Cities 1.5
Cities 1.5
Lessons in Wellbeing Economics: Engaging local communities to bring Academic Principles into Urban Practice
This past January, our editorial counterparts at the the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy published an issue dedicated to Ecological Economics; this episode showcases two experts in wellbeing economics who contributed their knowledge to that edition.
Image Credit: Photo by Milly Vueti on Unsplash
Featured guests:
Amanda Janoo is the Economics & Policy Lead at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, a global collective striving to deliver systemic economic change which prioritises human and ecological wellbeing. These concepts are outlined in the article she co-authored, “Policy Design for a Wellbeing Economy – Lessons from Four City Pilots”, which explores four very different cities that have put wellbeing economy theories into real world practice.
Rachel Laurence is the Deputy Director for The Centre for Thriving Places, which offers strategic support, research, training and evidence-based measurement tools that put the interests and wellbeing of people, place, and planet centre stage. She was the former lead for Economic Development for Barking and Dagenham council, and has acted as advisor for Barking and Dagenham Giving. She is also the co-author of “Wellbeing Economy Ideas for Cities: Lessons for Implementation.”
Links
Herman Daly’s Great Debates: The enduring vitality of Ecological Economics - Featuring Peter Jackson, Cities 1.5 podcast
Beyond Growth: How cities can put people and planet first - Featuring Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Cities 1.5 podcast
Dedicim.Barcelona
Bullshit Jobs - Dave Graeber, Strike Magazine
Measuring What
If you want to learn more about the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy, please visit our website: https://jccpe.utpjournals.press/
Cities 1.5 is produced by the University of Toronto Press and Cities 1.5 is supported by C40 Cities and the C40 Centre for City Climate Policy and Economy. You can sign up to the Centre newsletter here. https://thecentre.substack.com/
Our executive producers are Calli Elipoulos and Peggy Whitfield.
Produced by Jess Schmidt: https://jessdoespodcasting.com/
Edited by Morgane Chambrin: https://www.morganechambrin.com/
Music is by Lorna Gilfedder: https://origamipodcastservices.com/
00[Cities 1.5 main theme music] I'm David Miller and you're listening to Cities 1.5, a podcast about how climate leaders are driving global change through local action.[music fades out][urgent music] The principles of wellbeing economics, which prioritize human and planetary needs, rather than unsustainable growth, are allied to the field of ecological economics. A commitment to wellbeing lies at the heart of this podcast, which is a joint venture between the University of Toronto Press and the C40 Centre. This past January, our editorial counterparts at the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy published an issue dedicated to ecological economics, and earlier this season, I spoke with a contributor to this issue, Professor Peter Victor, who gave us a crash course in the ideas of the late, great father of ecological economics, Herman Daly, and took us on a whistle-stop tour through some of Daly's economic debates that are still shaping the field to this day. Each season of Cities 1.5 has featured leading economists like Katherine Trebeck, Tim Jackson, Sandrine Dixson-Declève, and more to help us explore why we must shift the needle away from unbridled neoliberalism.[music continues] Cities are leading the charge and navigating towards a system that prioritizes the health and wellbeing of people and planet above profit, because learning from our past mistakes and figuring out a path forward needs to happen simultaneously, if we are to have a future at all.[energetic, upbeat music] I've thoroughly enjoyed my deep-dive conversations into the theory of this sector of economics with each expert I've spoken to, and I hope you have too, but to counter the popular but untrue cliche that academics live in ivory towers, far removed from the real world, I also wanted to hear more about what happens on the ground when theory meets reality. How do very different cities decide to embrace the ideals of a wellbeing economy in their own unique context and which ways do they change? And what policies and practices did they stop doing? And, just as importantly, which new ones do they start?[music continues then ends][light, rhythmic music] This week, we're speaking with two contributors to the Ecological Economics edition of the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy. These dedicated scholars have been working on taking all the theory that's been challenging the philosophy of the post-World War II economic order and supporting cities to put those principles into practice. We'll be hearing about how systemic change, led by cities and from the ground up, is not just possible, but also preferable for both people and planet. We'll be hearing from Rachel Laurence, a wellbeing economist whose life's work is to support cities to become happier and healthier. But first, the Economics and Policy Lead at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, Amanda Janoo, gives us a short history of wellbeing economics and introduces us to pilot cities who are actually making these aspirational changes into reality. So, let's get going.[music continues then ends]
Amanda Janoo 03:39[rotary dial telephone rings] [clicks] Hi, I'm Amanda Janoo, the Academics and Policy Lead at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, and I'm joining you today from Burlington, Vermont.[receiver chimes, replaced in cradle]
David 03:51 When Amanda Janoo is not guiding us and our listeners through the twists and turns of economic history since World War II, she is the Economics and Policy Lead at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, a global collective striving to deliver systemic economic change which prioritizes human and ecological wellbeing. These concepts are outlined in her latest co-authored article for the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy, Policy Design for a Wellbeing Economy: Lessons from Four City Pilots, which explores what unfolds when for very different cities, in four very different corners of the globe, put wellbeing economy theories into real-world practice.[music continues then ends]
David 04:41 Amanda, thanks so much for being with us on the podcast and for your ongoing and really fascinating work.
