My thesis of what a perfect living community should look like.

Building what a community should look like has been a question for all of human civilisation and has morphed into many forms, with different levels of success for the overall happiness of the people. It is a difficult question with many incomplete answers, but to try and form a general framework, I will explore what a person needs, what a group of persons need and how we can create our living spaces to accommodate the needs of both considerations. We will base this around a pyramid of needs, focusing on the survival, safety, social aspect, and interpersonal requirements that we need our community to satisfy and produce a fulfilling experience.

To create a perfect community for a group of people to live in, we must first consider what a person needs, and then what a group of people would need. We may find that the perfect community for a single person may clash with what would be optimal for the larger population, and in such cases, a compromise may be required for this community.

The most basic needs of a person are survival: food, water, shelter, clothing and sleep. Now, how can we make sure every person in the community has an adequate level of this? The simplest answer would be to have a redistribution of resources; those who have a surplus of a specific surplus will share with those who are in deficit. In today’s society, where we use money as a means to get these basic resources, we would want a redistribution of money, making sure that those who have the least amount have at least a certain level to live on. One argument is to give a basic level of income, funded by taxes on the (extremely) wealthy. This would benefit the society as a whole, but we may have a grumbling of the (extremely) wealthy who do not want to share for the good of everyone, although the overall level of happiness would greatly improve, and it has been shown that by giving resources to the poorest of society, the entire society greatly improves in wealth.

Survival is also based on safety, which is our next level up on our pyramid of needs. Perfect safety means every person in the community feels as if no harm will be done to them physically, and no crime will occur. There is the philosophical question of whether we can ever remove crime entirely? Perhaps the answer is no, and in that case, we can greatly reduce it. The best method to reduce crime is to target its roots: poverty. Much crime occurs from a lack of education due to poverty. We have already fixed poverty earlier, and we will move on to education soon, so it seems the issue of safety, by consequence, is solved!

Social connection and acceptance are the next level up. This requires a complex and close understanding of how people operate in a community to make sure that everyone feels a social connection. Through past iterations of communities, we can observe that there are some aspects that are particularly strong in building community: physical closeness of living spaces, third places, interhappiness and empathy.

Physical closeness is characterised by having a walkable city; shops, schools, workplaces, parks, etc. are all built close enough that you could easily walk (say 10-20 minutes) to them, or have affordable and accessible public transport to take you there. This fosters a sense of connection to where you live and the people you see often around you. You always see the same person running at 7 am when you’re on your way to work, why not say hi? You always see the same family at the park, why not let your kids play with their kids and get a coffee? The same cashier always serves you at your local corner shop, and you’ve learned a lot about them over the years, so why not meet outside of the shop? Why not ask out the cute guy you always bump into? With this proximity of people, there are so many different opportunities of connection; proximity builds trust and familiarity. It’s why villages are always so tight-knit. The stress and time wasted commuting is also eliminated, giving you more time to spend with people and doing things you actually enjoy. Not to mention the health benefits of walking everywhere!

Third places are spaces where people come together without spending money that isn’t their home, school or place of work. This could be a community centre, sports centre, large park, arts and crafts area, anywhere you can have a large community get together without consumerism being the main force. This is a very powerful place as it's a hub of socialising and meeting new people, whilst also doing an activity that is enjoyable. This puts people in a good mood and relaxed enough to take the risk of talking to new people and forming new connections. Ideally, we would have a multitude of different types of third places where people meet!

Interhappiness (in the sense of each person is happy and fulfilled) is a much more difficult issue to solve, and we must also notice that this is very linked to social connection in the first place, a loop occurs! How do we get interhappiness if that's needed for social connection, which also needs interhappiness? We can ensure the other aspects of personal happiness are there and build on the connection. This is also closely linked to empathy; good people tend to be happy people, and happy people tend to be good people. So, how do we get good and happy people?

This question leads us to the highest point of our pyramid, realising our full potential: creativity, moral development and satisfaction with life. I wish I could say there is one easy solution to realising our full potential, but it is a difficult, complex and long road, which every person has their own path. We can look at the many themes in which we can find happy people, though one of which, surprisingly or unsurprisingly, is beauty. Beauty of where we live and beauty of what we create. Building the spaces that we live in to be a beautiful area, this is strongly linked to nature. Being able to easily access and enter large parks and protected natural areas should be a priority. Another aspect is health, exercise and nutrition should be easily accessible, and education on a widespread level of how to live a healthy life is required. The next difficult aspect is realising your potential, finding a fulfilling job and doing fulfilling work. Education, again, is quite important in this to give everyone the same opportunities and make sure education is not a barrier to someone’s dream job. Plentiful opportunity and the softness of failure is one; if people are not terrified that they will lose everything if they pursue a dream, they will go down happier paths. However, this is very optimistic to have everyone be able to do their dream job, who wants to be a bus driver? A cleaner? One solution is to solve as many of these with tech, self-driving cars, self-cleaning houses, self-deguttering gutters and the things that cannot be solved by tech be highly compensated and much more relaxed to give these people recognition, that yes, they’re doing a more difficult job, but it’s for society's benefit. So perhaps have them have shorter career spans with fewer hours and a sense of respect in the community for those doing these jobs.

Work is not the only way to realise your full potential; many hobbies and activities you do in your free time are just as important. Allowing access to viewing, creating and appreciating art must also be a priority. Taught at a young age at school, then further reinforced when older by having free and available art galleries. Sports and recreational activities, as such, also fall into this category, letting people discover new hobbies and fun things to do, fostering a sense of contentment that realises the happiness that we need a single person to have to become a good, happy person.

There are many other aspects of a perfect society that we couldn’t fit concretely into the pyramids. Diversity of ethnicity, gender, age, experience and background is a key consideration that ensures the society doesn’t tunnel towards one idea and has a diverse set of ideas that have been shown to lead to the best ideas. Overall, we have touched upon the varying levels of needs that society has and what we can do to fulfil them to create a perfect society. Of course, you can never fully attain a “perfect” society, but it is important to recognise that continual improvement and change will lead to the best outcome, so we must also have a democratic look at the community and find points of improvement, consider the best solution, then implement it and repeat.