Health, Wealth and Happiness: Conference Essays

Conference Essays 2010 Health, Wealth and Happiness: what makes a prosperous region?

Health, Wealth and Happiness: What Makes a Prosperous Region?South West Observatory 7th Annual Conference

The Assembly Rooms, BathWednesday 31 March 2010

SOUTH WEST OBSERVATORY

SW

What do we envisage when we wish each other a prosperous New Year? How can we make it happen here and now?

The South West Observatory’s 7th Annual Conference brought together a broad range of expertise to consider how distinct notions of prosperity are correlated, how to articulate and measure a common understanding of prosperity, and how to bring it about.

The South West Observatory is a data and intelligence network, working to inform policy and decision making through the exchange of ideas beyond thematic and spatial boundaries. With a combination of presentations and ‘question time’ style debate, the conference gave delegates the opportunity to understand and explore the interrelationship of public policy objectives.

The event programme, session summaries, speakers’ biographies and presentations from the day are available to view or download from www.swo.org.uk/events/conference-2010

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CONTENTSIntroduction

Robert Kennedy speech

Understanding and measuring health, wealth and happiness

Sustainable Development Indicators and Wellbeing Measures


Developing a principled prosperous society and releasing human potential

Panel debate: What is prosperity?

As above

Sustainable Communities in the South West - how can we achieve quantity and quality?

Health, Wealth and Happiness, and Futures thinking

Practically realising prosperity

Bibliography and Acknowledgements

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Health, Wealth and Happiness: what makes a prosperous region?

Vinita Nawathe • Managing Director of the South West Observatory

Professor Martin Boddy • Chair, SWO Board and Executive Dean, Faculty of Environment and Technology, UWE

Dr Sara Eppel • Head of Sustainable Products and Consumers, Defra

Paul Brown • Deputy Director (on behalf of Dr Gabriel Scally, Regional Director of Public Health for the South West) Matthew Taylor • Chief Executive, Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture & Commerce (RSA)

Nigel Jump • Chief Economist, South West Regional Development Agency

Dame Suzi Leather • Chair, Charity Commission

Professor Katie Williams • Director of the Centre for Environment & Planning, UWE

Simon Mauger • Regional Programme Director (South West), NIACE

Jonathon Porritt CBE • Former Chair, Sustainable Development Commission and Founder, Forum for the Future

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Better Information, Better Understanding, Better Decisions

The South West Observatory (SWO) promotes evidence-based policy making.

While this is not contentious in principle, there can be some resistance from some policy and decision makers. For some, evidencing everything sounds technical, dull and slow, while for some others, evidence is only useful if it backs up the decision already made - so called policy-based evidence.

The challenge for the South West Observatory is in promoting the role of evidence beyond a nice to have add-on - especially for those who believe politicians are elected to “do things” and quickly - to an integral, informing, authority-giving must-have part of the policy-making process.

At the heart of SWO is a social enterprise set up to develop and co-ordinate an intelligence network that supports and enhances the work of its members. The SWO network is made up of publicly funded bodies that provide data, analysis and research mostly within, and about, the South West.

It achieves efficiencies through sharing best practice and resource, avoiding duplication and getting bigger bang for buck through joint working and joint commissioning.

In our view, evidence - data, research and analysis - are weapons in an armoury. Evidence does not replace decision-making, it helps it. The stronger your evidence the stronger your argument, the more you understand the better prepared you are for counter-argument.

However, decisions can still be made on gut instinct, for political expediency, or despite some evidence - and can still be the right decision in a given situation.Evidence goes beyond hard statistics and measured indicators and is the sum of all the available information including knowledge about public perceptions, preferences and behaviour and the past and likely outcomes of contiguous policy interventions.

VINITA NAWATHE Health, Wealth and Happiness: what makes a prosperous region?

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One of our aims at SWO is to facilitate functional conversations - between researchers and policy makers, across policy silos and sector perspectives. To that end, we arrange technical workshops, policy seminars and an annual conference to share knowledge and expertise from within and beyond our network. We want to avoid the situation where an expert in any particular field sees a newly announced policy or decision and says (to themselves or the press) “They wouldn’t have done that if they’d known what I know!”

The theme for our conference in March 2010 was Health, Wealth and Happiness; what makes a prosperous region. It brought together a broad range of expertise to consider how distinct notions of prosperity are correlated, how to articulate and measure a common understanding of prosperity, and how to bring it about.

The range of ideas and viewpoints on the day certainly started some conversations. With many people currently grappling to express a collective aspiration in 2010 terms, we had a lot of requests for the day’s ideas to be captured and taken forward. I am pleased that nine of our speakers were able to turn their talks into essays to share with delegates and a wider audience.


Robert Kennedy was a common inspiration for some, and so his 1968 speech at the University of Kansas kicks off this tour of ideas.

I hope this collection of views provides food for thought, adds to understanding and ultimately informs some good policy and decision making.

To paraphrase a colleague at the Public Health Observatory in a World Cup year, here at SWO, we aim to provide you with the football to kick around, but you play your own game and score your own goals.

“Too much and for

too long, we seemed

to have surrendered

personal excellence and

community values in

the mere accumulation

of material things.

Our Gross National

Product, now, is over

$800 billion dollars a

year, but that Gross

National Product - if we

judge the United States

of America by that - that

Gross National Product

counts air pollution and

cigarette advertising,

and ambulances to

clear our highways

of carnage. It counts

special locks for our

doors and the jails

for the people who

break them. It counts

the destruction of

the redwood and the

loss of our natural

wonder in chaotic

sprawl. It counts

napalm and counts

nuclear warheads

and armored cars for

the police to fight the

riots in our cities. It

counts Whitman’s

rifle and Speck’s knife.

And the television

programs which

glorify violence in

order to sell toys to

our children.

Yet the gross national

product does not allow

for the health of our

children, the quality of

their education or the

joy of their play.

