In pursuit of happiness: Moving our communities toward a sustainable and happy future

A significant challenge humans face is the development of future communities that addresses a rapidly expanding population, finite natural resources, the potential end of affordable fossil fuels, environmental pollution and climate change. While the issues are many, the opportunity has presented itself to design our communities in a way that comprehensively accounts for social, economic and environmental sustainability. Communities designed with the intention of promoting the opportunity for all residents to pursue their own happiness may serve as a solution to many of these challenges. This paper is a call to action for engineers, scientists, architects, designers, developers, and planners to consider the promotion of happiness within our communities. A “Happy-Centric” framework and the acronym “PERSPECTIVE” are outlined with the intention of guiding the planning, retrofit and design of future communities to move toward sustainability and greater opportunity for happiness.