MAKE AMERICA HAPPY AGAIN

Mr. Buettner created the Blue Zones Project with a team of 200 people working in 23 American cities to help make them happier places to live. The project drills down into quality-of-life issues at the local level. That means working with city leaders to help craft policies that build better communities.

“Places like San Luis Obispo, California; Boulder, Colorado; Portland, Oregon. In all these places at a certain point, enlightened leaders turned away from just more development. They turned the economic energy inward to build a vibrant downtown. They’ve done things like eliminate billboards. When you think about it, nobody likes billboards except the advertiser. We don’t need to be taunted to buy stuff we don’t need and eat food that isn’t all that good for us,” he said.

Happy places are highly correlated with healthy food, walkability and lower rates of obesity.

“We bring these policy bundles to city councils and mayors and city managers, and we help them come to consensus,” Mr. Buettner said. “Most of the time, they don’t even realize that these policies can yield healthier, happier populations. Just showing them that and then bringing them to consensus on what’s feasible in this community and what would be effective in this community, it takes about four hours.”

The best ideas rise to the top, and a team member sticks around to help implement them.

“The short answer is yes, it can be done,” Mr. Buettner said. “We just have to shift the focus of our efforts away from trying to change individual behavior, which never works in the long run, to shaping people’s environment.”