It does not include the

beauty of our poetry

or the strength of

our marriages, the

intelligence of our

public debate or the

integrity of our public

officials. It measures

neither our wit nor

our courage, neither

our wisdom nor our

learning, neither our

compassion nor our

devotion to our country,

it measures everything

in short, except that

which makes life

worthwhile.

And it can tell us

everything about

America except why

we are proud that we

are Americans.”

Robert F. Kennedy

University of Kansas

18 March 1968


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ROBERT KENNEDY SPEECH


How we measure progress is fundamental to how we define our policy goals. The measures we use, the performance indicators we set define and shape thinking on where we should be heading. Prosperity can be defined in terms of affluence, growth and wealth. But it can also encompass welfare, wellbeing and happiness - and these are not necessarily the same thing.

Gross Domestic Product, the widely used ‘official’ headline measure

of economic performance is, according to the Office of National Statistics, ‘an integral part of the UK national accounts … a measure of total economic activity in a region’. It measures the total value of goods and services (including public sector) produced in a given time period. Expressed in terms of output per head or output per worker, it is a measure of productivity, the key measure of ‘competitiveness;’ according to the Treasury.

Levels of output are strongly linked to income, unemployment, job security, health and life expectancy. And the recent ‘recession’ - negative change in GDP for two quarters - recently reminded us of what happens when output falls and it all goes horribly wrong.

So what’s wrong with that? The problem is that GDP simply measures the monetary value of the goods and services produced regardless of the benefit - or harm - to people and society of what is being produced. It takes no account of the impact of producing those goods and services on environmental sustainability of consumption of non-renewable resources. And it takes no account of the distribution of benefits across society - of inequalities in distribution. Robert Kennedy’s speech in Kansas as long ago as

1968 expressed this with great eloquence.

Also, in richer countries at least, the link between output and measures of well-being such as health, education and job security are at best weak. And paradoxically, levels of self-reported happiness or satisfaction with life have not risen with rising levels of GDP.

There are four main alternatives to GDP, each of which embodies different definitions of prosperity and well being and, by implication, different goals. First, the Index of Social and Economic Wellbeing provides a single monetary measure which factors in social and environmental costs and the positive contribution of unpaid caring, volunteering and other factors to provide an alternative to GDP. Second, the United Nations has developed indices of human development potential which combine life expectancy and educational attainment with GDP to provide a single numerical index which can be used to compare places and track change over time. The Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs has developed a ‘score-card’ including 68 indicators spanning the economy, climate change and energy, natural resources and sustainable communities. Finally economist Richard Layard among

others has focused on self-reported levels of happiness and the factors that account for differences in this across time and place.

We need to define both our priorities and objectives and the measure we use to set targets and chart progress. To polarise things there are perhaps four alternatives. First: ‘it’s the economy, stupid’, and to quote economist Paul Krugman, ‘productivity isn’t everything but in the long run it is almost everything’ and that’s what we should focus on. Second: to quote Layard, ‘happiness is the overarching good’, and we should focus on the causes of happiness and our leverage over them. Third: to quote the Stiglitz Commission set up by President Sarkhozy, ‘measures of well-being should be put in the context of sustainability’ and we should combine goals of well-being and environment. Fourth; to quote Tim Jackson writing for the Sustainable Development Commission, ‘prosperity without growth is no longer a utopian dream. It is a financial and ecological necessity.’ And we must abandon goals built around output growth and GDP.


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PROFESSOR MARTIN BODDY

• achieve personal goals & participate • supportive personal relationships • communities • health • financial & personal security • rewarding employment • healthy & attractive environment

The wellbeing indicator is just one of the 68 sustainable development indicators which are published annually in ‘Sustainable development indicators in your pocket’ and on Defra’s website, as easy to read pie charts and graphs with traffic light assessments of progress. The 68 indicators already include wellbeing measures such as fear of crime, numbers of workless households and rates of suicide, which demonstrate the mix of qualitative and quantitative data that contributes to understanding wellbeing.

The framework of wellbeing that was agreed across Government covers the following:

Wellbeing indicators - what do we measure and what can it show?

When the 2005 Sustainable Development Strategy was published in 2005, Government committed to looking holistically at wellbeing, to see what is might mean for policy and how it might be measured. A cross-Government group identified measures to contribute to a basket of wellbeing indicators. A common understanding of what wellbeing is was established:

• positive physical, social and mental state • individuals have a sense of purpose

The slide below illustrates the correlation between areas of deprivation and poor environmental quality, with some startling results.

Each column is 1/10th of the population by area of deprivation, and the colours represent 1, 2, 3 or 4 environmental conditions that are ‘least favourable’ (meaning in the worst 10% in England. So in the least deprived/most affluent areas about 30% of the population live in areas where there is one or possibly two environmental issues that that may be least favourable. By contrast in the most deprived areas over 80% of the population live in areas that may be affected by at least one environmental condition that is least favourable. The correlation between deprivation and poor environmental quality is shown to be strong. Conditions examined are air quality, river water quality, housing conditions, fly-tipping, litter, detritus,

green space, biodiversity habitats, flood risk, road accidents and presence of ‘regulated sites’.

A couple of the qualitative indicators give us a good handle on issues of perception, such as perceptions of anti social behaviour, or self reported general health. With health, for example, over 90% of boys and girls aged under 15 rate themselves as in good or very good health, whereas this falls to around 70-75% of men and women in the general population.

