The Secrets of the World’s Happiest Cities What makes a city a great place to live—your commute, property prices or good conversation?

Charles Montgomery

Is urban design really powerful enough to make or break happiness?1. 城市设计真的足以成就或毁灭幸福吗？The question deserves consideration, because the happy city message is taking root around the world.

If one was to judge by sheer wealth, the last half-century should have been an ecstatically happy time for people in the US and other rich nations such as Canada, Japan and Great Britain.2. 如果单纯以财富衡量，那么过去50年应该是美国和其他富裕国家如加拿大、日本和英国居民幸福感爆棚的时期。sheer： 完全的，全然的；ecstatically： 狂喜地，心醉神迷地。And yet the boom decades of the late 20th century were not accompanied by a boom in wellbeing.3. boom： 繁荣，激增；accompany： 伴随，陪伴；wellbeing： 幸福，安康。The British got richer by more than 40% between 1993 and 2012, but the rate of psychiatric disorders and neuroses grew.4. psychiatric disorder： 精神异常，精神疾病；neuroses： 神经症，神经衰弱症。

Just before the crash of 2008, a team of Italian economists, led by Stefano Bartolini, tried to account for that seemingly inexplicablegap between rising income and flatlining happiness in the US.5. 在2008年金融危机爆发之前，由斯蒂法诺·巴尔托利尼带领的一队意大利经济学家试图解释美国人收入提高与幸福感低迷之间看似颇令人费解的差距。account for： 说明（原因、理由等），作出解释；inexplicable： 无法解释的，莫名其妙的；flatlining： 保持在较低水平的。The Italians tried removing various components of economic and social data from their models, and found that the only factor powerful enough to hold down people’s self-reported happiness in the face of all that wealth was the country’s declining social capital: the social networks and interactions that keep us connected with others.6. 这些意大利经济学家尽力把各种经济和社会数据因素排除在模型以外，他们发现唯一能够在财富面前降低人们自我幸福感的因素是本国不断减少的社会资本：即人与人之间相互联系的交际网络和互动。social capital： 社会资本，是指个人在组织结构中，利用自己的位置而获取利益的能力。It was even more corrosive7. corrosive： 侵蚀性的，（对社会、个人情感等）有害的。than the income gap between rich and poor.

高得离谱的房价、拥挤不堪的交通、昂贵的物价让很多年轻人开始逃离“北上广”，人们不禁开始反思：幸福生活的要素是什么？研究表明：人的自我幸福感与财富增长并不呈现正相关关系，相反，却与其每天花在通勤上的时间、个人的交际网络、生活节奏等有着莫大的联系。本文揭露了城市生活的幸福要素，也为我们提供了一些幸福生活秘笈。

As much as we complain about other people, there is nothing worse for mental health than a social desert.8. 就像我们经常抱怨他人一样，没有什么比社交荒漠对人的精神健康更有害的了。The more connected we are to family and community, the less likely we are to experience heart attacks, strokes, cancer and depression. Connected people sleep better at night. They live longer. They consistently report being happier.

There is a clear connection between social deficit and the shape of cities.9. 人际赤字与城市形态之间存在明显的关联。A Swedish study found that people who endure more than a 45-minute commute were 40% more likely to divorce. People who live in monofunctional, car-dependent neighbourhoods outside urban centres are much less trusting of other people than people who live in walkable neighbourhoods where housing is mixed with shops,services and places to work.10. 比起那些居住在适于步行且民居与商铺、服务和工作场所混合的社区的人们，住在城市中心之外、出行必须依靠汽车的单一功能社区的人们对待他人的信任比较少。monofunctional：单功能的，功能单一的。

The finding was seemingly straightforward: the longer the drive, the less happy people were. Before you dismiss this as numbingly obvious, keep in mind that they were testing not for drive satisfaction, but for life satisfaction.11. dismiss： 驳回，拒绝接受；numbingly：麻木地；keep in mind： 记住，考虑到。People were choosing commutes that made their entire lives worse.

