Trying to live, work and *protect assets* in 2025, who can afford to hold space for… happiness?
Expo with video.
What do you want to commit to? Investing money or time into something means you must have seen yourself in it, so signing up always goes beyond the portfolio data. But in these times, where do you see yourself? At the Invest in Happiness Summit, a recent placemaking event held in the Haymarket Theatre in Basingstoke, guests were invited to consider how to invest in the very feelings that inspire commitment to somewhere – so I was obviously happy to be welcoming everyone to the stage… but should I have been surprised at how many people turned up?
“Interesting, isn’t it…” I began my second link, stalking the spot-lit boards in front of an auditorium of expectant faces, “we’ve all turned up to an event with the word happiness in the title, presented by an organisation with the word love in its name. ..Are we alright?”
It’s not an irrelevant question to a large room full of property people, local councillors and corporate investors. All gathered in a theatre.
Love Basingstoke’s event Invest In Happiness aimed to bring together a creative mix of people to: “explore the pivotal role of design, investment, and placemaking in shaping vibrant, thriving communities for generations to come.”
Now, given all that you’ve seen, I’d not be surprised at you initially thinking: “Sounds more like Invest In Sappiness – and you want bricks-and-mortar property investors to show up to this, you say?”
You.
What struck me by the end of a full day, however, was how naturally the theme of “happiness” kept flowing out of everyone’s testimonies, thoughts, insights and compared experiences.
Because, let’s be honest… we’re not exactly okay, are we?
This event was originally scheduled for April 2024 and had to be postponed because of the local authority’s obligation to the sudden stasis of a pre-election period when the snap general election was called. To keep all the speakers and find a new window for the Haymarket, the subsequent ten months into late February brought even wilder political events into our imaginations and feelings by the time we were gathered for an event about happiness. We are not building communities and futures in an emotional vacuum – our lives today are a lot, even when not most immediately in peril.
But Basingstoke does seem like a rarely positive place in this context. A place with real potential, thanks to a confluence of things – a comparatively forward-looking council that seems to have practiced how to also be comparatively agile, while also being almost incomparably well furnished in key sites around the city. Organiser and creative mate Marelize de Beurs can, as Economy and Place Marketing Manager for Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council, share some positive, sensible figures about employment numbers, productivity and quality of life in the area. Director of Regeneration Sarah Longthorpe can also share a bunch of significant sites of opportunity open for partnership, from city centre to the rolling rural landscapes that make up most of the district. With some exemplary showcase projects around them demonstrating what’s positively possible. Honestly, just being able to open an event like this without immediately talking about cuts and lack of resources seems a bit like a halcyon daydream at this point.
For me, though, it was the vibe around the numbers, in the conversations. The human tone. This corner of South Central, feeling a bit out on a limb in north Hampshire, currently sounds like has a group of people with some vision and some big strategic assets to work with. So I think this was a not unrealistic location to ask the sorts of visionary questions this event was created to ask – stuff could get done well here, if the right folk gather round it further.
“Done well” meaning simply, will age well. Generational work in a nutshell.
It’s just. ..Who can afford to take a day out of *productivity!* to talk about something as privileged-sounding as happiness?
Dear me. If any instinct in you wants to ask that question you’ve already answered it; how much more stupendously obvious does our historic context have to be to admit in a professional setting that none of us can afford not to be talking about happiness at fucking last.
The privilege of happiness.
No one exactly mentioned the word inequality at this event.
Plenty mentioned the word community. And how you don’t build a nice place to live that isn’t believed in by the people who know how it works.
It would be an ask even for me to pivot from the horrifying honesty of how many global investors funding building in some city centres are also funding the politicians and arms companies destroying city centres in other places. Showing shots of Gaza’s university districts and health centres and primary schools and vibrant coastal commerce spaces as piles of rubble with infant hands protruding from the dust might have been true economic context but it would have set up a rather different event – one that, ironically, might have done less to re-imagine the brutal status quo.
I’m wondering a little bit about Aesop’s fable of the wind and the sun here – which element won the bet to have the traveler remove their coat.
