Well Being in Digital Media International Conference: 17-19 February, 2015 Beer Sheva – Tel Aviv, Israel “DIGITAL MEDIA AND WELL BEING IN CITIES: CURRENT TRENDS” Prof. Susana Finquelievich Wellbeing: A being that lives in close proximity to a well in the ancient of days, having a source of potable water. King Darius had sense of wellbeing because he had a well. (Urban Dictionary, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wellbeing) Abstract The concept of well-being in cities is attracting increasing attention in the context of urban development policies. However, the notion of urban well-being using digital media is still vague. It often tends to be confused with the concept of “smart cities”. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as enablers of e-services have the capacity to allow processes of urban transformation, by helping cities become “smarter” and more “sustainable”. In what degree do smart cities contribute to the well-being of citizens? By reviewing current trends in urban well-being policies the paper questions the concept of urban quality of life as limited to improved infrastructure and public equipment. It refers urban well-being also to intangible collective capital, such as the preservation and transmission of cultural heritage, collective memory, political participation; social equity, and inclusion for minorities and vulnerable social groups, which in the long run contribute to increasing the wellbeing of urban inhabitants. Finally, it proposes the use of ICTs to enable cities to provision and offer innovative citizen services to enhance their quality of life. 1. Well-being: Definitions and indicators The definitions of well-being are wide-ranging, and generally concomitant to concepts as quality of life, health, wellness, and living environment: “quality of life is the factual material and immaterial equipment of life and its perception characterised by health, living environment and legal and equity, work, family, etc.” (RIVM, 2000). In most of the current bibliography, the concept of well-being is strongly linked to health, which in turn is defined as “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. (WHO definition of Health, 1948). According to Barwais (2011) “Broadly, well-being has been defined from two perspectives. The clinical perspective defines well-being as the absence of negative conditions and the psychological perspective defines well-being as the prevalence of positive attributes. Positive psychological definitions of wellbeing generally include some of six general characteristics. The six characteristics of well-being most prevalent in definitions of well-being are: a) the active pursuit of well-being; b) a balance of attributes; c) positive affect or life satisfaction; d) prosocial behaviour; e) multiple dimensions; and f) personal optimisation. McAllister (2005) has defined well-being as “More than the absence of illness or pathology […with] subjective (self-assessed) and objective (ascribed) dimensions. It can be measured at the level of individuals or society [and] it accounts for elements of life satisfaction that cannot be defined, explained or primarily influenced by economic growth” (p. 2) (Camfield, Streuli, & Woodhead, 2010). Shin and Johnson (1978) have defined well-being form of happiness as “a global assessment of a person’s quality of life according to his own chosen criteria” (p. 478). (As quoted in Barwais, 2011). I prefer Bradshaw et al. 2007: 136): “Play[ing] an active role in creating their well-being by balancing […] different factors, developing and making use of resources and responding to stress.” It should be stated that this concept belongs to a chapter about child well-being in OECD countries. What about wellbeing in cities? Over half of the World’s population lives in urban areas; the urban population is increasing by about 2% every year. Urbanization bestows opportunities and risks, as well as enormous challenges for maintain and improving human health and wellbeing. The 21st century has conveyed new challenges, such as longevity, a massive growth in lifestyle-related diseases, segregation, in the more developed countries. It has also enhanced existing problems as population growth, new immigration to cities, displacements due to wars, terrorism, or natural disasters, and housing shortages, increase of urban violence and insecurity, socio-economic deprivation and inequalities in health, wellbeing and health-care accessibility, unequal access to urban infrastructure and services, and new epidemics, in developing countries. With these new defies has also come a renewed interest in urban areas and the wider built environment. A relevant issue to consider is that a city cannot be studied as a whole undivided entity. Most current cities are fragmented. In urban sociology, fragmentation refers to the absence or the underdevelopment of connections between the society and the groupings of some members of that society on the lines of a common culture, nationality, race, language, occupation, religion, income level, or other common interests. This gap between the concerned groups and the rest might be social, indicating poor interrelationships among each other; economical, based on structural inequalities; institutional in terms of formal and specific political, occupational, educative or associative organizations and/or geographic implying regional or residential concentration . Fragmentation also refers to the unequal access to urban infrastructure and equipment: urban technical networks, such as water, sewerage, electricity, education, health, transportation, etc. Therefore, when we discuss urban wellbeing, we need to consider that this wellbeing is far from being homogenous in cities, particularly in developing countries. How should one measure urban well-being? OECD (2011) states that concerns have appeared concerning the fact that macro-economic statistics did not describe the right image of what ordinary people perceived about the state of their own lives. Addressing these concerns is crucial. In OECD´s Compendium (2011) the conceptual framework used with respect to both focus and scope is based on principles that are well-established in the ongoing national and international initiatives in this field. In terms of focus, the Compendium delivers evidence on: a) the well-being of people in each country, rather than on the macro-economic conditions of economies; b) the well-being of different groups of the population, in addition to average conditions; c) well-being achievements, measured by outcome indicators, as opposed to well-being drivers measured by input or output indicators; d) objective and subjective aspects of people’s well-being as both living conditions and their appreciation by individuals are important to understand people’s well-being. In terms of scope, the framework distinguishes between current material living conditions and quality of life, on the one hand, and the