Contributions to Regional Science Eric Vaz Editor Geography of Happiness A Spatial Analysis of Subjective Well-Being Contributions to Regional Science This book series offers an outlet for cutting-edge research on all areas of regional science. Contributions to Regional Science (CIR) welcomes theoretically sound and empirically robust monographs, edited volumes and handbooks from various disciplines and approaches on topics such as urban and regional economics, spatial statistics, spatial econometrics, geographical information systems, migration anal- ysis, land use and urban development, urban and regional policy analysis, inter- industry analysis, environmental and ecological analysis, and related fields. All books published in this series are peer-reviewed. Eric Vaz Editor Geography of Happiness A Spatial Analysis of Subjective Well-Being Editor Eric Vaz Toronto Metropolitan University Toronto, ON, Canada Contributions to Regional Science ISBN 978-3-031-19870-0 ISBN 978-3-031-19871-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19871-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Contents Happiness Geography: Defining the Field ............................ 1 Eric Vaz Regional Challenges A Spatial Analysis of the Instagram Hashtag #happy: An Assessment of Toronto .......................................... 11 Eric Vaz The Subjective Well-Being in North Africa and the Impacts on Agriculture and Urban Land .................................... 33 Azzeddine Bellout, Eric Vaz, Antonia Bousbaine, and Christopher R. Bryant Territorial Challenges Researching Quality of Life in Old Age: Some Conceptual and Methodological Principles ...................................... 51 José de São José Peripheral Retail Expansion: Social Implications and Spatial Inequalities the Case of the Île-de-France Region ..................... 73 André Torre and Océane Peiffer-Smadja Locational Challenges Sustainable Cities, Quality of Life, and Mobility-Related Happiness .... 103 Karima Kourtit, Peter Nijkamp, and Marina Toger v vi Contents Tourism, Climate Change and Well-Being: The Products’ Diversity as an Opportunity ................................................. 121 André Samora-Arvela, Eric Vaz, Jorge Ferreira, and Thomas Panagopoulos Tourism, Senses and Well-Being .................................... 161 Dora Agapito Happiness Geography: Defining the Field Eric Vaz 1 Introduction Recent advances in spatial analysis have led to a growing interest in applying geocomputation methods to complex issues (Du et al., 2020), often defined over large datasets framing socioeconomic variables (Ekbia et al., 2015) and the natural environment (Bryan et al., 2011). Much of this work has been carried out to optimize decision-making and lead to a better quality of life, economic growth and social stability (Higgins et al., 2014; Rosu et al., 2015; Ahlfeldt et al., 2020). Thanks to the advances of computational power, spatial analysis has reached a new stage, where nonlinear modelling approaches combined with stochastic modelling allow for a better understanding of the geographical environment (Silva et al., 2020) and there- fore foster more accurate decision-making (Carver, 2019). This decision-making has focused predominantly on sustainable development, leading to better life quality, where spatial information on the natural environment has brought a key role, partic- ularly in ecology, to understand the present and offer a more sustainable future. From an anthropocentric perspective, wellbeing is the relation of humankind’s social, economic, and environmental stability, maximizing the opportunities for sustainable development while leading to better life quality. This holistic approach of wellbeing closely reminds a much deeper concept found in Aristotelian Ethics. From a positivistic posture, understanding what we define as happiness is subjective and explores individual wellbeing within space and time (Houlden et al., 2019; Kosanic & Petzold, 2020; Shekhar et al., 2019). It is thus highly uncertain, difficult to measure socially, and even harder to quantify and explain. Nevertheless, the advances in complex system science and the exponential growth of big data and the possibility of tracking individual data have led to a resounding interest B E. Vaz ( ) Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 1 E. Vaz (ed.), Geography of Happiness, Contributions to Regional Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19871-7_1 2 E.Vaz in the integration of complex systems to define a spatial understanding of happiness. The centre stage where the action of happiness plays is geography (Brereton, 2008; Stanca, 2010; Ballas, 2020; Mavruk et al., 2021). The key players are surrounded by the myriad of data sources that intertwine with computational methods that elab- orate on defining the field of happiness geography. The choice of variables related to wellbeing is chosen in three fundamental dimensions: Social, economic and envi- ronmental, and adapted to the spatial dimension of administrative boundaries that lead to the geography of happiness (David et al., 2014). The combination and spatial dynamics of the patterns found in the analysis of spatial wellbeing, and mostly, the potential of harnessing individual data and ongoing spatial and temporal response rates, leads us a step closer to quantifying happiness at a regional scale (Morrison, 2021). Such a field may well be defined as a novel contribution to the existing ideations of subjective happiness, where a new kind of spatial rationale leads to optimizing the geographical and planning environment of future regions and cities (Wang & Wang, 2016). 