The main wellbeing indicator which came into effect in 2007 has the following as part of its cluster of measures:

• Overall life satisfaction • Overall life satisfaction by social grade • Satisfaction with aspects of life • Satisfaction with aspects of life, by social grade • Satisfaction with aspects of life, by age • Frequency of positive and negative feelings • Frequency of positive and negative feelings, by social grade • Frequency of feelings or activities which may have a positive or negative impact on wellbeing • Level of participation in sport • Access to green space • Level of participation in other activities • Positive mental health


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DR SARA EPPEL


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The overall life satisfaction (ona scale from 0 to 10)consistently show an averagearound 7 and the mostcommon score being 8 out of10. But the more informativeelement is perhaps the differencein perception between the redcolumns (managerial andprofessionals), through to theorange columns (people whohave never been in paidemployment). The highestorange columns is also on level 8/10but never rises above 18% of respondents and is more spread across 5/10 through to 10/10. The managerial column (red) by contrast peaks significantly at 8/10 with 30% of respondents selecting this:

In summary, if the South West region is keen to develop its own set of wellbeing indicators, I would very much recommend capturing some from the national set. Wellbeing does not have a single indicator it is a basket of indicators, and I hope these examples have shown the richness of information that can be captured from different groups of society, which can be very helpful for targeting policy interventions.

The good news for the South West ofEngland, is that the local populations’overall dissatisfaction with their lives isthe lowest across England. So thefactors that bring people a good qualityof life are clearly high in this region.

The following slide shows the details of satisfaction with different aspects of life. Eleven aspects on the left (from relationships to community), are qualitatively rated, and the variation in the answers is shown. So, on average 88% of the population were fairly or very satisfied with their relationships, 86% their accommodation, 85% their standard of living etc.

But the variation from the average is plotted on the horizontal axes. These are coloured according to socio-economic group. The orange group (group E - casual labourers, state pensioners, unemployed) has around 10% fewer people being satisfied for almost all the aspects - particularly so in relation to relationships, standard of living, day to day activities, health, achievement of goals and future financial security. By contrast, around 5% more people in this group than the average were satisfied in relation to feeling part of their community.

This graph illustrates results that change as people move through different life stages (based on results for different age groups). Standard of living stays at around 80-85% of people fairly or very satisfied, until they hit around age 55 or so when it rises to over 90%. Similarly, the results for ‘ability to influence own life’ curve upwards at this age - in this case after a steady downward trend since the early 20s.

Finally, the ‘happiness’ questions. This slide highlights different feelings felt every day or most days over the preceding 2 weeks. 73% of people had felt happy, but only 60% of group E (casual labourers, state pensioners, unemployed) said they had felt happy every day or most days. The response for ‘engaged’ varied considerably with up to 75% of group A (managerial) feeling engaged but as low as 48% for Group E. The results for ‘everything was an effort’ also highlighted a marked difference for group E with with 22% agreeing to this statement, against 11% for Group A.


When understanding the interactions between health, wealth and happiness it is important to consider two main factors. Firstly, that “health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (World Health Organization, 1946) but also that “human health is a subsystem of the Earth‘s health. You cannot have well humans on a sick planet.” (Berry, 2003)

These statements highlight the fact that health, wealth, happiness, society and sustainability are intrinsically linked and fundamentaly dependent on one another.

The recent Marmot Review of health inequalities also provides strong evidence that the social and environmental dimensions which influence health are wide and varied. These include adequate standards of living, decent work, fair employment, a good start, education, appropriate

skills, opportunities, physical environment, capability, social support and social capital, service provision, relative income inequality and financial capability. The review also highlights a number of issues which affect the quality and selection of indicators to measure health inequalities. These include importance, feasibility and cost, availability, clear relevance to interventions, technical issues, criteria/guidance, smallest population for which indicator is reliable, information governance, impact, indicator sets and data sources. (Marmot, 2010)

Additional evidence which argues for a need to “shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people’s well-being” comes from the recent Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (2009). The report also argues that it is important to:• distinguish between an assessment of current well-being and an assessment of sustainability, whether this can last over time• look at income and consumption rather than production, when evaluating material well-being• emphasise the household perspective • consider income and consumption jointly with wealth • give more prominence to the distribution of income, consumption and wealth • broaden income measures to non-market activities

• develop and implement robust, reliable measures of social connections, political voice, and insecurity that can be shown to predict life satisfaction• assess inequalities in a comprehensive way in all the dimensions• assess the links between various qualityof-life domains for each person, and this information should be used when designing policies in various fields• provide the information needed to aggregate across quality-of-life dimensions, allowing the construction of different indexes• incorporate questions to capture people’s life evaluations, hedonic experiences and priorities• assess sustainability using a well-identified dashboard of indicators• develop a set of physical indicators covering the environmental aspects of sustainability. In particular there is a need for a clear indicator of our proximity to dangerous levels of environmental damage. (Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, 2009)

One set of indicators based on the concept that well-being is determined by wide and varied influences is the Gross National Happiness (GNH) Index developed in Bhutan. The index, inaugurated and launched by the Prime Minister of Bhutan in 2008, is made up of the following dimensions:1. Psychological Well-being2. Time Use3. Community Vitality4. Culture5. Health

6. Education7. Environmental Diversity8. Living Standard9. GovernanceThe index is “generated to reflect the happiness and general well-being of the Bhutanese population more accurately and profoundly than a monetary measure. The measure will both inform Bhutanese people and the wider world about the current levels of human fulfilment in Bhutan and how these vary across districts and across time, and will also inform government policy.” (Ura, 2008)

Ura (2008) argues that the reason for measuring all of the dimensions is that happiness does not depend on any individual aspect, but “having sufficient achievements in each of the 9 dimensions”.

The evidence presented shows that well being is not dependent on any one single issue. We must therefore move towards a far more holistic notion of health, wealth and happiness, because the factors that influence these outcomes are many.

An example we could learn from is Freiburg, in the Rhine Valley, where planning decisions are made with a focus on the well being of the population, ensuring that developments are:• making places to live fulfilled lives• supporting community interaction• prioritising the ease of local movement• paying particular attention to the role of public transport. (WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Cities and Urban Policy and South West Regional Public Health Group, 2008)


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DR GABRIEL SCALLY

One way for the South West to think about future challenges is to ask what model of citizenship is needed for the region to be successful. In the face of the short term problems of public service funding and rising social needs, the longer term challenge of climate change and finite natural resources, and the overall context of globalisation, how do we need to live to prosper?

