{"id":10938,"date":"2015-09-21T17:02:55","date_gmt":"2015-09-21T21:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/?p=10938"},"modified":"2016-01-22T09:48:35","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T14:48:35","slug":"move-slow-and-connect-people-with-nature-the-economics-of-happiness-in-jeonju","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/2015\/09\/21\/move-slow-and-connect-people-with-nature-the-economics-of-happiness-in-jeonju\/","title":{"rendered":"Move Slow and Connect People with Nature: The Economics of Happiness in Jeonju"},"content":{"rendered":"

A review of the International Conference on the Economics of Happiness<\/a>, held on September 3-5, 2015 in Jeonju, South Korea.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to re-establish the link between city and land.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the opening ceremony of the Economics of Happiness<\/a> conference, we were happily greeted with this statement from the event’s director, Dr. Helena Norberg-Hodge, who called for everyone present (governments, NGOs, activists, and local citizens) to re-establish the link between city and land, and in turn, as we understand, to use this link as a basis for how we go about our economic and social activities.<\/p>\n

\"economicsofhappiness_1\"<\/a>
Dr. Helena Norberg-Hodge gives the opening keynote at the Economics Of Happiness conference in Jeonju, South Korea.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Norberg-Hodge called for all activists to be \u201cbig picture\u201d activists, united by a shared vision for social and ecological wellbeing. \u201cHow do we get there?\u201d she asked the audience \u201cre-connect to others and re-connect to nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

It’s a sentiment that we’ve all seen echoing not only through activist circles, but also through professions from architecture and urban design to politics and law. Bringing individuals from such professions together, the Economics of Happiness is a global initiative, bolstered by the success of the recent film of the same name. Through the film and the parent nonprofit organization Local Futures<\/a>, which Norberg-Hodge directs, it would seem that a global cultural phenomenon is slowly taking root in cities and communities around the world.<\/p>\n

Global though it may be, Economics of Happiness is perhaps more appropriately described as a global collection of local initiatives, all of which are united by a shared vision rooted in things like compassion and connection. The conference was uplifting\u2014as you might expect a conference on the Economics of Happiness would be\u2014and filled with advice and success stories presented by speakers from the USA, UK, Japan, and South Korea.<\/p>\n

Of particular interest to The Nature of Cities readers, the conference was supported largely by Jeonju city’s Mayor Seong Su Kim, who wants to use it as a blueprint for building a happy, sustainable city, one that looks at a more \u201cuseful\u201d measurement than GDP and per-capita income in order to gauge the wellbeing of its citizens. Speakers chimed in to this effect through multiple viewpoints including law, industry, public service, and\u2014perhaps most pervasively\u2014the subjects were sprouting directly from the social and ecological ground in which they are planted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe roots of all our major problems are intertwined\u201d noted Keibo Oiwa, author of Slow is Beautiful<\/i>, and founder of Japan’s Sloth Club<\/i><\/a>, a movement for slow living amidst one of the most fast paced countries in the world. By the acknowledgment that all of our problems are intertwined, we also come to see that the solutions, too, are intertwined.<\/p>\n

As in nature itself, sharing one success broadly and across disciplines and borders, will ultimately lead to more success.<\/p>\n

A common theme at the conference, Oiwa asked us to look to nature, saying that \u201cNature seems to know where to stop its growth and progress… how to take just enough<\/i>\u201d, further suggesting that the major deficiency in the way we think of and carry out \u201cprogress\u201d is that this process is fundamentally disconnected from nature, from reality, and often from other people.<\/p>\n

Oiwa’s philosophy also pushes us to see how re-connecting to nature and each other as the basis of our design and building process does not necessarily mean stopping progress.<\/p>\n

All we have to do is look at the progress of nature itself for a case study, at how fast nature grows and re-generates and innovates; we can have a sustainable progress that is connected to and informed by nature, giving us amazing progress and beauty side by side.<\/p>\n

Speaker Janelle Orsi took the concept of ‘connection’ from a social angle, giving a sharp yet witty critique of the \u201csharing economy.\u201d A highly contested term in urban areas, the \u201csharing economy\u201d is most often identified, ironically, with highly lucrative business models like Uber and AirBnB, which claim \u201csharing\u201d as their philosophy.<\/p>\n

Orsi, who is co-founder of the Sustainable Economies Law Center<\/a> in Oakland, California, gave the conference attendees a different take on the meaning of a sharing economy, calling for us to look more deeply at what sharing means, and whether we can morally justify profiting wildly from others and still call it sharing<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The \u201creal sharing economy\u201d, Orsi says, is seen in projects such as community gardens, worker-owned businesses, car shares, and collaborations. She gave a convincing argument for a new local economy, one based on four levels of increasing scale: relationships (such as borrowing and sharing on a temporary basis), agreements (such as co-owning and space sharing), organizations (such as a food co-op), and universal systems of support (public transit, basic income, universal healthcare).<\/p>\n

\"economicsofhappiness_2\"<\/a>
Janelle Orsi explains her ‘legal wedge’ in altering legal structures to encourage local economic activity.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Being a lawyer by trade, Orsi is engaged with \u201cfixing\u201d the restrictive laws we find\u2014perhaps most often at state and local levels\u2014which prohibit a true sharing economy from emerging. \u201cWe need different laws and regulations\u201d, said Orsi, suggesting a set of laws for what she calls \u201cextractive\u201d commercial entities, and a different set for \u201cgenerative\u201d entities like co-operatives and non profit organizations.<\/p>\n

The intent is to be more restrictive on profit driven organizations, which tend to \u201cextract\u201d wealth from a local economy, and to be more encouraging for those organizations which generate wealth and wellbeing for the people.<\/p>\n

Reflecting strongly the thoughts of the late economist E.F. Schumacher, another constant theme throughout most of the conference was the call to be small. Schumacher’s 1973 book, \u201cSmall is Beautiful\u201d, continues to be a highly influential call for economic thinking which puts people and the environment as central concerns.<\/p>\n

Smallness encourages better relationships between people and the environment, and better relationships between people and the environment give us a framework to take development actions that have sustainability and wellbeing built into their core. Schumacher’s concepts are statements of absolute simplicity and clarity at once.<\/p>\n

Speaking to this point, Neil McInroy, from the U.K. based Centre for Local Economic Strategies<\/a>, gave a plan to \u201cbring the economy back home\u201d by building out a full, diverse, and resilient local economy that merges \u201ccommercial, public, and social\u201d economic sectors.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most surprising was Jeonju’s Mayor Kim\u2019s very sincere call to action for building a happy and sustainable city, much of it surrounding ecological and agriculture-related themes.<\/p>\n

Mayor Kim, who was a huge champion of bringing the Economics of Happiness event to his city\u2014and who insisted that the organizers make it an annual event going forward\u2014gave a very daring strategy which, he noted, goes against the national agenda in South Korea. This is not easy territory for a South Korean mayor to tread, even in a mid-sized city like Jeonju.<\/p>\n

One of Mayor Kim’s main points was ecology, where he highlighted efforts by the city to invest in local biodiversity, reforestation, and cutting river pollution. Of these, the call for biodiversity is one of the most critical, yet is only beginning to take form in public forums.<\/p>\n

Mayor Kim might be happy to know, however, that such topics are well discussed here on TNOC:<\/p>\n