Happiness: An Alternative Objective for Sustainable Community Development

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is two-fold. First, we demonstrate that individual happiness is a vital component of community well-being, and that community well-being in turn plays a major role in shaping individual happiness. Second, we argue for increasing individual happiness through participatory community-level interventions as an alternative objective for sustainable community development. Making individual happiness a primary concern of community development is worthwhile for two reasons. First, it is a widely comprehensible, place-based goal that has broad political acceptance. Second, working toward bolstering residents' happiness may help to smooth conflicts in practitioners' pursuit of the three pillars of sustainability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)