There are three dimensions to creating sustainable citizenship for the twenty first century. We need citizens who are engaged in decision making. This doesn’t only, or even mainly, mean turnout in elections. It is about people understanding the kinds of issues

we face, giving decision makers at all levels permission to make the right choices for the long term and also recognising that the options open to them depend a lot on how we run our lives. For example, the trade off between economic growth and environmental sustainability can be less difficult if individuals and communities agree to do things differently.

Second, we need more creative and resourceful citizens. There are implications here for education, for the way we deliver public services and for promoting and supporting enterprise. For example, how can we change the way we spend public and third sector money on disadvantaged

individuals and communities so that not only do they have more control, not only does more of the money circulate in those communities but the resources enable people to move from dependency to independence.

Third, we need to encourage people to behave in ways which enhance what David Halpern has called the hidden wealth of nations. This is the web of goodwill, trust, caring, reciprocity and volunteering that largely determines the health of society. Human beings are naturally inclined to empathy and reciprocity - we developed these instincts in small homogeneous communities but now live in diverse, fast moving mass societies. What are the new ways of growing and protecting social capital?

In seeking to promote a sustainable model of citizenship what happens in organisations is crucial. There is a gulf between how we feel about our own lives and our view of society as a whole. We tend to be optimistic (if anything too optimistic) about how our own lives will go while we are far too pessimistic about what is happening in society at large. Equally, while we tend to be tolerant and understanding about the people we know we can be judgemental and harsh about strangers (especially as they are

represented in the mass media).

It is in organisations - at work, in clubs and charities - that we close this distance between personal efficacy and social pessimism. So an important question for the South West Observatory is how institutions in the region operate. Are they innovative, open and inclusive or hierarchical, bureaucratic and conservative?

Last week I was at a meeting in the West of England to discuss issues facing small market towns. Too much of the talk was about how the towns suffer from the failures of policies set down by central or local government. Yet, any of these towns could transform their prospects by increasing their own structures of challenge and support. If local businesses were more innovative, if local social networks were better exploited, if local people themselves got together to develop new ideas and commit to a shared vision then so much could be achieved despite the failings of town hall and Whitehall.

Of course, government policy matters to the region’s future, as does the state of the national economy and the global environment. But the most powerful place to start this conversation is asking how we need to live if we are to create the better future to which we aspire.


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MATTHEW TAYLOR

Whilst we may debate what “remunerated work” means, it is hard to deny its role as a basis for sustainable welfare for individuals and groups across space and time. Academic and research studies of health, wealth and happiness are clear that economic or financial prosperity are the bedrock of much human activity. Of course, we can extend these traditional measures to better reflect other welfare issues, as the English RDAs have done with the development of the Regional Index of Sustainable Economic Wellbeing, but we can not replace them entirely. In environmental, social and cultural terms, human satisfaction is rooted in the removal of fundamental economic concerns because that then allows the building of higher aspirations and ambition - known as culture.

It is useful to dig deeper into the economic psychology of what people mean by prosperity. We can recognise five different ways of looking at this issue; all of which have evidence to support them, but are also areas of debate. I use money as the measuring stick: it is the best tool we have as an objective ruler to compare value.

• Absolute prosperityIf I have £10 and you have £5, I am probably more prosperous than you in absolute terms. However,

What is prosperity?

Prosperity can be defined in many ways. Here, I concentrate on one important aspect: “a successful, flourishing or thriving … especially in financial respects.” Whilst it is not everything, financial prosperity is a crucial part of overall well-being. Indeed, I would argue that it is a sine qua non for health, wealth and happiness. Whatever the flaws of GDP/GVA as comprehensive indicators of these three factors, they are an important component of well-being, representing a clear measure of the income rewards of work effort available to households and individuals. They attempt to capture the “what we get out for what we put in” of human endeavour.

we need to be aware of “money illusion” over time and space. If I have £10 now and you had £5 thirty years ago, you might have been “better off” then than I am now, in the sense that your purchasing power may have been greater. Similarly, £5 to spend in a relatively poor, developing country in 2010 may buy a lot more than £10 spent in central London. Absolute prosperity, then, needs to be measured against some concept of reality; its implied access to real, valued resources.

• Relative prosperityPeople are not just interested in their absolute prosperity, however. They also care about their relative prosperity. It is not just how much I have but how much I have compared with other people that can affect my contentment. A famous experiment at Havard showed that students offered a smaller absolute amount of money preferred that to a larger amount when their peers were given less rather than more than them. In figures, for example, they thought it was better to have $100 if everyone else got $50 than to have $150 when everyone else got $200. We see this relative affect in many situations, e.g. when we rue the “inequity” of differentials in wages and bonuses within organisations and societies. The investment banker who gets a

£250,000 bonus feels hard done by when his colleagues get £500,000 even though, in any wider sense, he is prosperous. At another extreme, concern about relative prosperity is behind the importance people put on national collective bargaining in the work place.

• Asymmetric prosperityFinancial prosperity relative to our neighbours is not all that matters. People are also concerned about direction: they seem to value things differently according to whether they are rising or falling. To explain, if I earn £10 an hour and then get a raise to £12 an hour, I will be pleased in the short term but I will quickly get used to the new wage rate and soon “take it for granted”. If the extra £2 an hour is then removed, whatever the reason, I will be dissatisfied and the hurt will last. For many people, the pain of losing income often seems to be greater than the pleasure of acquiring it: we are asymmetric in our response to changes in prosperity. This has very real consequences, as we can see in the various disputes currently underway in the UK transport sector and as we may well see to a much greater extent as the government tries to cut our public sector cloth back towards our means in the next few years.

