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Scenic¹ City Sights Linked to Higher Happiness

One of the ugliest sights in Great Britain is a small power station outside Plymouth, England, its electrical lines and towers surrounded by a drab-colored fence. I know this not because I've been there—but because a photo of it has scored a measly 1 out of 10 on an online game called Scenic or Not. The game has viewers rate photos from all over the U.K. on their scenic beauty.

英国最丑陋的景象之一是英国普利茅斯郊外的一个小发电站，它的电线和塔被一圈土黄色的栅栏包围着。我知道这一点并不是因为我去过那里，而是因为它的一张照片在一个叫做“风景还是不风景”的在线游戏中只得了十分之一的分数。这款游戏让观众对来自英国各地的照片的风景美进行评分。

After a million and a half ratings of more than 200,000 photos, the site has classified more than 93 percent of Great Britain as scenic, or not, or somewhere in between. And now, a study in the journal Scientific Reportshas used that data to show that our happiness increases in line with the scenic beauty around us. Which might sound kind of obvious.

在对20多万张照片进行150万次的评分后，该网站将英国93%以上的地区划分为风景区、非风景区或介于两者之间。现在，发表在《科学报告》杂志上的一项研究利用这些数据表明，我们的幸福感会随着周围风景的美丽而增加。这听起来很明显。

"But what was I think surprising is we find that connection when they're in more built-up areas as well. So it's not just a natural area that might have an impact on happiness, but we might also feel happier in more beautiful areas in our cities."

“但我认为令人惊讶的是，当他们居住在更多的建成区时，我们也发现了这种联系。因此，这不仅是一个可能会影响幸福感的自然区域，而且我们可能在城市中更美丽的地区也会感到更快乐。”

Chanuki Seresinhe is a data scientist at the Warwick Business School and the Alan Turing Institute. Seresinhe and her team used data from the "Mappiness" iPhone app—which polled some 15,000 participants about their wellbeing a few times a day, over a three-year period. The app also pulled GPS data, which allowed Seresinhe and her team to correlate happiness ratings with the Scenic-or-Not rating of where a participant happened to be. The team found that as scenic beauty goes up, so does self-reported wellbeing. And that held true for areas featuring picturesque² human-built structures, such as bridges and interesting architecture.

Chanuki Seresinhe是华威商学院和阿兰图灵研究所的数据科学家。Seresinhe和她的团队使用了来自“Mappiness”iPhone应用程序的数据，该应用程序在三年的时间里每天对15000名参与者进行几次关于他们健康状况的调查。这款应用程序还提取了GPS数据，这使得塞瑞西尼和她的团队能够将幸福感评级与参与者碰巧在哪里的场景或不场景评级联系起来。研究小组发现，随着风景优美程度的提高，自我报告的幸福感也会提高。对于那些以风景如画的人类建筑为特色的地区，比如桥梁和有趣的建筑，情况也是如此。

And though it's just a correlation³ for now, "I think what's interesting about this research is it shows that just a small injection of beauty into an area of a city can create happiness for possibly thousands of people that are being exposed to that."

尽管这只是暂时的关联，“我认为这项研究的有趣之处在于，它表明，在一个城市的某一区域注入少量的美丽，就可以为可能成千上万的人创造幸福，而这些人正置身于美丽之中。”

Which could come in handy. Because the global population is forecast to grow to 11 billion by the end of the century—living mostly in cities. Which should be built to be as appealing as possible.

这可能会派上用场。因为到本世纪末，全球人口预计将增长到110亿——主要居住在城市。它应该尽可能地吸引人。