How do our built environment and social infrastructure impact our happiness and well-being?
This question is central to the Bahai Chair for World Peace’s newest publication, Infrastructure, Wellbeing, and the Measurement of Happiness, edited by Hoda Mahmoudi, Jenny Roe, and Kate Seaman.
In her introduction to the volume, Professor Hoda Mahmoudi notes, “Ill-conceived infrastructure stifles and suppresses human development and produces inequitable social and economic systems. Well-conceived infrastructure, on the other hand, inspires the human community to yet greater heights.”
Throughout this edited volume, an interdisciplinary and dynamic approach is taken by University of Maryland contributors, including Professor Hoda Mahmoudi, Research Professor and Chair of the Bahá’í Chair for World Peace, Dr. Kate Seaman, Assistant Director of the Bahá’í Chair for World Peace, Professor Carol Graham, Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow at Brookings, College Park Professor, and a Gallup Senior Scientist, and Professor Naomi Sachs, Founding Director of the Therapeutic Landscapes Network and Assistant Professor for Plant Science and Landscape Architecture.
This volume discusses everything from architecture to economics to psychology. The interplay of systemic racism, infrastructure, and human well-being as a goal of development are examined.
In their chapter on the Urban Nature Happiness Hypothesis, Dr. Jenny Roe and Dr. Naomi Sachs discuss the trend of humans looking to nature for pleasure during times of upheaval, change, or crisis and the ways we can incorporate this into our infrastructure to create happier cities.
Dr. Carol Graham and her co-author Dr. Sergio Pinto penned a chapter titled “The Geography of Desperation in America: Labor Force Participation, Mobility, Place and Well-being.” In it they tackle significant conversations surrounding economics, the decline of manufacturing and mining jobs, and the impacts of failing infrastructure on workers and their physical and mental well-being.
“The book puts forth the argument that it is only in understanding the true nature of infrastructures reach– how it connects, supports, and enlivens human beings– that we can truly begin to understand infrastructures possibilities. It connects infrastructure to that most elusive of human qualities– happiness– examining the way infrastructure is fundamentally tied to human values and human well-being.”
The contributors to this volume take a creative and innovative approach to answer these significant questions and challenges in new and revolutionary ways, motivated by the desire to improve infrastructure and human lives.
A virtual book talk is scheduled for March 30th from 2.00pm-3:30 pm est, which will feature the editors and contributors of the book who will speak about their chapters and research. Registration is available by clicking on the button below.