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detainee inside the park, Disneyland’s trains actually ground to a halt so that the site could be cleansed of the offending reference to real life. Any interruption of the cheery choreography is a threat to this carefully crafted hedonic machine.
    We are left with the question of authenticity: If you’re happy, does reality matter? The philosopher Robert Nozick once challenged people to imagine an “experience machine” that would sink occupants into a lifelong dream, something like a coma state, in which neuropsychologists could stimulate their brains, simulating the most wonderful pleasures imaginable. Nozick argued that plugging into the machine would be a kind of suicide. He predicted that most people would opt for a life that was less pleasant, but one that involved real challenges, real striving, real pleasure and pain.
    Even if it were possible to live out one’s life in Disneyland, a eudaimonic approach would surely require seeing past Disney’s consumable facades, acknowledging the struggles of the cast members who play its character roles, and engaging with the urban systems that support the experience machine. Disneyland and its visitors contribute to the traffic and urban blight that awaits beyond its berms. You cannot separate one pleasurable moment from the system that created it, or your own role in creating that system. The question then is, how can real designs in real places infuse life with the sensual and sensory pleasures we often pay to experience? Should they even try?
    Beyond the Hedonic City
    Our rejection of the experience machine carries us back to the deeper notion of happiness for which the Greeks argued. So does the evidence from the emerging field of happiness economics, where Kahneman’s peers have tried to understand what influences the happiness of entire societies, drawing on data produced by census reports and polls such as the massive World Values Survey and the Gallup World Poll. These surveys don’t simply measure affect , or people’s relative cheeriness in the moment. They ask how people feel about their entire life. * The hope is to distill eudaimonia down to a number that can be compared with just about any variable, from income to unemployment to the length of our commutes and the number of friends we have, and then to understand all the ingredients that combine to create life satisfaction. †
    These surveys are fueling a revolution in economics, partly because they contest the power of massive advances in spending power to make societies happier. After countries reach the standard of living that many first world countries hit around 1960, happiness and gross national product stop following the same trajectory. ‡ Income matters, of course, but it is only part of the story.
    It’s true that if you live in a poor country, getting richer goes hand in hand with getting happier. This makes sense. You are unlikely to say you are happy when you cannot offer food, shelter, and security to your children. But in the world’s rich countries, working harder to earn more money gets less effective once you’ve passed the average income mark. After that, each extra dollar delivers proportionately less satisfaction.
    If money isn’t everything, what is the full recipe for happiness? Adam Smith’s followers in classical economics have never produced a plausible answer, but the surveys offer a few. People who are well educated rate their happiness higher than those who aren’t. Employed people are happier than unemployed people—even in European states where generous welfare policies insulate citizens from the most destructive effects of unemployment.
    Life satisfaction is strongly influenced by location. * People in small towns are generally happier than people who live in big cities. People who live next to the ocean report being happier than those who don’t. Living under the flight path of commuter jets is terrible for happiness. Persistent wind is bad, too. But we do not