Infrastructure and well-being

Abstract

This paper presents the main contours of debates about well-being and the connections between infrastructure, well-being, and sustainability. Broadly distributed well-being is the goal of national governments, and individual well-being represents a desirable positive state beyond physical health. Contemporary definitions of well-being originated in the field of psychology in the 1980s. Psychologists have highlighted three aspects of well-being: cognitive, affective and eudaimonic well-being. The cognitive evaluation of well-being, through the assessment of life satisfaction, is commonly used in large national and international surveys. There is a growing interest in comprehensive approaches to measuring well-being, and its eudaimonic aspect. The second half of the paper examines the relationship between well-being and three key infrastructure topics—mobility, public space and nature contact—by referring to classic and new examples from urban design, the social sciences, and urban restoration ecology. These examples suggest that dimensions of well-being—among them trust, optimism, belonging, delight and empathy—have consequences beyond the individual and are necessary for community commitments to sustainability and environmental justice.