War zones and fashy boys brutalising the marginalised might be the logical conclusion of capitalist values, but these are extreme-sounding scenarios to most of us still having to work waist-deep in the economy. Extremes the media thrives on, which is a more fundamental part of the problem with trying to invest in happiness than we might consider.
What about the stories of alternative ways of living? Who is telling them?
Natascha McIntyre Hall is The Mindful Regenerist, a placemaker and futurist. And in her keynote she first showed us a carousel of images we’d all know well; snippets and slices of semi urban life that could be right outside the theatre and which showed the more cumulative effects of our crap economics. Thoughtless interventions that forget the way humans actually want to use spaces, walk down roads, dwell for a moment. Everyday unhappiness we don’t notice.
As an urban design thinker, she was able to help us look. Designers cross over with artists in this regard – see it again, stop and notice. That’s where you live. Why is it that way?
I’d urge you to click on her slide show and go through the images. Because even without her inspiring explanations in person, her following selection of captured moments from examples of great public living around the world will change how you feel. You don’t need to know if a space is in Copenhagen or Liverpool, a more intentional, considered little moment in a community looks simply lovely. You’ll want to step into it. And she has a long scroll of them in there.
It does beg the question, though, at an event still full of statistics: How do we measure “good”?
Perhaps it starts with Natascha’s simple assertion that: “community = shared experiences”.
Who is imposing, or releasing, those shared experiences? A property developer with a progressive-sounding urban design partner presenting a big scheme’s masterplan from on high? The sort that makes it into keynotes?
For all the playfully feelings-changing examples of good public design practice she shared, Natascha had another take.
“Legacy is ancestry from a different perspective.”
Wow. Now that’s context. Who we think we are shapes how we see the place we call home. And why we want to live there. It’s a global scale vibe right now, and it echoes to some ancient human roots.
The valuation of happiness.
You might well expect climate-thinking people to want to prescribe “good” things. You might also think this sounds like an imposition. But if experiences in nature are increasingly accepted to be health beneficial, it’s no wonder that Maccreanor Lavington’s head of sustainability Marc Selligman would suggest that:
“regenerative = positive impact”.
Buildings can be catalysts for change, ways to build the future and reach beyond their plots with influence, he suggested. It’s more than just constructing more efficient structures, there is something implied in the DNA of a building’s story when it’s regeneratively designed – it says something to people, and it keeps saying it every day to those moving around it. It elicits an emotional connection.
The most obvious example to hand here was not only referenced by Marc but keynoted entirely by its protagonist. And it is an inspiration.
Hugo Denée is an investor demonstrating clearly how happiness can be inspired by the right regenerative building. His project, Plant, is a distinctive office block in the middle of Basingstoke brought back to life with a lot of people taking notes. I’d been shown around it by Marelize before Christmas and it grabbed me.
Friend and forthcoming Bournemouth Writing Festival co-conspirator Peter John Cooper had said to me: “I remember the Wiggins Teape building up there had the most fantastic orange carpet in its big entrance space.” It might be the one disappointing thing about Plant that this can’t have survived the years. The rest of the former Gateway building, then Mountbatten House, is probably now in the best iteration of itself it’s ever been. A 1970s low rise cluster of dark brown glass and garden platforms, it’s a sort of Logan’s Run era utopian ideal of giving every single office in the block its own outside green space.
One of the first new tenants was the AA, immediately relocating its head office in there. Maybe reflecting an ambition for zero emissions futures with all those plants outside their windows, who knows.
Hugo himself seemed diffident about the development, but I prompted: “You must be proud of it, it gets everyone feeling great.”
He looked a little bemused, then coy for a second, and replied with an unguarded smile: “Yeah, I suppose I am. It took a lot of work.”
Plant looks transformed by a lot of vision, and sets a tone for how to re-imagine existing buildings’ stories – and storeys. What good can they do, what feelings can they inspire, what people can they attract to invest in them and who will they bring with them?
