Rethinking the metrics of progress: Building cities around joy, not just GDP

For centuries, cities have been designed with clear goals in mind: maximize productivity, fortify defense, facilitate trade, and ensure efficiency.

- ANNA MAE YU LAMENTILLO

The measures used to determine urban success have followed suit: gross domestic product (GDP), real estate values, traffic throughput, and infrastructure investments. These are quantifiable and easy to chart on a graph or balance sheet. Yet, they are remarkably poor at telling us how it feels to live in a city.

Cities are not machines. They are living ecosystems of human interaction—where people fall in love, raise families, grieve losses, find community, or seek solitude. If we ignore the emotional and psychological landscape of urban life, we risk designing cities that are efficient but soulless, lucrative but lonely. The time has come to radically rethink what we measure when we talk about progress.

GDP, while a powerful economic indicator, tells us nothing about the distribution of wealth, quality of relationships, or mental health of a city's residents. Property values may rise while homelessness surges. Traffic may move more smoothly while public space shrinks and social disconnection grows. These dominant metrics offer a narrow and often misleading view of urban wellbeing.