Recognizing the great importance of urban policies and the dominant tendency in smart city discussions to emphasise the role of new technologies, I decided to create the
Happy City Index – a ranking that promotes the efforts of city leaders who prioritise their residents, both current and future generations.
The principles behind the Happy City Index are based on a few core values:
1. Everyone involved in the development of the Happy City Index contributes on a voluntary basis, dedicating their time to collecting reliable, objective, and comparable data. This stems from a strong belief in the need to highlight the importance of residents, while also recognising the role of new technologies – but only as tools in the process of improving the quality of life. Each year, more than
200 individuals from around the world are engaged in data collection.
2. The ranking has always been, and will continue to be, an objective tool for comparing the achievements of city leaders in improving the quality of life, relying solely on objective data to assign cities a specific score. This means that
no city has ever been involved in the creation of the ranking, whether financially or in any other capacity, and never will be.
3. There is no single "happiest city" in the world. We are diverse in our cultures, religions, traditions, and expectations regarding urban policies. Therefore, the ranking recognises the need to
list a group of cities that are the most active in improving quality of life worldwide and designates them as the happiest. These urban policies and the actions of these cities deserve sincere recognition and the promotion of best practices.
The full ranking is available at
www.happy-city-index.com.