And as leading as Hugo is, he is not quite alone in his attitude. Here in Bournemouth, for example, Ashley Nicholson and Verve Properties have sunk integrity and creativity into the tired former Debenhams by investing in the mid-to-long-term of my home town’s centre with Bobby’s. It’s attracted some forward looking businesses into its space and might have helped The Ivy move in across the Square this winter. As I asked the development manager there on a tour round Patch’s renovation of one of the floors: “Are you going to hold your nerve?” and he replied firmly: “Yes, we’re staying.”
And that’s in a context still much less clearly positive than Basingstoke’s.
To me, investing in better-feeling buildings for the longer term feels like a growing vibe.
As I discovered for another client, the ethical investments market has been projected to reach $53trillion this year by some estimations, a third of all global assets under management. And with over 936,000 B-Corporations driving more rigorously accountable future-minded business generally, like local property mates Omega RE who supported the event, plenty of signals are out there that not everyone wants to keep investing in misery.
But health is a holistic state – wellness is a combination of different positive influences at once, like the rich context of nature itself. This is as true for the design of a scheme as it is for the people who’ll move into it. Feelings have to be reflected in figures.
As Lord Mark Price shared, there is an economics to happiness.
The former John Lewis Partnership and Waitrose boss now runs a business called WorkL which helps employers: “measure and improve workplace happiness” and: “individuals to develop and be happier at work”.
“You’ve got some impressive metrics there,” I said to him, “and a whole lifetime of promoting positive experiences in the workplace. But in the current environment of leadership paralysis and supposed waning interest in ESG stuff… how do you feel about the progress? Are people wanting to invest in happiness?”
He looked incredulous for a paused second, then said: “Yes. Those figures are going up and up.”
But as Abby Foster put it: “You cannot manage what you don’t measure”.
She spoke about connecting wellbeing to performance, implying that if: “more than 70% of millennials use ESG factors to guide investment decisions” they are going to need ways to assess this.
Sharing the BREEAM standard for designing healthy developments, she effectively highlighted the basic inadequacy of how developments are usually measured. If all new construction accounted for quality of air, water, nourishment, light, movement, thermal comfort, sound, materials, mind, community… imagine our daily experiences in these structures and spaces. How we’d feel, what we might be thinking about, the work we might want to do in them.
“It just sounds really obvious,” I said to her, “everything we ever build should be measured this way.”
“The standard is out there, open source – any one can use it” she shrugged.
..Cost will be the immediate word any developer would say to that, lickety-snap. ..Actually they’d probably say viability because it sounds more technical.
But perhaps the emerging realisation for all of us is how we have been framing the costs of unhappiness. Or simply haven’t been.
The source of happiness.
Doing good never just happens. I don’t think feeling good ever just happens, there is always a context and a trigger, which was rather the point of this event, thinking about how we might encourage it.
Trust feels important to me in this. And that links directly to leadership.
If we don’t trust our supposed leaders, it usually comes back to a growing sense that they aren’t interested in us really, that they haven’t got your back. Which means they aren’t going to invest in you. Neighbourhoods reflect this as you walk through them – is the language of the materials and spaces around you suggesting trust? Does everything seem, y’know, loved?
Tidy streets and tended planting are a love language.
They are evidence of belief in the place.
This may be the central issue of our current government in the UK – they don’t seem very interested in investing in the people of Britain. Sensible as they try to sound with figures and plans, senior leadership in Westminster doesn’t sound tenacious about the things we need to feel safe, free enough to move around and try things, confident enough to be ourselves wherever we are. We don’t feel very loved. Flattery is not love, BTW Nigel Farage. It’s the billionaire asset owners that seem adored, not those feeling heart-sick because nothing in their community works well.
Here is where the real need for investment in happiness, wellbeing, resilience, regeneration is, and why it doesn’t happen enough. It’s unsexy. It’s vital, but looks less keynote-shiny than a CG-illustrated masterplan.
The hope here may be that like all advertising, more of us are feeling increasingly heart-sick and bored with keynote-shiny plans and more ready to feel a deeper connection into belonging.
To me, this felt reflected in the heart of the Invest In Happiness Summit, and it could easily not have been.
