INTRODUCTION

We are engaged in a giant evolutionary experiment.

1. https://www. un.org/development/ desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html to 68% by 2050.1

2. For discussions of this, see for example: J Lawrence Broz, Jeffry Frieden and Stephen Weymouth: Populism in Place: The Economic Geography of the Globalization Backlash, International Organization, September 2019; David Goodhart, The Road to Somewhere: The New Tribes Shaping British Politics, Penguin, September 2017.

Such a startling shift over a mere few hundred years would be a shock to the system of any organism - and for humans, it has not come without problems. We have been reminded by the coronavirus crisis of some of the fragilities of cities, including poverty and overcrowding. Reduced congestion, noise and pollution have made us realise how, in normal times, they often do not provide ideal living conditions. With uncertainty about the long-term mental health implications, we are reminded of problems that may be less tangible but are equally hard to manage - loneliness, anxiety, and stress.

We embarked on our history of urban mass-migration without much sense of the consequences. Cities tend to separate us from the natural world, and in an era of climate crisis, inequality and global pandemics, we need to think beyond their effect on individuals and consider their impact on the planet.

We can certainly be optimistic about the future of cities, but it is clearer than ever that they will have to adapt to shed some of the aspects of city living that are bad for individuals, for sociability, and for the environment. In this Green Paper, we look at some of the ways they might do that better.

Cities continue to attract ever more people for good reason. Urban life has always offered freedom from traditional authority; cities are places where individual selfexpression is often newly, and thrillingly, possible. By bringing together people from disparate backgrounds and with different ideas, cities foster exploration, creativity, invention and innovation. One reason the populist parties that are on the rise in so many countries often seem suspicious of cities is that they are places where tolerance of difference and openness are often seen to work.2

Cities can be exhilarating, creative and purposeful but urban life can also be overwhelming. In some cities, there is little green or blue space. There are high

3. https://wellbeingeconomy.org/ iceland-government-unveils-wellbeing-framework levels of obesity. Crowded roads are thick with toxic fumes. People often spend hours commuting in unpleasant conditions (maybe this will change, maybe it won’t). Many of us sit too much and get too little exercise. Levels of anxiety, depression, and mood disorders are high. Many people work long hours, often in precarious occupations. Even those in relatively comfortable circumstances worry about technology, competition or health shocks undermining their jobs. The economic future looks precarious. Social inequality is often stark and highly visible, breeding resentment, fear and alienation.

Cities are multifaceted - highly complex adaptive systems - and the question of what makes people thrive in urban settings has engaged researchers from a wide range of disciplines - sociology, ethnography, anthropology, geography, politics, environmental science, physiology, psychology, economics, art, design, architecture and culture.

In this paper we draw insights from all of these disciplines to offer an overview of the current thinking on wellbeing in cities. Even before the pandemic, there were signs that policy was increasingly being framed through a lens of wellbeing. Iceland, for example, recently established a framework of 39 indicators covering social, economic and environmental dimensions of quality of life against which to judge policy initiatives.3 There could be political pressure in the post-coronavirus world for more of this: recent months have brought a new awareness not only of our physical but also our mental, social and cultural vulnerabilities. In addition to exposing cities’ fragilities, however, the pandemic might also suggest ways in which they can be more resilient.

Our aim in publishing this Green Paper is to stimulate discussion. To bring together people who are thinking innovatively about what makes cities fit for humans, to foster discussion and debate, and to promote fresh thinking in the quest for solutions.

At Therme Group we believe that we have a part to play. Our business combines technology and nature to promote a culture that draws on deep-rooted traditions while also being essentially innovative.

Systems And Empathy

Sometimes the assumption is that cities are systems in need of fixing. The smartcities debate has been a case in point: the implication often seems to be that if technocrats can only collect enough data, everything can be fixed.

But cities are not simply data points. They are living organisms made up of millions of people with preferences, prejudices, passions. Cities have an impact on their inhabitants; and their inhabitants, in their millions of day-to-day actions, have an impact on the city. It is a constant, dynamic process. Technology may be able to sort out some problems efficiently - track-and-trace apps may turn out to be successful approach - but it needs to be balanced with a wider sense of what makes for wellbeing.

People don’t want to see themselves primarily as part of a mechanical system designed for efficiency and productivity. Many of the things we care about mostour relationships with other people and with the natural world, our care for others, love, dignity, pride, respect - cannot be quantified. They cannot be turned into data. You can’t put a monetary value on them. Which is not to say that money is irrelevant to wellbeing - poverty and inequality are undeniably associated with higher levels of mental distress - but there is only so much you can count. And counting doesn’t always tell you what matters. As the coronavirus pandemic showed, the people we deem essential in a crisis are often quite poorly paid.

As our often visceral reactions to cities suggest, our environment has an emotional as well as a physical impact upon us. Cities are not abstract, mechanical systems with human beings mere datasets moving through them more or less efficiently. To maximise wellbeing in cities, we need to apply emotional intelligence: to see cities and our interactions with them holistically.

