ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the personal journeys of its founders, Mike and Liz Zeidler. It outlines the role that positive psychology and other related disciplines have played in the work that has led to Happy City being hailed as a leading global example of city-scale action for wellbeing. Some observers have argued that attention needs to shift from researching whether specific psychological interventions have a positive or negative effect, towards an understanding of how differing contexts can determine beneficial outcomes for any intervention. For positive psychology to be applicable to the real-life challenges we saw in communities, we needed to add other principles, including systems thinking, solutions focus, diversity, and inquiry. Happy City takes an action research approach and attempts to continuously test positive psychology principles in the real world and with real communities. The messages that are embedded in the best of positive psychology are best shared by those already trusted in communities – by work colleagues, health and workers.