Amanda Janoo 04:48 Aw, thank you so much for having me, David.
David 04:50 Well, it's a pleasure, and I think our listeners are going to find it even more of a pleasure over the next little while. So, can you just tell our listeners a little bit more about your background and about what the Wellbeing Economy Alliance is, and what you do?
Amanda Janoo 05:05 Sure. So as the Economics and Policy Lead and one of our resident nerds, so a lot of my work focuses on demystifying the economy to make new and transformative economic ideas a lot more accessible to a wide range of different audiences. And because of my background, I worked in international development prior to joining WEAll as an industrial policy and structural transformation expert, and so I also focus and work with governments who are interested in redefining progress and transforming their economies in line with their social and ecological goals.
David 05:38 So, let's talk about the social and ecological goals a little bit more, from the perspective of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, and I guess, first of all, I should ask who's involved in that alliance?
Amanda Janoo 05:50 It was a coming together of, we say, many mothers who were all coming within the "new economy" space, and their initiatives were falling under a lot of different banners, whether that's regenerative economy, solidarity economy, post-growth, de-growth and many more, but they recognize that what was needed was not necessarily another think tank, but really a movement-building organization that could illustrate the connection between these various points, and also invite in a wider range of organizations, governments, change-makers, activists from around the world who are really committed to transforming our economic paradigm and system so it works in service of people's and planet's wellbeing.
David 06:31 Traditional economists, and certainly those who created the architecture post-war, that established the rules that the world is governed by, and then the economists that advise governments like Thatcher and Reagan in the '70s and '80s would say, "Well, the economic system already produces that result." So, can you just comment, from the perspective of somebody who thinks about the economy producing wellbeing in a way that's harmonious with the planet, what's wrong with the current economic rules we live under that doesn't meet the needs of people and the planet?
Amanda Janoo 07:06 Well, I appreciate you referencing the post-war period because I think that's important to look at a little bit of the history of this evolution, because a lot of our mainstream sort of economic thinking and indicators of progress really came out of the Great Depression and that post-war period where the big fear was high levels of unemployment, stock market crashing, and ultimately, you know, whether or not we were achieving a sufficient level of economic output. And so, we've held those indicators as our North Star even to this day where, if you listen to Marketplace or any sort of mainstream economic radio or news program you'll hear a lot about GDP growth rate, stock market values, etc. But those aren't the crises of our time now. The crisis of our time is not that we don't know how to produce enough; the crisis is that the ways in which we're producing are ultimately not leading to the collective improvements in our quality of life and, in many ways, are leaving us worse off. The levels of inequality between and within communities has reached such a critical level that we're seeing reduction in social trust, rising violence, political instability, so a lot of the things that ultimately matter most for people is not the orientation point for the decision-making, as we continue to just view people and nature as inputs into production and to try to use them as efficiently as possible, rather than thinking about, "Is this production actually serving people and planet and the kinds of services that we need most to all thrive?"
David 08:40 I'd like to ask the question based on the post-war arrangements because, if you don't study economics—and it's all been a long time since I did—but if you don't study economics, as a citizen or a resident of a city, you can make the assumption that these principles and rules have been there since time immemorial and that we actually collectively sat down and said, "Here's how our systems are going to work at the Bretton Woods Conference."[light, gentle music] And so, I think it's important to remind people we made a collective decision about a set of rules and they're not working very well, so we can make a collective decision to have a different set of rules, if we choose. Can you talk a bit about what the economics looks like if you start from the principle that it's about people's wellbeing and living in harmony with the planet, and, you know, how we might incorporate these principles into our global systems?[music fades out]
Amanda Janoo 09:37 If you have a conversation with your neighbour and you ask them about what they love about where they live, nine times out of ten, they're going to talk about the community and the nature in some way. Those are the dimensions that people really care about – the place they live and the quality of that life. And the assumption, for a long time, was that wealth was what mattered most for our wellbeing. But we're reached a sort of critical tipping point where that argument is no longer holding true. So, I live in the United States, for example, supposedly the wealthiest country in the world, but people are not super happy. We have a massive mental-health crisis, huge levels of drug overdose and violence and, you know, many other sorts of issues, and so once you start that conversation of just asking what people care about most, then that opens, even, up our imaginations and then think about, "Okay, well then why aren't those the dimensions that we're really prioritizing when we evaluate the prosperity of our communities?" And some of that comes from a little bit of an outdated, dominant policy story, which was the idea that we just need to grow the economy as quickly as possible, and then it'll trickle down and everything will get better, and obviously it didn't trickle down. The idea for a long period has been, the government is mostly there as a fire fighter. They're just supposed to intervene when there are crises, but we're at a moment where even the wealthiest countries or cities or communities, the frequency and severity of the social or political or environmental crises we're facing means that we just don't have the resources to keep going that way. So, it's requiring a shift in our paradigm to view government and policy as a more proactive agent to actually reshape the structure of the economy. And the way I define the economy is, it's the way we produce and provide for one another, and that, yes, includes business and finance, but also includes public-oriented institutions like academia or government, as well as non-monetary dimensions of the ways that we care for one another as families, communities, neighbours, etc. And so, those are all aspects of our economic system and, ultimately, what we need to get to is a place where we no longer need to make the case, for example, of why health is good for the economy, but feel like we can swap that burden of proof and start evaluating the economy by its contribution to our health, of really thinking about which are the economic activities and behaviours that are positively contributing to social connection, clean air, clean water, so that we can encourage and reward those, proactively, while discouraging economic activities that are really detrimental and exploitive for people and planet.
David 12:24 It sounds like what you're describing is an economy that, when we think about the rules that we want to govern those relations, starts from meeting the needs of people, whether you can measure them financially or not—emotional, physical needs—in a way that works with the planet. How radical is this notion today? Has there been a shift in understanding by people, by governments, by city governments, by policy makers, about these kinds of ideas, and by economists, of course?
Amanda Janoo 12:57[driving music] It's not such a radical idea anymore, and it wasn't even a radical idea, pre-1950s, I think, but ultimately, the government is always involved in determining the shape and outcomes of an economy. And currently, and throughout, you know, the neoliberal period, it was a lot of focusing on encouraging the large corporations, investors, entrepreneurs that were viewed as the most efficient at generating wealth, but then with COVID, for example, it was amazing to see, across pretty much all countries, that it did not take policymakers very long to identify which types of economic activities or workers were most essential and it was not hedge fund managers, right? It was grocery clerks and farmers.
David 13:45 Yeah, they were allowed to work by Zoom.
Amanda Janoo 13:46[laughs] Yeah, right? We intuitively understand the kinds of activities that are most essential, at least for maintaining our current wellbeing, and we were able to identify those pretty quickly. The point is now to expand that logic to also think about the wellbeing of all life and all species and the kinds of ways in which we can provide for one another, and that is going to ensure long-term prosperity for generations to come.
David 14:11 I think people sort of assume economic rules are set by institutions like the World Bank, but national governments run the economy. Can you talk about the role of cities here and why it matters, from a human wellbeing and planetary sustainability perspective?
Amanda Janoo 14:27 I definitely believe that cities are doing the most innovative work, and I think a big part of that is because the smaller the scale, the harder it is to create conceptual silos. It allows for more interconnected and also more nimble and agile types of transformation. So, one of my favourite examples is from Barcelona.[driving music] There was just a huge level of distrust in government and so they instituted this Dedicim Barcelona. It's like a participatory policy platform which allowed for all citizens to just put forth any policy proposals that they thought would be relevant to debate, discuss, up-vote on them, and the city promise that, if they got a certain level of support, they would just pass it without asking any questions. And this revived a faith in democracy there that, then, was a big reason why when they went about developing their climate strategy, it was the first city strategy that was genuinely in line with the Paris Agreement because their strategy was not theoretical. It was really practical. It was really grounded in reality, but integrated the social and the environmental in a way that was really transformative.[music fades out]
David 15:39 You recently co-authored a paper for the Journal called Policy
Design for a Wellbeing Economy:Lessons from Four City Pilots. I'd like to hear some more about the lessons you took from those. But can you just speak first about, when you thought about that work, what were you hoping to achieve and learn?