The sad part is that the more we flock to high-status cities for the good life—money, opportunity, novelty—the more crowded,expensive, polluted and congested those places become.12. 令人难过是，随着更多的人涌向大都市寻找幸福生活——金钱、机遇、新鲜感，这些城市也就变得更拥挤，生活成本更加昂贵，污染更加严重，交通更堵塞。high-status： 地位高的；novelty： 新奇、新颖的事物；congested： 拥挤的，堵塞的。The result Surveys show that Londoners are among the least happy people in the UK, despite the city being the richest region in the UK.

When we talk about cities, we usually end up talking about how various places look, and perhaps how it feels to be there. But to stop there misses half the story, because the way we experience most parts of cities is at velocity:we glide past on the way to somewhere else.13. 但停留这个层面会让你看不到问题的另一面，因为我们感受城市的某一部分时总是走马观花：匆匆而过急着赶往下一个地点。velocity： 速度，速率；glide： 滑过，流逝。City life is as much about moving through landscapes as it is about being in them. Robert Judge, a 48-year-old husband and father, once wrote to a Canadian radio show explaining how much he enjoyed going grocery14. grocery： 食品杂货店。shopping on his bicycle. Judge’s confession would have been unremarkable if he did not happen to live in Saskatoon,Saskatchewan, where the average temperature in January hovers around -17C.15. 若非住在一月份平均温度徘徊在摄氏零下17度的加拿大萨斯喀彻温省萨斯卡通，贾奇的自白也就没什么值得关注的了。confession： 表白，自白；hover： 徘徊，盘旋。The city stays frozen and snowy for almost half the year. Judge’s pleasure in an experience that seems slower, more difficult and considerably more uncomfortable than the alternative might seem bizarre.16. alternative： 可供选择的事物，其他选择；bizarre： 奇怪的，离奇的。He explained it by way of a story: sometimes, he said, he would pick up his three-year-old son from nursery and put him on the back seat of his tandem bike and they would pedal home along the South Saskatchewan river.17. nursery： 幼儿园；tandem bike： 双人自行车；pedal：踩自行车，骑自行车。The snow would muffle18. muffle： 裹住，围住。the noise of the city. Dusk would paint the sky in colours so exquisite that Judge could not begin to find names for them.19. dusk： 黄昏，薄暮；exquisite： 精美的，精美的。The snow would reflect those hues20. hue： 色彩，色调。. It would glow like the sky, and Judge would breathe in the cold air and hear his son breathing behind him, and he would feel as though together they had become part of winter itself.

Drivers experience plenty of emotional dividends21. dividend： 利益，好处。.They report feeling much more in charge of22. in charge of： 负责，管理。their lives than public transport users. An upmarket vehicle isloaded with symbolic value that offers a powerful, if temporary, boost in status.23. 一辆高档的汽车具有象征价值，能够有力地，即便是暂时地，提升拥有者的身份地位。upmarket： 高档的，高级的。Yet despite these romantic feelings, half of commuters living in big cities and suburbs claim to dislike the heroic journey they must make every day.24. 尽管感觉甚为浪漫，但这些生活在大城市和城郊的通勤者们，一半都说不喜欢每天不得不奔波的这段艰苦旅程。The urban system neutralises25. neutralize： 中和，抵消。their power.