As Sîan Rebourg of The Hill Group and Deborah Williams of Sovereign Network reflected together, housing associations can help communities partner with developers to invest in places that reflect who lives there. And this must include, they said, a commitment to “maximising social value” – which has to include mechanisms to report it.
Done right, engaging with communities with really good listening, subsequent interventions are likely to be comparatively tiny in investment terms but so impactful to lives.
Their case study of Burnaby Lees is so exemplary I am going to share their slide quote about it in full:
“The Burnaby Bees gardening project aims to improve neglected green spaces outside the Burnaby shopping parade and encourage local people to learn and share gardening skills. Originally, the green spaces were unloved, overgrown, and had become a hotspot for litter and fly tipping. The land was inaccessible due to metal railings, making maintenance impossible. We secured £6,000 of funding from the Hubbub Foundation and Starbucks, through the ‘Access to Nature’ Fund, to work with the community to improve these green spaces. As a result, the space is now 1 out of 100 Nature Hubs across the UK. We have been working in partnership with BDBC and the award winning local garden designer, The Beady Gardener, to support us with delivering this project. We have received some additional funding from the Home Office, Safer Streets Fund towards the project and to further look at improving the area around Burnaby shops.”
How tiny and crafts-y and unglamorous might this sound to global venture capital manager, but what meaningful evidence of change and trust to people living in that corner of Basingstoke?
Now imagine a whole region made up of such literally grass-roots expressions. How much would they inform the shape of the bigger developments they flow around? How would this change a wider place to live?
Sîan and Debs shared the four big ambitions of the groups’ partnership and they spell out what’s needed:
• Renewed homes and streets where residents feel safe.
• A prosperous community, with strong links to a growing economy.
• A sustainable, healthy and integrated neighbourhood.
• A proud, empowered and connected community.
Proud. Empowered. A community wound together. Tell me you’re paying attention and not feeling an emotional connection to that.
In the group panel chat I hosted near the end of our time, the sense of solidarity and vision between all the speakers was an energy I could feel and hadn’t quite expected.
There was conviction between everyone on the stage – a resilient sense that there is something unstoppable about this movement.
“We won’t even have to talk about sustainability,” Marc Selligman broke in, “the benefits will speak for themselves to investors”.
I am having to pause recalling this to gather myself a bit.
Our last keynote speaker took us to perhaps where we most needed to be. From high-level positive figures at the beginning of the summit to where positivity even begins.
Vafa Taleban is an authentic leadership coach and she talks readily about helping people with big responsibilities cultivate trust. But not simply as some system of accountability. Her business is called Personal Revolution for a good reason.
Vafa’s central word I think is pretty central for me too – confidence.
Sharing an intimate testimony of personal challenges and how she worked through them to a realisation of that word, it’s led her to want to help others become leaders in their own lives, whatever their responsibilities – to: “develop resilient, conscious, and authentic leaders who are equipped to navigate the complexities of an uncertain world.”
It was a moving, human, and exactly relevant way to close the Invest In Happiness Summit.
It won’t surprise you at all that Vafa and I could hardly stop talking afterwards, all the way to my train home.
If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes emotional truth to raise a village. That’s all about the stories we tell each other and ourselves, and the spaces we are willing to keep holding for each other to do so.
I’ll say it’s a privilege to stand in the middle of a special event like this and be given the trust and freedom to interpret its flow and people’s testimonies a little. I felt totally at ease with how Marelize and her team had organised it and curated its purpose. I was stuck by the warmth everyone brought to each other and to her. From talking to Basingstoke & Deane’s Leader, Councillor Paul Harvey, to every one of our speakers, the atmosphere everyone brought was gently, well, joyful.
For all the buzz of being in a theatre, I think we all felt safe. Like it is perfectly possible for us to help each other picture being alright. And how to invest in it.
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A huge thank you to Marelize, the politicians and officers at Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council, all our heart-felt and insightful speakers and to all the developers and community champions who created such a warm welcome for us all, including me.
Love this - you are such an inspiration