“Average levels of subjective well-being have been shown to fall as population size and population density increase,” says one UN Happiness study.
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It’s hard to find a city that is pushing harder for greater population density.
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City councillors in Vancouver, which was already the most dense city in Canada a decade ago, have in recent years rammed through several mass upzonings impacting virtually every lot in the city.
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Other municipalities within Metro Vancouver, which is the fourth-densest region in North America, are almost as aggressive about trying to house more people per square kilometre. The second-most dense city in Canada is New Westminster, the City of North Vancouver is third, and White Rock ninth.
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Vancouver, especially, has adopted an unnecessary “build it and they will come” philosophy, a coalition of 30 Metro urbanists claimed in a March statement. It is paving the way for hundreds of thousands more housing units, which experts say go far beyond what is necessary to satisfy population forecasts.
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Unfortunately, global research into the correlation between population density and happiness is discouraging for cities, which have consistently proven less satisfying places than towns and rural areas.
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That is despite the so-called “urban promise,” by which cities offer higher economic and educational advantages, thus drawing most immigrants. Meanwhile, the world is rapidly becoming more urban. In 1910, only one in 10 people lived in cities. That proportion is expected to hit 68 per cent by 2050.
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“We find that urban living is associated with lower scores across seven dimensions of well-being, social satisfaction and economic satisfaction,” says a recent study led by Adam Finnemann of the University of Amsterdam.
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Statistically, residents of regions with dense populations express lower life satisfaction than those who live in more spacious areas. “For economically developed countries, rural areas consistently show higher happiness,” Finnemann’s team found.
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A study of 1,200 Canadian neighbourhoods, by UBC economics professors John Helliwell and Hugh Shiplett, also discovered people are significantly less happy in urban areas.
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When the researchers compared the least happy cohort of Canadians to the most happy in 2018, they found the unhappiest contingent lived in cities where population density was eight times higher than where the most satisfied residents made their home.
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Disturbingly for residents of Canada’s fast-growing big cities, Helliwell and Shiplett found Vancouver and Toronto were the least happiest places in the country.
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Helliwell co-founded the United Nations’ annual Happiness Report in 2012, with Richard Leyard of the London School of Economics and Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University.
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In 2015, Canada ranked fifth on the UN’s life-satisfaction scale, out of almost 150 nations. But by 2026, Canada had dropped to 25th. In that time, the country’s population expanded by 17 per cent.
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“Although population size or density per hectare is not inevitably correlated with lower subjective well-being,” said a related UN Happiness report by Netherlands economist Martijn Burger, “in developed economies, average levels of subjective well-being have been shown to fall as population size and population density increase.”