Driving in traffic is harrowing26. harrow： 使苦恼，折磨。for both brain and body. The blood of people who drive in cities is a stew of stress hormones.27. stew： 烦恼，焦虑；hormone： 荷尔蒙，激素。The worse the traffic, the more your system is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, the fightor-flight juices that, in the short-term, get your heart pumping faster, dilate your air passages and help sharpen your alertness, but in the long-term can make you ill.28. 交通状况越糟糕，身体系统里产生的肾上腺素和皮质醇就越多。从短期来看，这些应急体液让你的心脏跳得更快，气道胀大，提高你的警觉性；但从长期来看，它们可使你致病。 adrenaline： 肾上腺素；cortisol： 肾上腺皮质醇；fight-or-flight： “打斗或逃跑”，也就是面对紧急情况作出反应；dilate：使扩大，使膨胀。Researchers for Hewlett-Packard convinced volunteers in England to wear electrode caps during their commutes and found that whether they were driving or taking the train, peak-hour travellers suffered worse stress than fighter pilots or riot police facing mobs of angry protesters.29. 惠普公司的研究表明，英格兰的志愿者在上下班途中戴上测试电极帽，实验发现无论是自己开车，还是乘坐列车，高峰期时人们遭受的压力比战斗机飞行员或面对一群愤怒的抗议者的防暴警察还要大。 Hewlett-Packard： 美国惠普公司；electrode：电极，电流导体；mob： 民众。

But one group of commuters report enjoying themselves. These are people who travel under their own steam30. under one’s own steam： 凭借自己的力量。, like Robert Judge. They walk. They run. They ride bicycles.

Why would travelling more slowly and using more effort offer more satisfaction than driving? Part of the answer exists in basic human physiology31. physiology： 生理机能。. We were born to move. Immobility is to the human body what rust is to the classic car. Stop moving long enough, and your muscles will atrophy32. atrophy： 萎缩，衰退。. Bones will weaken. Blood will clot33. clot： 凝结成块，堵塞。. You will find it harder to concentrate and solve problems. Immobility is not merely a state closer to death: it hastens34. hasten： 加速，加紧。it.

In 1969, a consortium35. consortium： 财团，联盟。of European industrial interests charged a young American economist,Eric Britton, with figuring out how people would movethrough cities in the future. Cities should strive to embrace complexity, not only in transportation systems but in human experience, says Britton, who is still working in that field and lives in Paris. He advises cities and corporations to abandon old mobility, a system rigidly organised entirely around one way of moving, and embrace new mobility, a future in which we would all be free to move in the greatest variety of ways.36. 他建议城市和公司放弃旧流动模式——完全基于单一流动的僵化组织系统，而采取新的流动模式，也就是未来我们出行将拥有多种多样的交通方法可选择。

To demonstrate how radically37. radically： 根本地，彻底地。urban systems can build freedom in motion, Britton led me down from his office, out on to Rue Joseph Bara. We paused by a row of sturdy-looking38. sturdy-looking： 强壮的，强健的。bicycles. Britton swept his wallet above a metallic post and pulled one free from its berth.39. 布里顿拿着钱包扫过一根金属桩，然后从泊车位中拉出一辆自行车。“Et voilà40. Et voilà： 法语日常用语，意思为“看哪！瞧哪！”!Freedom!” he said, grinning41. grin： 露齿而笑，咧嘴笑。. Since the Paris bike scheme,Vélib’42. Vélib： 巴黎的公共自行车租借服务项目。, was introduced, it has utterly changed the face of mobility. Each bicycle in the Vélib’ fleet gets used between three and nine times every day. That’s as many as 200,000 trips a day. Dozens of cities have now dabbled43. dabble： 涉足，尝试。in shared bike programmes, including Lyon, Montreal, Melbourne,New York. In 2010, London introduced a system, dubbed44. dub： 把……称为，给……起绰号。Boris Bikes for the city’s bike-mad mayor, Boris Johnson. In Paris, and around the world, new systems of sharing are setting drivers free. As more people took to bicycles in Vélib’s first year, the number of bike accidents rose, but the number of accidents per capita fell. This phenomenon seems to repeat wherever cities see a spike in cycling: the more people bike,the safer the streets become for cyclists, partly because drivers adopt more cautious habits when they expect cyclists on the road.45. 这一现象反复出现在自行车使用人数激增的城市：骑自行车的人越多，马路对于骑自行车的人来说也就越安全，部分原因是当意识到路上骑自行车人越来越多时，驾驶员就会更加小心地驾驶。spike： 突然增长，激增。There is safety in numbers.