Amanda Janoo 15:58 So, the Wellbeing Economy Policy Design Pilots were done in: Perth, Scotland; Toronto, Canada; Pomona, California; and Porirua, New Zealand. And each of these cities went through a process of a participatory co-creation of a new wellbeing vision for their city and embarked upon an exploration of what kind of transformations in the economic system and governance system would be necessary to achieve those goals. Before the pilot, I was leading a project to develop the Policy Design Guide, and because of maybe my background, working with policymakers to help facilitate policy design, and also in looking at what literature existed already, one of the things I noticed is there's no lack of people trying to tell policymakers what to do, what kind of policies that they should implement, what alternative set of indicators they should be using, but there didn't seem to be a lot of resources around the how – like, “How do you actually go about understanding what matters for wellbeing? How would you then go about selecting the kind of indicators that would help you to assess progress? How do you then align institutions and stakeholders for this more holistic or systemic approach?” etc. And so, that was the starting point was really trying to work in a participatory process.[light, percussive music] And so, we put out the Policy Design Guide and, with that, we were conscious that, although it included examples around each of these different sort of concepts or processes, we wanted to see what it would be like in piloting, in a variety of different locations, different contexts, cultures, places around the world to understand “What does this really look like in action?” And, because of the strong principle in participatory process, that's definitely, I think, one of the important learnings which we're seeing in terms of people want a voice.[music fades out] I think one of the biggest issues with neoliberal globalization is people don't feel like they have any power over their individual or the collective livelihood. And so, empowering people to feel like they're not just engaged at the agenda-setting area, but are really proactively engaged throughout the entire process of policy design through implementation, I think also allows for a lot more bravery on the part of politicians, as well to say, "We've got, you know, the community behind us, and this is being led by them." But there's obviously some barriers of that too, because there's fear of letting go of some of that power and control because you don't know, if you just let people decide what they want to do, if you're going to have the capacity or even resources to do it. I think that's oftentimes the fear that policymakers, I've found, have is that, "Well, if we ask people what they want, they're gonna want the sun and the moon and we won't be able to do it and then it'll be a mess." But the reality is that, for example, from the pilots, Perth and Kinross in Scotland, they asked children to define wellbeing for the city because they had just passed this Children's Human Rights Initiative and they were really trying to make sure that voice was being really centered. They even came up with really intelligent, immediate proposals like, "We should have a Christmas festival," because that would help local businesses, that would provide space for social connection, and that would be an opportunity for, like, enjoyment and play for people within this, historically much more economically-marginalized community. And so, just the fact that children can think so systemically, there's no reason why we can't believe that all people, if given the opportunity wouldn't have a good understanding of what was needed for their communities and how to get there.
David 19:32 I think, from a city government perspective, the best city governments, at least intrinsically, believe that. Whether they do it well or not depends on all sorts of things, but you have to believe in the people that elected you and their wisdom. So, that's a really powerful insight, that people need to be engaged from the outset. What are some other insights from the pilots?
Amanda Janoo 19:54 It was in Pomona, California, Perth in Scotland, and Porirua in New Zealand, all really, historically, economically-marginalized communities, but these communities have never been asked, actually, what is going well, and it was always, "What's the problem?" And so, the ability to just really reflect on where there are skills and things to be celebrated as a source for that transformation felt really empowering. So, I think that was another one of the realizations we had.[driving music] Starting with a positive vision, to be really clear what are the goals that you have, and to frame those in a positive aspirational way, so for example, if that's around social connection, time, clean water, air, green spaces, etc., and then to look at,"What is already working in line with that?", "Where do we see examples of people taking time to be together, of doing work that feels really meaningful?" and it's contributing to society, where we see examples of environmental stewardship, and, "How do we then encourage, reward and build upon that?" that's a pretty big shift, but it's been quite a powerful one.[music fades out]
David 21:10 The one thing people might have questions about is the city role in creating meaningful work and you mentioned that. And, you know, income, employment, and employment being fulfilling and meaningful all matter, so what's the city government role in that side of creating a wellbeing economy?
Amanda Janoo 21:31 This kind of question also gets to just the realities of this work. Let's open our imaginations to really different systems whilst also acknowledging that there are steps that need be taken to get there. And so, one of my favourite books is Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. He did an analysis—I think it was just in the US and the UK—but he found that the majority of people had a job that they thought need not or should not exist. So, they were doing work that they felt was either contributing nothing to the world or actively leaving it worse off.
David 22:05 Wow.
Amanda Janoo 22:06 Yeah. And this is really significant because, if there's any sign of a failing economic system, it's got to be that one, because there's a nearly perfect inverse relationship, at this point, between how much you are remunerated and how much you are actually contributing positively to the world. So, the jobs that really do the most important social contribution are paid very little within our current system, whereas the ones that are quite exploitive and extractive are paid a lot. It's not that a single city alone can necessarily transform the entire labour market structure, but I do see, for example, with the huge sort of growth and acceleration of universal basic income or universal basic guarantee, for example, initiatives amongst cities and pilots, that there's starting to be the shift and a recognition that the idea of the labour market, itself, is pretty gross.[light, percussive music] And so, ultimately, the belief that everybody should be entitled to a certain level of basic comfort and security and then, on that basis, they have the security so that the type of gifts and skills and work that they feel really called to do, they're able to bring that energy towards, because Canada, for example, just developed this Quality of Life Framework and I love it because one of the indicators they included was a sense of meaning and purpose, and it's the only wellbeing framework I've seen so far with that as one of the top domains.[music fades out]
David 23:33 You sound inspired and, you know, we work in the climate area. The threats are real. We may be over 1.5 degrees already, which is a boundary that scientists have said we really don't know what's going to happen, but it's going to be bad. It's a tipping point, so it's a big worry. Where do you get your inspiration from and, through the lens of trying to create a wellbeing economy, why should we be optimistic? Do we have hope?