2 On Happiness as a Consequence of Sustainable Development In detriment to economic growth, much of our landscape has changed dramatically over the last decades. With the unprecedented effects of urbanization and popu- lation increase, human beings have significantly jeopardized the natural environ- ment, heritage landscapes, and the stability of itself as a keystone species. The increasing competition and economic growth have led to a neglect of the natural environment, and since Brundtland raised the need for strategies for common goals of sustainable development. However, there is no consensus on what this sustainable development entails, particularly given the complexity of the very notion of what could be discarded and what should be kept for future generations (O’Neill & Kahn, 2000). Scholars agree, however, that sustainable development is crucial for the very survival of our species and that humankind must find a solution to readjust itself to its surrounding environment (Garibaldi & Turner, 2004). One of the culprits of envi- ronmental and landscape degradation has been the excessive growth human being has generated (Vaz, 2016). From an economic standpoint, more significant asymme- tries between social strata lead to loss of resources from a Schumpeterian perspective (Puscaciu et al., 2016). In other words, society has taught us that only a small nucleus of people remains and holds wealth, while the large majority of humankind lives in challenging misery. There is a clear pattern of poverty, crime, and wealth at the spatial level, clearly traceable to the root of hubs of economic growth, such as urban areas. Therefore, urbanization processes are a logical consequence of economic prosperity, and while cities grow, infrastructures spoil the already environmentally depleted land use, where natural resources become scarce. This sinks process has led to new tech- niques that enable better monitoring and understanding of the spatial dimension, HappinessGeography:DefiningtheField 3 supporting the planning of urban and rural areas, and defining the socioeconomic strata from a geographic perspective, leading to more sustainable and sounder envi- ronments. Wellbeing is closely related to this very concept, as it assumes social and economic stability and integration of awareness and harmony with the natural envi- ronment. The Aristotelian notion of happiness furthermore expands on the idea that happiness is an absolute objective for humankind, only reflected in the existence of a common goal. From a sustainable development perspective, this common goal may become the attempt to transmit to future generations our social, economic, and natural environment, without any negative externalities that create dramatic changes, but offer a stable system of growth to the generations to come. 3 Spatial Information for Complex Decision-Making With the recent technological development witnessed in the last decades, computa- tional systems have increased dramatically their ability to cope with large amounts of data and offering more complex analysis of data sets. This has brought signif- icant advances in geocomputation, where the assembly, editing, and manipulation of data allow at present much more elaborate computational tasks than a decade ago. A large volume of geostatistical and spatial analysis methodologies has arisen from the possibility of understanding complex interactions, leading to advances in nonlinear modelling approaches that follow out of the traditional body of knowl- edge of statistical toolsets mainly available until the nineties. These new methods embed the possibility to observe behaviours and predict motion over space and time. It is only natural that the traditionally applied visions such as von Neuman and the scholarly work found in genetics have become interesting paths for the advances in spatial analysis and observation of empirical outcomes. One of these methods links to cellular automata, which have primarily been used to prospecting spatial phenomena such as land-use change. The very nature of land-use change modelling utilizing stochastic processes enabled in cellular automata shows that combined method- ologies of geographical analysis embed well into the stream of complex systems, converging to the advances in the field of geographic information science. The cellular automata itself derives from a straightforward concept. A single cell iterates its state given the fact that growth is the produce of its adjacency. The anachro- nism further explores this simple growth mechanism known as the cell iteration over time that the future state of the cell is represented by a transition probability, in other words, the mechanics on how plausible it is for the cell to grow adjacently, given the probability of any other cell becoming similar to its adjacent type. Adding different categories to this, the cells take action to form certain determinants of change over space and time. In all its simplicity, this model represents a compelling concept of nonlinearity that has been widely used for planning purposes in the field of spatial analysis. It is therefore intriguing that the usability of this method has not yet been applied to other fields of social science, and can only be a result of the little explo- ration still at hand of complex systems modelling in line with fields such as the