• Intergenerational prosperityThis asymmetry can extend


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NIGEL F JUMP

backwards and forwards a long way. Most of us are “better off” than our parents and they were “better off” than our grandparents. Most of us aspire for our children and grandchildren to be “better off” than ourselves. Is this fundamental to human nature or a consequence of the period of growth we have experienced in the last 150 years? These intergenerational matters play a key role in many important matters that we currently face. Climate change, for example, is partly about intergenerational prosperity. We can take the approach “live for today and let tomorrow look after itself” or we can say “I will sacrifice some of my prosperity for future.” Essentially, we make these decisions about value over time every day when we decide to spend, to save and to invest and when we vote for “jam today” or “jam tomorrow”.

• Sustained prosperityThese quasi-political issues take us to the final aspect of prosperity. Many people prefer a degree of certainty in their income stream. There can be no “steady state” but one only has to think what has happened to people’s consideration of health, wealth and happiness during the recession to understand how important sustained prosperity can be for many. Mind you, given the UK proclivity to indulge in repeated property booms, you have to ask whether we really learn the

lessons of sustainability in wealth accumulation.

Assuming these five aspects of prosperity ring true, we can return to the essential argument that economic prosperity is part of our make up and an essential part of a sustainable future. Economic, social and environmental aspects of health, wealth and happiness can not be divorced from each other. In turn, given increases in population and productivity over time, it implies that, for the foreseeable future, growth will remain a key element of human reality. On the supply side, this links through employment, skills, technology and

innovation to entrepreneurship and competitiveness. On the demand side, this means the evolution of values to reflect new scarcities, needs and aspirations.

Against this background, our fiscal and monetary levers needs to foster personal incentives, aspiration and motivation. Policy has to work with the market: a system in which exchange creates value and “putting aside today for the benefit of tomorrow” is at the heart of human activity. At its best, this “capitalism” is not about accumulating “stuff” and instant gratification. Rather, it is about development and prosperity for


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the long term. I would argue that, though imperfect, it has proved better than any alternative at solving the great intergenerational issues of the day. Society needs to recognise property rights and to balance market power and information with optimal regulation. Generating institutional trust, thereby, the market offers the SW region robust hopes for sustained prosperity in the years ahead.

What is prosperity?

To prosper means to thrive, to do well, to succeed. It does not mean to get, or be, rich. Indeed the drive for riches is often anathema to prosperity. We seem to be almost hard-wired to want to improve our lot but when the concept of improvement is purely a material notion and when it is based only on individual gain then, ironically, we begin to drive out precisely that which underpins true prosperity. So, if we wish to build a prosperous region, what should we aim for?

There will be others who argue an economic case, who will focus on jobs and employment, who will explain the need for inward

capital investment, for growth in enterprise and an expansion of the knowledge economy. And they are right to do so. As we have seen recently economic resilience matters. But so too does social resilience. We are at heart social and spiritual beings. And if we are to protect and foster authentic well-being we need to pay attention to growing those aspects of our lives.

A basic psychological need is to love and be loved. The social connectedness in which love is embedded starts with the family, so I believe that those commentators who emphasise the family are right. But I do not think that strengthening the family can be divorced from public policy; nor, in my view, does a strong state imply weak families.

Next we require others to recognise us, to treat us, as having worth. What we might call the politics of respect. This is not just a matter of us each being nice to each other in our private lives, although that is necessary. Again, there are public policy dimensions: equality of opportunity to education, health and social services, policing, broadband and so on. Underpinning this politics of respect must be a recognition of diversity and equal opportunities regardless of difference.

And so we come to difference and inequality itself. How is this related to prosperity? The answer, as Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have so brilliantly shown in The Spirit Level, is very strongly indeed. More unequal societies have poorer outcomes whether you measure it by teenage pregnancy, drug use, crime, ill-health (mental and physical), educational attainment and so on. The forces driving increases in inequality are plain – you only have to consider how inequality has grown in recent times in spite of unprecedented amounts of money and effort being devoted to combating it.

So seeking prosperity requires us continually to strive against increases

in inequality and to look beyond the culture of personal contentment to a concern for those who do not share in comparative well-being. To be vigilant about the more distant dangers that result from a short-run preoccupation with individual comfort.

There is a substantial role for government (central and local) in minimising - through social security, state pensions, health care and education - inequality and its effects. But I am interested also in informal organisations whereby we express a concern for the well-being of others, through activities which lie outside politics and public provision but which nevertheless


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DAME SUZI LEATHER

reflect and advance concern for others. The small acts of kindness which show neighbourliness, the voluntary organisations which build connectedness, the patchwork of citizens who do so much to stabilise and sustain our social fabric.

So as we try to arrive at a common articulation of what prosperity means let me put the case for including in it: richness of associational forms. How can we prosper without that complex social connectedness which constitutes civic society?

A system which allows for few or no social forms between the individual or family and the state is totalitarian. A system which structures most relations between individuals through corporations, as modern Japanese society has done, is proving to be peculiarly vulnerable to the new social challenges of unemployment and aging. (Interestingly there are now in Japan deliberate attempts to try to create and foster civic society.)

So what would a region seeking prosperity try to foster? An analogy from climate science might help. The thickness of soil determines how much carbon is released to the atmosphere. A thicker layer traps more carbon. And what determines the soil’s thickness? The length of plant roots.

So, in a sense, it also is with society. Deeper social roots, means richer societal loam, better able to help individuals withstand the vicissitudes of life. Reliable, dependable, adequately funded public services may in effect be socially stabilising, but they will never absolutely replace in efficacy and reach the authentic, simple and responsive provision of charitable activity.

So whether it’s faith communities, play groups, older people’s lunch clubs, environmental or arts organisations, whether it’s the volunteer who supports the frightened young parent who is overwhelmed by the yo-yo-ing emotions of caring for a tiny child,


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or the neighbour who will go in and sit with an elderly confused parent while their son or daughter gets a break, or the community music group which puts on monthly live performances in the village hall, or the environmental volunteer who helps clear the drainage ditch around that precious land, whether it’s the avid walker who picks up litter as he strides across the moor, or the young woman who meets prisoners through the gate release scheme, these all share something in common. They all demonstrate a sense of connectedness and mutual responsibility. They represent what social science jargon might term ‘polyvalent social links’ or, more prosaically, ‘social glue’.