Amanda Janoo 23:59 I do believe that there's a lot to be optimistic about, particularly when we think about how rapidly paradigms are shifting. And so, yes. We are in a state of facing a lot of crises, existential crises we haven't faced before. When I first started studying economics, if you were questioning any mainstream economic ideas, you were just out in a field somewhere and nobody was talking to you. People are being actively invited into the space now. And then, since COVID, I think we've all just been wrestling with fundamental questions like acknowledging, I think, deep down, that we don't expect the future to look the way that the past has, and that has opened up, I think our collective imaginations in a way that allows for quite significant shifts to come at all levels.[driving music] And so, power in numbers, you know? It's helpful to not feel like you're alone, to know that there are other people who are wrestling with these similar kinds of questions, and to know that there's people who are going to be cheering you on if you take a brave and bold step of challenging some of those dominant myths and really articulating a new hopeful future for people and planet.
David 25:03 Amanda Janoo, I think you have a lot of people cheering you on. Thanks so much for being with us today and for your ongoing exciting and really critical work.
Amanda Janoo 25:14 Thank you so much for having me.[music continues then fades out]
David 25:21[light, driving music] This episode of Cities 1.5 is produced by University of Toronto Press with generous support from the C40 Centre for City Climate Policy and Economy. Want more access to current research on how city leaders are taking climate action? We also publish the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy. Our mission is to publish timely, evidence-based research that contributes to the urban climate agenda and supports governmental policy toward an equitable and resilient world. The Journal serves as a platform for dynamic content that highlights ambitious, near-term climate action, focusing on human-centered solutions to today's most pressing climate challenges. To read the latest issue, visit JCCPE.utpjournals.press or find the link in the show notes.[music fades out]
Rachel Laurence 26:20[rotary dial telephone rings][clicks] I'm Rachel Laurence. I'm the Deputy Chief Executive of the Centre for Thriving Places and we are based in Bristol in the UK.[receiver chimes, replaced in cradle]
David 26:30[light, rhythmic music] Through her work at the Centre for Thriving Places, Rachel Laurence offers strategic support, research, training, and evidence-based measurement tools the put the interests and wellbeing of people, place, and planet centre stage. Rachel and the Centre inform city policy in a holistic manner and through an academic lens, with a focus on happiness and community engagement. She is also the co-author of Wellbeing Economy Ideas for Cities: Lessons for Implementation, which featured in the recent Ecological Economics issue of the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy.[music ends] Rachel, welcome to Cities 1.5.
Rachel Laurence 27:11 Thanks for having me.
David 27:13 Well, I'm thrilled. Can you just tell us a bit about yourself, who you are, what you do, and what the Centre is?
Rachel Laurence 27:20 I have worked for about 15 to 20 years in areas around what might be called new economics or new economic development, ideas of trying to look at more progressive ways of organizing the economy. My background actually was as a youth worker, and then I did quite a lot of work on community-led economic development, working with communities who were trying to grow different ways for the economy to work from the ground up, and I sort of gradually moved into policy, and then I ended up working in local government in the UK. And, for the last couple of years, I have been working for the Centre for Thriving Places. So, I come to this without an academic economic background. I very much moved sideways and hopped through different things but with questions lots of experience now of, practically, how people who are trying to shape economies in place, at city level or at a kind of regional level, are trying to organize resources so that society functions better. And I think that's a really helpful way of thinking about the economy, a way of organizing how we manage resources so that people can live well and the planet can be well, as well.
David 28:29 I think that's a very important insight actually, right from the beginning, that that's what economics is about. It's about how we organize and share resources, and your approach is starting from the ground up. Can you talk a bit about that, why you start there, and the implications?
Rachel Laurence 28:48 Absolutely, and I think this is really critical to what we do in the organization I work for, as well, with the Centre for Thriving Place. The clue is in the name. It's about place-based approach, and I suppose our starting point is,"What's it like to live in a place? What's it like for a person to live in a place? How do we feel about the place we live?" If you ask most people, "What's your local economy like?" or, "What is the economy like where you live?" they won't give you figures about GDP growth. They'll say, "Oh, it's great because there's a nice place to shop and there's a good place to go to the park with my kids and it's quite easy to find childcare and the local jobs that I can access, and that I can get to by bus, are reasonably well paid and they fit around my childcare. We think about how a place functions, and all of those different parts that we would say at the Centre for Thriving Places are drivers of wellbeing all of the different things in the place that shape what your day-to-day life is like. If you take that starting point to help you understand what the economy is for people, then if you're designing economic strategy, what you're designing is how that place should work. And, if you take that sort of one step further, you should be thinking probably about how it works for different kinds of people with different kinds of needs, and from different backgrounds and with different kinds of wealth. And, if you're thinking about "Well, how do you organize businesses and employment and jobs and transport and infrastructure so that it functions well?", in my view, that's what a good economic strategy does, and that's very different from the kind of theoretical approach to a national economy that looks at how efficiently organizations work to create growth.[driving music] And I think that there has been a long-running assumption that is really coming apart now, and has been for the last sort of 10, 20 years, the assumption that if you get a system working well to drive GDP growth, that somehow, magically, people will have a good standard of living and the planet will be fine. That assumption that that connection exists has been, you know, really disproved. That's not what we've seen at all and it's perfectly possible to have places, countries that have really high GDP and huge levels of inequality and misery. You see that at city level. If you understand that growth doesn't necessarily go with a place being a great place to live, that, to me, suggests that we're getting something wrong with economic strategy if it's not producing that sort of human and planetary wellbeing. You end up with a very different kind of strategy if you take the other starting point.[music ends]
David 31:10 I work for C40 which is a place-based organization of mayors of the world's great cities. I think it's unusual that an economist would start with place and cities and towns and high streets, whether they're succeeding or not. Can you talk more about that and what are the implications for our thinking about the economic rules we agree to and for government strategies for economic success if we start with place?
