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How Sustainable is Mobility in Cities Branded the Happiest?

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Linking Sustainability and Happiness

Part of the book series: Community Quality-of-Life and Well-Being ((CQLWB))

Abstract

In recent years, the interest in measuring happiness has increased. Numerous initiatives measure and market happiness interpreted through metrics such as housing affordability, unemployment rates, and safety. However, they have not considered sustainable mobility as a possible indicator of communities’ happiness levels. This chapter shares the results of a mixed methodology aiming to link sustainable mobility to the happiness levels of urban people via three objectives. The first objective is to identify the key role of sustainable mobility in improving people’s mood as it has a significant impact on quality of life and public health; consequently, it can also contribute to making people happier. The second objective is to investigate sustainable mobility’s weighting factor within three international happiness indexes, the World Happiness Report, the Happy Planet Index, and the Better Life Index, as standards of measurement for people’s happiness, branding the happiest cities to the global community. The third objective is to emphasize the sustainable mobility performance in those cities officially branded as the happiest in the world. This chapter concludes with happiness as a possible element that can be embedded more deeply in the discourse of promoting sustainable mobility.

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  1. Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt

    Alshimaa Aboelmakarem Farag

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  1. Alshimaa Aboelmakarem Farag
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Correspondence to Alshimaa Aboelmakarem Farag .

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  1. School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Scott Cloutier

  2. School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Sara El-Sayed

  3. College of Health Solutions, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA

    Allison Ross

  4. Phoenix, AZ, USA

    Melanie Weaver

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Farag, A.A. (2022). How Sustainable is Mobility in Cities Branded the Happiest?. In: Cloutier, S., El-Sayed, S., Ross, A., Weaver, M. (eds) Linking Sustainability and Happiness. Community Quality-of-Life and Well-Being. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89559-4_10

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