This matters because we are social beings, we derive our sense of ourselves from how others perceive and treat us. And prosperity in the modern world requires a continuing and resilient intermeshing of the myriad communities which constitute our civic society. We need community organisations strong enough to secure people’s identities and relationships.

I belive that there is a strong case to be made for regional prosperity depending on a healthy third sector comprising organisational forms which express, foster and cement connectedness.

Sustainable and Prosperous Communities in the South West: how can we achieve quantity and quality?

Even given the current economic climate, it is likely that there will be large scale housing, and therefore, urban growth in the South West in the next 20-30 years. Latest projections show that the number of households in the Region will increase by 36% between 2006 and 2031. The Government’s stated aim is to accommodate this growth in sustainable (and prosperous) communities: we have had central government guidance and ‘sustainable communities’-focused policy for over 10 years. Yet, we seem to struggle to deliver, both in terms of quality and quantity, and the majority of our

housing is still delivered in ‘placeless’, single-use, speculative, developments, with little urban design or civic merit. In this paper, I ask what is going wrong, and offer some thoughts on what we could do to deliver more sustainable and prosperous (in the widest sense) places in the SW.

First, is seems useful to set out exactly what is meant by a sustainable community. In the UK, a definition is used that encompasses both new and regeneration schemes. Sustainable communities are argued to have a mixture of specific physical and non-physical qualities (see the table below); with a fundamental focus on achieving balanced and integrated social, economic and environmental components. The emphasis is on housing and other uses, such as employment, community, and education, with a real concern for the needs of communities now and in the future. Importantly, ‘sustainable communities’ are presented as ‘mixed’ communities, containing, for example, social and private housing, a mix of housing forms and household types.

A sustainable community has: a flourishing local economy; strong leadership; effective engagement and participation (especially in the planning, design and long-term stewardship of the community); active voluntary and community sector; diverse, vibrant and creative local culture; safe and healthy local environment; well-designed public

in anything close to the definition of a sustainable community set out above (Williams and Lindsay, 2007). A number of reports have assessed the UK’s progress and conclude that while some new housing developments are performing better than previous developer norms in terms of urban design, and some aspects of energy efficiency, travel behaviour and community development, they are not delivering on community cohesion (many are just remote dormitory settlements), service provision and many other key sustainability features (findings summarised from reports by Williams, 2007; Williams and Lindsay, 2007; Sustainable Development Commission, 2007; Power 2004; CLG, 2006; TCPA, 2004, RICS, 2007).

These same reports offer some insights into why things are going wrong, citing variously, a mismatch between delivery partners’ aspirations, objectives and timescales (particularly between regulators and regulated) and a lack of local benefits accruing from new developments (which means that new housing is seen as an imposition not a responsibility, and hence treated as a numbers game, rather than an exercise in ‘place-making’). In these circumstances, sites are often developed speculatively, with no detailed or long-term plans by the local authorities. The problem with this system is summed up by Liz Pearce, Chief Exec of the British Property Federation when she states ‘One of the shortcomings of the predominant build-for-sale housing

and green space; good public transport and other transport infrastructure; buildings that can meet different needs over time and that minimise the use of resources; well integrated mix of decent homes of different types and tenures; good quality local public services; sense of place; right links with the wider; regional, national and international community; sufficient size, scale and density and the right layout to support basic amenities in the neighbourhood and minimise use of resources (including land). Summarised from ODPM, 2003, p.5

Sustainable communities are seen as desirable in the UK because they are a genuine attempt to avoid past failures in housing and planning. The concept has incorporated lessons learnt from mass social housing, periods of poor design (urban and architectural) and ineffective, property-led, regeneration. More specifically, sustainable communities are an attempt to address the ‘sustainability agenda’, by valuing the environmental, social and economic attributes of a scheme over time.

Although we have had pro-sustainable communities policy guidance for over a decade, and the ‘Sustainable Communities Programme’ since 2003, evidence of progress on the ground is disappointing. Although it is difficult to get a true picture of advances, recent research suggests that only a minority of all new housing is being delivered


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PROFESSOR KATIE WILLIAMS

model is that the developer does not retain long-term interest in the site. There is no incentive to produce a design better than the minimum needed to make a sale, and issues such as the design of the public realm and long term maintenance can be sidelined without any impact on profit.’ Further, delivery problems were also found with the complexity of the process, including numerous agents, mismatched regulatory and funding systems, and poor phasing of infrastructure and amenities. In addition, private investment was often difficult to secure and maintain, and community participation was found to be problematic. Many of the reports also cite a low skills base, within and between professions trying to deliver sustainable communities. And, partly as a consequence of these problems, the sustainable communities agenda is also not meeting housing targets: housing completions have halved since 2007, and most completed units have had some sort of subsidy.

So, what could we do to deliver better quality and quantity? First, I believe we need a far more sophisticated and varied vision of what we want to achieve. We need to lose the obsession with finding one model of sustainable living (see Guy and Marvin, 1999). ‘Sustainable’ communities can be found in multiple guises, and could include different urban forms, designs and scales. And crucially, we must find more local solutions. This

is not to say that ‘anything goes’ but that we need to find housing solutions focused around agreed principles (of sustainable development, such as the prudent use of resources and social equity) but then to realise a range of solutions, which could include, for example community land trusts, more co-housing, small scale developments and also some larger new settlements. We need to accept also that with multiple visions go wide-ranging actions to achieve sustainable communities, some actions may be top-down and capital intensive, others more community (or individually) driven. But we need this sophisticated vision, delivered by people with experience and knowledge of different models.