Rachel Laurence 31:42 People whose job is to try and run places well, whether you're an officer within a local government organization or an elected politician, you're sort of automatically thinking about, "How does that place function as a system?" That's your job. That's what you've been elected to do. People want to know, "Are you going to make this a great place to be and to live?" So, your starting point, when you're working with anybody whose job is to run a place or organize, you know, how things work in a place, you have that human-centered approach from the outset. I think national government can learn an enormous amount from that because, in a way, it doesn't make it obvious how to run a place. It's still quite difficult. There are tradeoffs and it's not always straightforward but, basically, what we find is that, if your starting point question is,"What makes a place great to live?" then the answer to that will be a vision, usually, which is,"What would good look like?" and that's something that you can collectively generate with the people in that place. And then, the next question is, "Okay, how do we organize ourselves to make that a reality?" And the action plan, if you like, that you might then develop to figure out how you organize things to make that vision a reality is what I would call an economic strategy or an industrial strategy which really should be, you know, an economic plan of how all of those different parts of the system interact so that you can make that vision a reality and that vision is likely to have in it an idea about what it would be like to live in a place and how that place will serve its people and its environment. The vision is unlikely to have in it, if you just ask people on the street, "What are the growth targets?" If you're starting point question as a national government is, "What's the growth target for this country? We'd like to have a system that produces 3% growth in productivity a year," then the action plan that you generate – your economic strategy or your industrial strategy tends to have quite different activities that suggest themselves. So, I think, for me, one of the reasons why place-based working is so interesting and important is that it already, inherently, gets you away from almost that trick question about, "Ooh, which bits of the economy should we be growing?" and it enables you to just start very naturally with that fundamental question of, "Well, what's it like to live in this place?" and, "How do we design a system that does that?" So, I think place-based working, even if people who are doing it don't see themselves as particularly radical or progressive or even particularly as economists, tend to be asking the same kinds of questions, which are, I think, quite progressive questions about, "How do we make the system work better than it's currently working for the people in this place?"
David 34:09 One of the implications of your approach, to me, is about the importance of public services, as well, because a high street with a great library, for example, or what we call in North America, community centres, or great places to be in public, a nice square, benches, all of those things are part of something that helps make a place a place where people can thrive, not just their wallets.
Rachel Laurence 34:35 Exactly, and where people want to be and spend time, and not just sort of, you know, rush in, and rush out.[music fades out] So that's definitely a huge part of placemaking, I think, is thinking about how people interact physically with their environment in that way.
David 34:48 You recently co-authored a paper for the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy called Wellbeing Economy Ideas for Cities: Lessons for Implementation. Can you speak a bit about that paper and, in particular, some lessons that you've learned and seen and you and your co-author speak to about what cities should actually do to start building on this idea that economics should be a place-based approach that is about the jobs, the place, the services, all of that, that people need in order to thrive?
