Editor's note: Bhutan is a small country bordering India to the south and east, Tibet to the north and Sikkim to the west. With a land area of 18,000 square miles, it is about the same size as Switzerland. With its remote location and with its regulated tourism, it remains largely shrouded in mystery to the rest of the world.  

The term "gross national happiness" was coined in 1972 by Bhutan's fourth Dragon King, Jigme Singye Wangchuck. He used this phrase to signal his commitment to building an economy that would serve Bhutan's unique culture based on Buddhist spiritual values. The assessment of gross national happiness measures quality of life or social progress in more holistic and psychological terms than the economic indicator of gross domestic product GDP which emphasizes growth in production, consumption and accumulating (or dissipating) investment holdings.

Ecocity Builders' President Richard Register recently traveled to Bhutan to think through a design for an ecotown at the confluence of the country's two largest rivers with a merging of Bhutan's measures of Gross National Happiness and ecocity principles.  

A month ago I returned from Bhutan, one of the more amazing trips of my life. I spent the next three weeks writing up a report on it all and now I'm contemplating next steps... back to Bhutan?

Happiness!

The first thing I learned about happiness over there is that, though they are probably even as the Bhutanese themselves say, measurably happier than most, of course it comes and goes and comes back in all of us. Sometimes they are happy, sometimes not, but doing better than most I'd say having lived there for a little less than a month. From my experience outside Bhutan, which is about 300 times the time I've been in Bhutan, what I knew about their Gross National Happiness index before going, was that people either didn't know where Bhutan was or thought it was a generally good idea, so closely were the country and the idea identified with each other. It all seemed rather innocent and positive. So why not play on the old Gross National Product, which somewhere morphed into Gross Domestic Product (who are those economists to decide such things, anyway?) and why not make something of a joke of GDP while advancing happiness a little?

Well, it's a lot more important than that. What is really going on here, or I should say there, is a challenge to the whole construct that is almost like the chant of consensus reverberating around the world, the carrier wave of belief in infinite growth in a finite environment, producing Gross Global Damage and shaking the planet from its atmosphere's climate change to the very circulation of the oceans, to the shaking of the earth itself - in fracking, mind cracking, even raising the seas for God's sake and distorting and impoverishing evolution into eternity since extinctions, much less mass extinctions, are forever. That's how bad the religion of GDP and it mantra of produce, grow, consume, produce, grow, consume actually time without end is.

GNH a pretty good idea? Little Bhutan making a playful ironic comment about the big world outside? Hardly. This country is the mouse that roared, but unlike the novel, movie and stage adaptation by that name, by declaring peace on the future, not war on the US as in the fiction version. In the real country's case, peace is promoted through maximum happiness instead of maximum growth and consumption.

This small country has no illusions as to its size and power in the big world of big games of big countries and people gaming the game of politics and economic development for all they can get. What Bhutan is saying is simply this: good values, happy lives, long term peace and compassion for all sentient beings are the end, not growth, consuming and power. The economists have it backward, whether capitalist or socialist or in their case rather contentedly monarchial until 2006. That was the year their fourth King abdicated. Then he and his son and their government ironed out a democratic constitution that went into effect in 2008. I inserted that "compassion for all sentient beings" above because it is real and operative in Bhutan in so many ways. The goal of happiness is not just for their people. It means also that they are as exemplary in their environmental hard work and real accomplishment as any other nature-loving tree-hugging people one can find.

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5 themes 

by Jennie Moore, Director, Sustainable Development and Environmental Stewardship, British Columbia Institute of Technology   

Calthorpe Revisits Pedestrian Orientation - still at the heart of Ecocities

Well known architect and sustainability leader, Peter Calthorpe was one of the original participants at the first Ecocity World Summit held in San Francisco in 1990. His 1986 book, "Sustainable Communities" co-authored with Sym van der Ryn influenced the thinking of many planners and urban designers. The concepts complemented ecocity principles first articulated by Richard Register's "Ecocity Berkeley" published in 1987.

  In subsequent years, Calthorpe's focus adopted a less avant-guard orientation with his work on transit-oriented development advanced through the Congress for New Urbanism. Still pushing the envelope towards sustainability, this approach is less than what would ultimately be needed to achieve cities in balance with nature. This month, however, Calthorpe seems to be returning to his ecocity roots, announcing that he wishes to retire the term "transit oriented development," a phrase he coined. His rationale is based on a well-known ecocity precept: that all transit users are ultimately pedestrians. The city has to be designed for the human body and human powered mobility first in order for transit to work effectively.

In an interview with Metropolis Magazine (http://www.metropolismag.com/Point-of-View/July-2013/Q-A-Peter-Calthorpe/), Calthorpe observes that pedestrian-oriented development is at the heart of good city design. This aligns with the first ecocity condition of "access by proximity" in the International Ecocity Framework and Standards (www.ecocitystandards.org). To live within global ecological carrying capacity, most daily trips would need to be walking, cycling or transit (Moore and Rees 2013).

References:

Moore, J. and W.E. Rees. 2013. Getting to One-Planet Living. Chapter 4 in Linda Starke ed., State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible? Washington DC: Island Press for Worldwatch Institute.

British Columbia Institute of Technology School of Construction and the Environment is Lead Sponsor of the International Ecocity Framework and Standards Initiative  

Akira Shinoda assumed office as the mayor of Niigata City in November 2002. He is currently serving his third term. After taking office, Shinoda continued the practice of maintaining the transparency of information in order to work together with citizens to promote reform and creativity in city politics, and dedicated himself to the safe development of Niigata as a unique city with both a rich environment for sustaining rice-paddies, and advanced urban facilities.

Valérie David,

Director of Sustainable Development Department, Group Eiffage