Huffington Magazine Issue 46 | Page 40

AP PHOTO/REED SAXON Might a different external environment — a different sort of city, that is — have stopped their growth? In tackling these questions, the beachfront enclave of less than 100,000 joined a global debate just making its way to America. Countries around the world have begun worrying about how their people feel, not just how much they produce. The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan even has a measure- ment for it: the Gross National Happiness (GNH). Coined in the 1970s by a Bhutanese king wanting to ease fears about modernization, the concept now rules that country’s politics. It’s also spreading westward, where some top economists making sense of the recession are happy to knock down the old gods — profit, loss, GDP, GNP — and replace them with a new one. A wave of teen fatalities including the hotel-top suicide made officials in Santa Monica, California, re-assess the way they run things. A sidewalk memorial stands near the spot where a 14-yearold student athlete jumped to his death in 2011.