Rachel Laurence 35:25 Yeah. And I felt very privileged to be involved in writing that article along with Saamah Abdallah and Luca Coscieme from the Hot or Cool Institute, and Kate Pickett from the University of York, and Lisa Hough-Stewart from the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. What we were trying to do with that article was write something quite practical that looked at, I guess, the mechanisms or the methods that city leaders could take if they're trying to put a wellbeing economy approach into practice. So, we talked a bit about the steps that you might go through if you are somebody working at a place-based level for a city, and you've decided that it would be a good idea to try and create a more wellbeing economy-focused approach. And there's lots of different ways of doing it. I feel like it's important to say, I don't think there's one right way or one right framework. You know, this is about a basic set of ideas and a basic starting point and vision. But, when we look at how people are implementing it in practice around the world, there are some common themes that come through. And so, I can talk through perhaps some of the steps that we talked about in the article. So, in the article, we sort of boiled it down to six steps that feel like they are often present when we're working with people who are trying to implement this process. So there's what I talked about before – vision. It's really important to have a shared vision of what good looks like. What do we mean when we say, "wellbeing economy"? And that might be different in different places, and it might be different for different groups in those places, but being able to articulate a shared understanding of what outcomes you're actually trying to achieve with this economic plan that you're generating, that's really critical. It's really important to think about what you're going to measure, and sometimes measurement can feel quite dry and geeky and sort of data-y, but if you think about it, the things that people decide to measure, to check whether they're making progress in the way that they want to make progress, tend to end up being the things that become priorities, that become the targets, that become the things that people work towards. So, if you've set yourself a target to measure over a certain period of time, how much have you managed to increase the wages of the poorest 10%, and if that's become something you decide you're going to measure, then it's much more likely that's going to become the focus of thinking in planning and making plans around that.[light, gentle music] It's important to think about, "What are you going to measure?" and, "What data are you going to use? How does that align? Is that going to tell you whether you've achieved what your vision said you wanted to achieve?" And then, there's two steps which belong together really, which we've called collaboration and citizen participation. With collaboration, it's incredibly important to think about how different partners and different stakeholders are going to work together, and this is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. I see lots of places that struggle with siloed working where the people who are responsible for energy and retrofit never get a chance to talk to the people who are responsible for public health, and then they never talk to the people who are doing economic development, [music fades out] so this kind of collaboration across the different parts of the system. But then, also recognizing that citizens, going about their day-to-day lives, even if you have fantastic collaboration across the kind of official departments, it's important to put extra and separate attention into how you're going to engage the residents and citizens in these discussions, as well. And then, the last two kind of steps—and I should say these are not consecutive steps. These are just different parts of the process that are often quite iterative—so there's something really important around thinking about prevention and asset-based work, so thinking about how you design a system, an economic system which is going to produce the outcomes you want from the outset, rather than have an economic system over in one place and then, later, think about how you distribute the wealth or increased access to those jobs as a kind of an afterthought. Think about it from the outset, how you prevent bad outcomes from happening, how you prevent more carbon being released into the atmosphere or poorer health outcomes. And then, the last and possibly most important point that we make in the article is that all of this is experimental. Even though there's loads of really interesting practice going on, that can be learned from, anybody trying to make a wellbeing economy happen in place at the moment is doing that in the face of a system which is not really designed to facilitate that way of working, as you alluded to. We're coming out of decades and decades of a very different approach to the economy, so if you're trying to create wellbeing economy in place, you have to accept that a lot of what you're doing is experimenting, is having a hunch, testing stuff out, seeing if it works, adapting. So, this kind of spirit of experimentation is really, really important.
David 39:56 Do you have any examples of work you’ve seen, or your co-authors have seen, of things that are useful to be measured at a city level when you’re thinking of the economic strategy in a different way?
Rachel Laurence 40:01 I'm really glad you asked that because that's something that my organization thinks quite a lot about actually, and often is at the heart of, when we're supporting leaders, to think about this is something that we try and bring. So, we've created a framework called the Thriving Places Index. There's lots of other frameworks that work really well, as well. There's lots of other organizations that have thought of different ways of measuring and what the right things might be to measure, and ours interacts quite well with lots of those others. But, essentially, what we've done with the Thriving Places Index is spend a bit of time working with academics in this field to understand what the drivers of wellbeing are, what the known drivers of wellbeing are that we know really make a difference to whether people are able to thrive. And what that gives you is a basket of indicators. In our index, there's about 96 indicators that we track every year for each place in the UK, each local authority in the UK, but there's many more that kind of sit underneath that, and they sit under a set of headings which essentially are around local economy, housing, people's level of income, indicators around health outcomes, climate and sustainability outcomes, and then some things around sort of how society works, so feeling of safety, people's feeling about belonging. So, if you look at youth crime, for example, and youth participation, that gives you a really good sense of a lot of what's really happening in the system. It's kind of a good proxy for lots of other things. We feel like our index is as good as any as a starting point, but we would also say that, actually, what really matters is to look at what matters to your population and to the people who live in your place. Any good framework, any good set of measures will have something around sustainability, something around equality, and a set of things around living conditions, and probably then some economic metrics around how the local economy might be functioning to deliver that.
David 41:50 You've really highlighted both collaboration and participation. Can you speak to that, why it matters so much, and, you know, any examples that you've seen or maybe your colleagues have, of this done really well?