We also need to develop a stronger evidence base around sustainable communities and act on it. We need to monitor what works and what does not. Unfortunately, much ‘good practice’ is now accepted wisdom, and is not based on learning or evidence. For example, current policy advice is for higher density housing, yet recent research questions the desirability of high density developments, showing a correlation between density and dissatisfaction with the area (Bramley and Power, 2009). This type of evidence has to be weighed against the strategic benefits of higher densities in a far more considered way. Other new research challenges the conventional wisdom on sustainable neighbourhood

design by showing people do not necessarily behave more sustainably in so-called ‘sustainable’ housing schemes (Williams et al., 2009). Again, this needs careful consideration to ensure we are not repeating past mistakes in physical determinism.

In addition, we need to develop more sustainable and effective delivery mechanisms. We need to maximise what we can do within the current planning and delivery systems (learning from good practice in the UK). We have to maximise the variety of public-private partnership models that can be used, depending on local circumstances (Studdert, 2009). We also have to ensure committed leadership from individuals or organisations that have medium or long term interests, rather than short term goals: this could be from LAs, architects, developers, communities or land owners. And we have to develop teams with mutual interests, with better skilled team members. Project management and community engagement also have to be prioritised from the outset and managed so all stakeholders are involved early enough in the process.

Finally, we need to learn from places where higher quality and faster housing delivery works. We need to take note of what is happening in other countries and see what is potentially transferable (see Studdert, 2009; Falk and Hall, 2009). For example, in countries such as Germany and Sweden

local authorities have greater local autonomy and financial independence, and work within more flexible regional planning frameworks. They often lead in master planning and engagement. In many instances, local authorities are landowners (or have some stake in the land) and can therefore demonstrate leadership, and they can often borrow money at cheaper rates from municipal banks to forward-fund. A wider range of house-builders is often involved (self-procurement groups, private and social landlords, etc), and this gives a wider choice of types and tenures of housing, and more long term interests. Large scale neighbourhood developments often have more local support than in the UK because of sustained municipality and community involvement, and visible benefits (op cit).

In conclusion, it is possible, but difficult to deliver truly sustainable communities in the UK, where people can live prosperous and healthy lives. We need a wider portfolio of options than the straightforward build-for sale model, with more skilled, pro-active, confident and visionary professionals involved in delivery. We also need to focus our efforts on what works: especially taking into account how people really want to live. We also need to press for higher quality built environments, and to seek wider changes that move us towards the benefits of some the European delivery models.


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Health, Wealth and Happiness and Futures Thinking*

We live in uncertain times. In our internal worlds we are very familiar with futures thinking - we plan our future, rehearse possible situations, and we develop internal dialogues that can propose and argue viewpoints. At a psychological level this is a very necessary and healthy process. These are skills are closely associated with our mental wellbeing and our capacity to interface with the external world, nurturing and applying the strategies and tactics that we need to survive and flourish. Many therapies are essentially based on working to develop this capacity. But to what extent does society, and in particular education, assist us develop these skills, or indeed even acknowledge them?

Despite education policies that have sought to ever more closely tie students’ educational experiences to their future economic activities, there is in fact very little opportunity for students to meaningfully reflect upon their individual and collective futures in schools, colleges and universities, and limited support for them to develop positive strategies for shaping and directing their future trajectories. Instead, young people’s experiences of preparing for their futures may be characterised by careers guidance acknowledged as inadequate, and by pessimistic visions of future catastrophe at a global and societal level, resulting in children overly optimistic about their chances of achieving fame and fortune and overly pessimistic and passive in the face of global concerns.

More fundamentally, there is ambivalence in our culture that on one hand proposes high levels of uncertainty (environmental, social, economic), while suggesting paternalistic political models to be in charge of solutions, if only we agree and comply. Futures thinking is misrepresented as being about prediction, prescribing ‘answers’ so that stakes can be claimed. The real empowerment of citizens actually engaging with uncertainty is not politically proposed as a matter for mature citizen involvement. In this culture, we should be suspicious

when futures thinking feels a confirmatory exercise rather than an exploratory one; for futures thinking is by definition a starting point, not a means of setting out a repertoire of solutions. It is an ‘open process’, involving understanding the nature of uncertainty, inclusive of allowing the qualitative and emotional drivers as well as the quantitative and more rehearsed evidence. But we have contemporary obsession with quantitative indicators as opposed to qualitative understanding and a prolonged focus on the quantitative generates short-sightedness and overbearing attention on the present

In a ‘prediction culture’ educators are politically contracted to adapt and modernise to prepare students for futures designed and decided elsewhere; discouraged from actively exploring the features of social or technological change historically and in contemporary society. The education institution is no longer seen as a site within which alternative ideas for the future can be shaped and generated. This is unhealthy both for the institutions and for the individual.

With each new government, an alternative social future is presented

Health, Wealth and Happiness: what makes a prosperous region?SIMON MAUGER

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and with these future visions, new responsibilities for education, skills and learning are proclaimed - prepare ‘good citizens’, ensure workplace skills, teach sustainability. Analysis of representations of the future in policy, however, suggests that these future visions are more likely to be rhetorical than premised upon thoughtful, democratic and considered examination of possible social change. The transformation of ‘the future’ into a rhetorical device in political discourse rather than an emergent reality of social change has a number of implications: it treats the future as something that can be mobilised at will rather than a consequence of our contemporary actions and decisions; it militates against the careful questioning of the evidence and ideas used to inform these future visions; and it discourages examination of the diversity (or more often, uniformity) of voices involved in producing ideas of the future. In short, it provides a very poor basis for any attempts to plan or prepare us for the complex, contested and uncertain futures we will undoubtedly have.

