In 2019, the Costa Rican city was the talk of the Newcities Wellbeing City Forum. In 2020, it was awarded the main prize of the event. What changed in 18 months?
When we last spoke with Irene García Brenes – the advisor to the mayor of Curridabat – it was after she had appeared as a panelist at the 2019 forum when she gave the audience more details about the Sweet City Initiative: their plan to prioritise biodiversity in their urban design. By improving the experience of pollinators, Curridabat is improving the wellbeing of its citizens. Those listening in attendance were impressed by the initiative, but Curridabat did not win the award that year. At the 2020 virtual forum, Curridabat was nominated again for the same initiative, but this time it won the Wellbeing City Award.
“I didn’t expect to win the main prize in wellbeing,” said García. “What made our program more holistic this time around was that we included ways to improve mental health. We are measuring happiness now in Curridabat, so I think that helped.”
Convincing the city council and the public that improving the urban experiences of bees and birds would be good for everyone was challenging at first. When it was understood that the Sweet City initiative was just an enhancement of a way of life that citizens enjoyed for generations – which included green spaces for recreational and cultural activities – then the skeptics became believers.
The updated version of Sweet City includes indicators such as the quality of home life, work-life balance, leisure time, satisfaction with municipal services, and the quality of supportive relationships. Early in 2020, the city did a survey to determine these indicators of social progress. In general, 78 percent of the population are satisfied with life in Curridabat. Certain districts were happier than others, with some neighbourhoods saying their level of satisfaction was just below 70 percent, whereas other areas were above 90 percent.
“There is a limit to how much happiness depends on economic income, especially when you have all your basic needs covered,” says García. By gender, 74 percent of men and 83 percent of women said that they were satisfied. “In Curridabat, women are on average happier than men. Latin America is a very macho society, so men keep feelings inside and feel worse, but women tend to deal better with mental health because they ask for help.”
Curridabat’s biodiversity plays a major role in this overall satisfaction with life. One-third of residents said that they visit city parks and other green spaces six days a week. When asked which sentiment and emotions they feel about life in Curridabat, the word that came up 89 percent of the time was joy.
“Things like satisfaction, happiness, and joy should be the real measures of performance for a city,” opines García. “Nothing else should matter.” Too often, economic indicators are used to rank cities, as if the only thing that mattered was the gross domestic product. Curridabat confirms something that should be widely known but is often forgotten, which is that there is more to happiness in life than money.
No city is ever going to be perfect, or even ideal. A unicorn city, with a strong economy that benefits all levels of society, with truly harmonious relationships between all races and cultures, with very low crime, effective public transportation, no pollution, led by honest and competent public servants does not exist. There are some cities that check some of those boxes, but no city checks them all. Ignore what the tourism or investment departments of your local city government says at news conferences and prints in marketing brochures. The ideal city does not exist. In Curridabat, things are far from ideal, but residents are satisfied, happy, and joyful anyways, which García believes is because of their close relationship with nature.
“If you have a job, you are grateful for the wages that allow you to eat and have your basic needs met, but it doesn’t necessarily make you happy,” García says. “You have to see human beings as the complex creatures that they are.” Why wait for decades-long economic development plans to come to fruition, or for a long-awaited subway line to be built for citizens to be satisfied, when happiness can be found in the small pleasures of life in the present.
As the Wellbeing City Forum wrapped up in September 2020, García had just completed Curridabat’s pandemic reopening strategy after a six-month lockdown. Many cities are dealing with covid-restriction fatigue within their populaces, and Curridabat is no different. Residents miss the freedom of enjoying the outdoors in large groups, but like almost everyone else on the planet, living under layers of colour-coded restrictions and zones of community spread is taking its toll.
By 2022, Curridabat will open its Center of Territorial Intelligence in Biodiversity where residents can learn about plant species and observe best practices for onsite water management, food production, and landscaping. Designed by Tandem Arquitectura, this centre will comprise about a dozen lightweight structures dedicated to education, research, and ecological operations. It is a testing ground for ideas before they are spread across the city.
“Municipalities spend millions of dollars on things that in the end have no impact on the happiness of their residents,” says García. “Without nature, and natured-based solutions, we don’t have a future as a society. We believe that the most important services that we can offer to citizens are eco-centric services.”
Words Phil Roberts
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