Rachel Laurence 42:06 I care very much about this and my background, as I said earlier, is in community-led economic development, properly bottom-up where you bring together people who live in a place to collectively, through workshops, figure out what they would like their place to look like and then you work backwards from there to work out what the economy needs to do to serve that vision.[gentle, sparse music] I mean, I think it probably goes without saying that the more you can get residents in a place involved in shaping what the vision is, the more likely it is that what you then do meets their needs. The less they're involved, the less likely it is that you will magically, telepathically know what their needs are, so I think there's a very basic reason for it. But I also think there's a huge opportunity when you really properly do citizen involvement and enable people who live in a place to not only shape the vision, but also be involved in then delivering whatever the action plan, the economic plan is that comes out of that. You unlock a huge amount of assets, essentially, so you unlock a lot of knowledge and intelligence but also people's ability to make and do things and to the connections that they have. So, I think that, if you haven't got people involved in setting the vision, then you have a big problem.[music fades out] But, even better, if you're able to then do things like citizens assemblies or other forms of kind of citizen engagement to set that vision, if you're also able to then resource and support all sorts of different people from the community to develop their own businesses, to become involved in designing and delivering different kinds of programs and community infrastructure, what you then get is a much more vibrant and resilient local economy that really does meet local needs. I mean there's a whole kind of world of participatory budgeting. There are some really interesting examples of citizen-led investment forums. There's a great organization called Barking & Dagenham Giving, which started with the council devolving some public money to the community to make decisions about how that might be spent on community grants. But actually, what happened was that once the community had had a chance to really think about how impact investment might work, they decided that they didn't just want to give little bits of money to a sports club here or a community organization; they wanted to invest in wind turbines somewhere that it made sense to have wind turbines, and then for the proceeds of that investment, the dividends to be invested back in the community, so immediately started to take a really savvy approach to that investment, because they wanted to contribute towards tackling climate change, and then generate kind of more business opportunities locally. So, I think it's really interesting that money is now being spent in a much more impactful way than it otherwise would have been.
David 44:44 Rachel, can you just for our non-UK listeners, tell us a bit about Barking & Dagenham?
Rachel Laurence 44:45 Yeah, so Barking & Dagenham is a part of London. It's the East End of London and, historically, it was a place where there was a lot of industrialization. It made cars. Ford's factory was in Dagenham, and that was de-industrialized very quickly in the '70s and '80s and has then had a lot of poverty, but in recent years has been doing a huge amount of quite innovative work to regenerate its economy from the bottom up.
David 45:10 On that optimistic note about people taking an initial idea of making it so much better when they're really engaged, are you optimistic about whether this work to start building our economies through place is going to help us address inequality, social inclusion, exclusion, and the climate crisis?
Rachel Laurence 45:35 I really do, and I'm not just saying that because it's my job to say that. I really honestly do. That's why I do this work. A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be in a workshop in Leeds. I was talking to people from local government from the public health teams and the environment teams. I was having a brilliant, optimistic, hopeful, practical discussion, basically to really connect public health outcomes with climate and to connect all of that back with how they drive economic growth in the region – really innovative, really practical, achievable, positive, hopeful examples that really will help them reduce carbon, that really will reduce inequality, and it really brought it home to me; I came home from that workshop full of energy and optimism and sort of then logged on to my social media channels and all my other friends were feeling miserable about the state of national politics and I thought, "Well, that's why I work at the local level."[driving music] It's just it does feel a lot more optimistic and just practical and common sense. So yes, I have a lot of hope.
David 46:32 Well, Rachel Laurence, you not only are inspired, you're inspiring. This has been a fabulous conversation and the underlying principles that you've espoused and you and your colleagues have espoused in the terrific paper in our journal are really important ones for cities globally, and I really appreciate not just you being with us today, but your ongoing work, which really matters and is giving me some hope. So, thank you very much for that, too.
Rachel Laurence 46:58 Thanks so much. It's been a privilege to be interviewed by you.[music continues then ends]
David 47:16[energetic, upbeat music] It's important that we use science to understand when outdated economic theories have outlived their purpose, in order to create new systems that serve the needs of planet Earth rather than planet profit. Such ideas are sometimes dismissed as radical, which makes cities, as global climate leaders on the cutting edge of progress, the perfect testing ground. Wellbeing economy practices and the urban areas they're thriving in such as Perth, Toronto, and more, are leading the way and showing the rest of us that systemic change on a global scale is possible. It's crucial to showcase these holistic and engaged examples of urban leadership and use them as a guiding and hopeful light for what the future must look like and how we can deliver it.[music continues then ends][Cities 1.5 main theme music] Well, that's a wrap on season three of Cities. 1.5. Thank you very much for listening. I hope that you found our guests as inspiring and thought-provoking as I have. Cities 1.5 will return for season four this fall, so make sure you subscribe on your favourite podcast listening app to get the latest updates. And, if you just can't wait, there's now three full seasons of Cities 1.5 episodes to catch up on. See you in September.[music continues][music continues] This has been Cities 1.5, leading global change through local climate action. I'm David Miller. I was the Mayor of Toronto, Canada, and I know, firsthand, the role cities can play in solving the climate crisis. I'm the Editor in Chief of the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy, published by the University of Toronto Press in collaboration with the C40 Centre for City Climate Policy and Economy, where I'm also the Managing Director. C40's mission is to help our member cities halve their emissions within a decade, while improving equity, building resilience, and creating the conditions for everyone, everywhere to thrive.[music continues] Cities 1.5 is produced by University of Toronto Press in association with the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy and C40 Cities. This podcast is produced by Jessica Schmidt, and our executive producers are Peggy Whitfield and Dali Carmichael. Our music is by Lorna Gilfedder. The fight for an equitable and resilient world is closer than you think. To learn more, visit the show's website, linked in the episode notes. See you next time.[main theme music continues then ends]