How might those concerned with education and learning through life contribute to developing thoughtful engagement with future possibilities? How do we draw on the lessons learned from our existing research traditions to enhance education’s capacity for developing informed

strategies for responding to, shaping and adapting to socio-technical change? How do we move beyond either naïve complacency or blind pessimism in building our understanding about possible social futures and education’s role in shaping these? And how do we equip individuals, institutions and education systems to debate and create the desirable social and educational futures that they may imagine? What we do know at present is that in our culture there are limited external tools to support individuals

of whatever age to understand how best they might contribute individually and collectively to imagining, building and shaping alternative futures for themselves, their communities and their planet. So, to fully equip individuals to engage with their possible futures, to explore their current situation and possible trajectories, to rethink how their past leads to their present, is a radical challenge to current temporal stances in education and for learning through life, but it is fundamental to the health, wealth and happiness of our region.

* This Paper is both a summary of and development from a Discussion Paper prepared for the ESRC Education Futures Seminar Programme 2010, co-authored by Professor Keri Facer, Professor Anna Craft, and Simon Mauger.


Practically realising prosperity

For society to prosper there is a role for government in supporting communities and addressing the evil of poverty.

One of the most important features of a modern and resilient economy is its ability to provide access to sustainable, properly paid employment. In the past, a legitimate criticism of a great deal of green politics has been that it ignored this essential requirement, and I believe this has undermined the ability of green campaigners to appeal to the core of British opinion.

Today, I am very happy to say, things have changed; the decarbonisation

of the British economy will not only address issues such as climate change and peak oil, but it will also support the development and growth of completely new industries and, with that, new investment and new jobs.

Let us just take a look at one feature of this process, the campaign to improve the energy efficiency of existing homes (often referred to as “The Great British Refurb”), which some commentators predict will become the UK’s largest single engineering project since the Second World War. Our homes are responsible for around 27% of the country’s carbon emissions; and all the main political parties now acknowledge that action to improve the energy efficiency of existing housing is an essential component of the nation’s strategy to meet our carbon reduction commitments.

Predictions based on the experience of our neighbours in Europe, particularly the Germans, who are now eighteen years into a serious ‘retrofit’ of their housing stock, indicate that such a programme is likely to create over 200,000 jobs. Add to this the potential benefits that new, cheap sources of energy will bring to the significant proportion of the UK population who are experiencing problems heating their homes. This is amazing!

There is little doubt that the UK and

the regional economy of the South West have been undermined and rendered less resilient by the collapse of its manufacturing base. But here, with the demand created by the desire to improve over 25 million existing homes, we are in serious danger of creating a new manufacturing ‘sector’.

Clearly this is a major opportunity, a real example of how the recovery from this current recession can be genuinely ‘green’. However these things don’t happen by themselves. In order to ensure that the UK and the South West does benefit from this opportunity and, perhaps more importantly from a sustainable development point of view, in order to ensure that those benefits contribute to the sustainable regeneration and

renewal of our poorest communities we MUST prepare!

Our government and its agents, (including the banks....we own them and as a result we find ourselves in a once-in-a-lifetime position to influence their investment policies) must respond with a concerted strategy designed to support business and ensure this programme is supplied with the resources it requires. In addition we must also respond with investment to develop the skills and knowledge of the workforce, not only targeting existing industries, but also unemployed people and those communities who have faced exclusion from the employment opportunities of the past few decades.

Health, Wealth and Happiness: what makes a prosperous region?JONATHON PORRITT CBE

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Katie Williams Bramley G and Power S (2009) www.CityForm.org; CABE (2009) who Should Build Our Homes?, CABE 2009; CLG (2007) Eco-Towns prospectus, www.communities.gov.uk; CLG, (2007) Homes for the Future, www.communities.gov.uk; DEFRA (2006) Sustainable Communities: A shared agenda, a share of the action, TSO, Norwich; Falk N and Hall P (2009) Why not Here? Town and Country Planning, Jan.; Falk N (2008) Beyond Eco-towns: The Economic Issues, URBED; Falk N (2008) Making Eco-Towns work: Developing Vathorst, Amersfoort NL; Guy S and Marvin S (1999) Understanding Sustainable Cities: Competing Urban futures, European and Regional Studies, Vol.6, No.3, pp. 268-275; ODPM (2003) Sustainable Communities Plan, www.communities.gov.uk; Studdert (2009); Williams K (2010) Sustainable Cities, research and practice challenges, International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development, 1(1); Williams, K, Lindsay, M, Dair, C (2009) Neighbourhood Design and sustainable Lifestyles, in Jenks M and Jones C Dimensions of the Sustainable City, Springer. Williams and Lindsay (2007) The Extent and Nature of Sustainable Building in England: An Analysis of Progress, Planning theory and Practice, 8(1), pp 27-45; Williams K and Dair C (2007) What is Stopping Sustainable Building in England? Barriers Experienced by Stakeholders in Delivering Sustainable Developments

Gabriel ScallyBerry, T. (2003). The Mystique of the Earth. Caduceus, Spring 2003 (Issue 59). Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. (2009). Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. Marmot, M. (2010). Fair Society, Healthy Lives - The Marmot Review. The Marmot Review. Ura, K. (2008). Explanation of GNH Index. Retrieved une 10th, 2010, from Gross National Happiness - The Centre for Bhutan Studies: www.grossnationalhappiness.com/gnhIndex/intruductionGNH.aspx WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Cities and Urban Policy and South West Regional Public Health Group. (2008). South West England Freiburg Study Tour, Summary Record and Photo Report. World Health Organization. (1946). Preamble to the constitution of the World Health Organiszation as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June, 1946. WHO.

Many thanks to the speakers who gave presentations and/or took part in panel debates at this conference, and especially those who contributed to this report.

Thank you also to the sponsors listed at the front of this publication for their support.

The event programme, session summaries and presentations from the day are available to view or download from www.swo.org.uk/events/conference-2010

BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSFront cover and conference photography by James Hembrow, Captured Studioswww.captured-studios.co.uk

Conference design byRoom 7 Advertising & Design www.room7.uk.com

Special thanks to Paul Brown (SW Public Health Observatory) and Dominic Murphy (Creating Excellence)

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