Culture

How Happy Are You With Your City? Somerville Finds Out

Boston suburb asks its citizens to rate their happiness
andrewmalone

The City of Somerville, Massachusetts, conducts its own census, and when the latest survey went out in early 2011, the forms included a new section asking a question government doesn’t often ask of its people: are you happy?

Somerville, just north of Boston, is the first in the country to pose this sort of question in a citywide survey. The results have recently been released and, overall, Somerville is a happy place. A brief sample: