the changes taking place.