We need empathy as well as systems. We need to discover what is human in cities. We need to appreciate how cities can sit alongside, respond to, and belong in the natural world and work from there.

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WHAT IS WELLBEING?

Edward Diener, the seminal theorist of wellbeing, argued that it consists of ‘three distinct but often related components… frequent positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and cognitive evaluations, such as life satisfaction.’4

The fact that wellbeing involves subjective feelings based on moods and emotions (as well as conscious judgements of quality of life) makes it a concept difficult to get hold of and hard to measure.5 Discussions of wellbeing frequently dodge the tricky issue of defining exactly what it is, and this ambiguity can make it seem a slippery concept. Though we all instinctively know what wellbeing feels like, and, conversely, what it feels like to be lacking. Therme Group is undertaking a five-year research programme on the philosophy and science of wellbeing with Cogito, the University of Glasgow’s epistemology research group, in an effort to unpick some of these issues.

As well as knowing wellbeing when we see it and feeling its absence when we don’t, we also instinctively understand the inextricable relationship between wellbeing and the environment. You are much more likely to feel a sense of wellbeing on a quiet beach or in a forest glade than you are while waiting to be seen in hospital. Ugly, neglected places, as found in some parts of cities, are likely to generate a sense of hopelessness and a feeling that no one cares. Humans intuitively respond positively to natural greenery and the presence of water. In many of the growing megacities of the world, it is hard to feel any connection with the natural world at all - and that has an impact on all the other interactions we have in a place.

If inhabitants of cities are in a constant cycle of being influenced by their environment and influencing it in turn, the dynamic interplay involves not only the intellect but also the emotions: it is a fully human process, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual. It engages everything about us.

In this paper, we look in turn at these aspects of wellbeing in cities - physical, mental, social and spiritual. In reality, they overlap and are interdependent. All of them are underpinned by our relationship to our environment: we know, to take one relatively minor example, that people who can see greenery from their hospital windows recover better from heart surgery.6

Looking at cities through the lens of wellbeing leaves us with no alternative but to focus holistically. If citizens are to thrive, cities must be responsive to people in all their humanity - and to all of their citizens. Wellbeing cannot be solely the preserve of those who already have the basics covered - financial security, housing and health. It isn’t (despite the way the term has sometimes been used) an indulgence for the affluent, an optional bit of consumerism. When it comes to health, we are affected by the health and behaviour of other people.

Therme Group believes that wellbeing for all is a matter of natural justice. It is also a practical necessity. Global disease reminds us of John Donne’s maxim that ‘no man is an island’. Our vulnerability to one another is often exacerbated in cities, which involve proximity to other people, a great deal of moving about, and complex economies in which the rich are dependent, in a crisis, on the immigrant hospital cleaner and the female supermarket worker.

People’s relationships to the places they live, work and pass through have an impact on the many others against whom they jostle and bump up against in cities minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day. Not even the super-rich can isolate themselves entirely. Higher levels of wellbeing across the board make for a more civil and agreeable city for all, and allow everyone to flourish.

7. https://www. linkedin.com/pulse/ we-ancient-creatures-living-moderntimes-oliver-payne/

8. https://www. health.harvard. edu/blog/saunause-linked-longer-life-fewer-fatal-heart-problems-201502257755

Starting From The Human

At Therme Group, we believe that we have an important part to play in helping to increase the wellbeing in cities of the future.

That means starting from the human - which in practice means looking not only for innovations, but also at what has sustained people for millennia. ‘We are ancient creatures living in modern times,’ as Oliver Payne, author of Inspiring Sustainable Behaviour, puts it. ‘We are fit for a world that no longer surrounds us.’7

Many of the most reliable ways of promoting wellbeing reach back into the roots of our culture, taking instincts and preferences that humans have had for generations and refashioning them for a different world. Today we can scientifically measure whether sauna bathing is good for us and learn that it lowers blood pressure and is beneficial to those at risk of heart disease.8 But the benefits of sauna bathing, as of thermal baths, have been well understood by those for whom they are part of the culture, for centuries.

At Therme Group we work with nature, technology and culture to combine deeprooted thermal traditions (think Japanese onsen, Korean jjimjilbang, Roman baths, Turkish hammams, Finnish saunas) with indoor tropical ecosystems, creating the world’s most advanced wellbeing resorts in the heart of cities, accessible to all.

Historically, the thermal spa was a place to meet, socialise and share ideas, somewhere people could get together on a more equal footing. We follow this tradition, offering a place to unplug, to be in tune with nature, to engage with art and culture and enhance mind, body and soul.

At Therme Group we believe in making connections to address issues of wellbeing in complex, dynamic environments. Through Therme Forum, for example, we bring together leading thinkers around sustainability, culture and cities to collaborate in working towards changes at scale. We see citizens as more than consumers: it is no accident that art lies at the heart of everything we do. Therme Art is central to our vision, commissioning art in Therme Group’s facilities. We will take art to people and create experiences that engage the whole person, fostering wellbeing in the widest sense.