In Somerville, Massachusetts surveys were being done just to see how happy residents living in Somerville really are. Not surveying on material objects or anything of that sort the surveys were being asked very simple on happy happy people really are. Just to have an eye on this survey to see what peoples responces would be, psychologists and economists just to “monitor” the surveying process.
Surveys like this have been done before such as in France and in Britain and other places. Some residents from Somerville even said that they felt “flattered” by the interest that the city had in trying to find out what brings happiness to their residents. Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone said “We need to change our mind-set in how we serve people”. I think that actually is a very good line because people/residents really would like for their city officials to connect and understand a little bit more of what the people want and how they would like it. After surveys like these are done the city officials start discussing and thinking as said in NYTimes.com article they will begin to speak about perhaps building more parks for their residents or more highways anything that can relate to results from the surveys on what would make them happy. Somerville was thought to be a very good place to try this survey in because they were once known as “Slummerville” because of bad reputation due to crime. That has all changed now and their reputation has changed. Also wanting to see just how happy their residents are because they are located in between Harvard and Tufts Universities the city of Somerville is a growing population.
If they continue these surveys they will know exactly how to help improve their reputation even more and how to actually try to keep their residents happy with the way they live. This is a very good idea from the city officials to approve and to test.
(Revision for Thursday 9/12)
In the article “How Happy Are You? A Census Wants To Know” by John Tierney a survey is being done for the residents of the city of Somerville on just how happy are they with living in Somerville. The survey varied from different approaches such as how residents felt towards police officials, schools, safety & availability of affordable housing. As many may have thought some people will answer not generally speaking about how happy they are but will probably speak off of current emotion at the moment in which some residents did. Some residents even replied saying their happiness depended on things they wanted to change about themselves and didn’t have anything to do with Somerville. City officials really want to find out just how happy their residents really are and a big question of “Taking everything into account, how satisfied are you with Somerville as a place to live?”
Reflection – I think that I did a much better job summarizing the article the second time oppose to summarizing it the first time. I took off some of the additional information in which I learned in class that I didn’t really need. I got more straight to the point of the summary and held back on the additional information.
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