Laura of what I like blog has written up a dandy little summary of Eric Weiner’s findings from his book “The Geography of Happiness”.

Here are the first two points:

Culture – The unhappiest countries (Moldova, which seems to have been a bit at sea ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, is a deeply depressed place) have a distinct lack of culture. Without culture there’s no sense of identity, no connection to a country. No literature nor art means no sense of self, either at the collective or individual level.

Nature – Despite the general ennui that the Swiss seem to exhibit (from my brief, superficial observations), the country rates very high on the happiness scale. This is largely attributable to the very deep connection that the citizenry has to nature. Iceland, a stunningly happy (if very dark) country, also has this relationship with the outdoors. There’s an appreciation, not a fear, of the land, connecting the people to the most basic thing that humans know

Read more.

David Byrne in the Wall Street Journal:

There’s an old joke that you know you’re in heaven if the cooks are Italian and the engineering is German. If it’s the other way around you’re in hell. In an attempt to conjure up a perfect city, I imagine a place that is a mash-up of the best qualities of a host of cities. The permutations are endless. Maybe I’d take the nightlife of New York in a setting like Sydney’s with bars like those in Barcelona and cuisine from Singapore served in outdoor restaurants like those in Mexico City. Or I could layer the sense of humor in Spain over the civic accommodation and elegance of Kyoto. Of course, it’s not really possible to cherry pick like this—mainly because a city’s qualities cannot thrive out of context. A place’s cuisine and architecture and language are all somehow interwoven. But one can dream.

David proceeds to give a list of factors that make a city “livable” for him. Read what follows at WSJ.