conditions required to ensure their sustainability over time, on the other: a) Material living conditions (or “economic well-being”) determine people’s consumption possibilities and their command over resources. While this is formed by GDP, the latter also includes activities that do not contribute to people’s well-being (e.g. activities aimed at offsetting some of the regrettable consequences of economic development) while it excludes non-market activities that expand people’s consumption possibilities; b) Quality of life, defined as the set of non-monetary attributes of individuals, shapes their opportunities and life chances, and has intrinsic value under different cultures and contexts; c) The sustainability of the socio-economic and natural systems where people live and work is critical for well-being to last over time. Sustainability depends on how current human activities impact on the stocks of different types of capital (natural, economic, human and social). On the other hand, UNESCO´s Human Development Report 2014 states that “progress on human development, then, is not only a matter of enlarging people’s critical choices and their ability to be educated, be healthy, have a reasonable standard of living and feel safe. It is also a matter of how secure these achievements are and whether conditions are sufficient for sustained human development. An account of progress in human development is incomplete”. For the purposes of this paper, I have used the OECD´s Compendium, plus the yearly report “How´s life?”, as well as UNESCO´s Human Development Report 2014, adapting them to the interfaces between social media and urban wellbeing. 2. The implicit concept of urban wellbeing in the early informational cities The relationships between cities and digital media Cities began playing a remarkable role in Information Society debates in the early 1990s. The first event I attended on this issue an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Conference in Paris, in 1990, “ICT and the City”. Speakers from OECD countries discussed the expectations brought up by information and communication technologies (ICT): urban dwellers would profit from electronic health devices; they would telework either from home or from conveniently located telecottages; urban mobility would be reduced as well as comfortable, because ICT would make every service available from home or office. Natural disasters would be avoided thanks to cybernetic sensors and computer-mediated organization. And, best of all, urban pollution would be greatly diminished, because the new ICT based industries were, as it was believed, pollution-free. In those times in which a new cybernetic paradise was announced, nobody spoke about digital media and well-being in cities, but the concept was actually underlying the discourses. In the nineties, the prevailing concept was not well-being, but “life quality”. Some of its definitions are : Szalai (1980): life quality refers to the degree of excellence or satisfactory character of life. A person’s existential state, well-being, satisfaction with life is determined on the one hand by exogenous (‘objective’) facts and factors of his life and on the other hand by the endogenous (‘subjective’) perception and assessment he has of these facts and factors, of life and of himself WHO-QOL Group (1993): an individual’s perception of his/her position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which he/she lives and in relation to his/her goals, expectations, standards and concerns Veenhoven (1996): happy life expectancy = product score of life expectancy (in years) and the mean ‘happiness’ Musschenga (1997): the good life is a combination of enjoyment: positive mental states (the hedonic component), satisfaction: evaluation of success in realizing a life-plan or personal conception of the good life (the cognitive-evaluative component) and excellence: the virtuousness or value of a person’s activities (aretic component) In “The Informational City (1989), Castells had analyzed the then new information technologies and urban-regional processes as they occur in a larger historical context. He identified this new mode of development as the informational mode of development. His hypothesis: we are experiencing a historic set of transformations that relate to: capitalism as a social complex and capitalism’s restructuring (global capital flows), the informational mode of development, and IT as a potent operating instrument. Naturally, the early nineties were also times for ICT-related fears and uncertainties. Fears about the unforeseen effects of unbound technologies, the 1984-like vigilance on citizens, negative impacts on personal relationships, increase of individualism, and adverse impacts on jobs, among others. Some of these fears proved to be justified. Regarding the city, Castells (1989) explained that the digital media encouraged the generation of a dual city, which certainly does not contribute to urban well-being for the majority of the population. There are three phenomena contributing to the complex nature of the dual city’s social makeup. (1) The rise of the informal economy, the unregulated income-making process which would otherwise be government-regulated. (2) A decreased proportion of a participatory labor force (the diminution of the unions). (3) An increase in the criminal economy. According to Castells (1989), high tech does encourage more jobs, but it does so in such a way that creates a polarized and segmented labor force. Qualitatively, the management-labor power balance has shifted well in the favor of employer. In addition, labor at all levels is now more flexible, adopting the “just-in-time” system. Quantitatively, there are scarcer unskilled clerical jobs, the number of skilled clerical jobs is lessening, and the number of middle-income households is decreasing. The decline of most of these jobs is directly related with the change and gender and ethnic characteristics of the work force. Unambiguously, uneducated women, unskilled migrants, and ethnic minorities accomplish the lowest-level labor in the informational economy. However, states Castells, there are strong possibilities of improving urban life quality in the informational city. Urban inhabitants can assert their cultural identities, organize communities, and occupy places in such a way to make them meaningful. Castells stresses the need for citizens to build their identities not in vacuums, but in relation to others. Urban inhabitants need to build communication codes with other identities, cities and regions must reassert and empower themselves in the new informational economy. Localities (and regions) must shape the central place in determining “the social control of places over the functional logic of the space of flows” (Castells, 1989: 351), and local governments must organize community engagement and civic participation” (Castells, 1989: 352). 3. E-government: the citizen as a user The 1990s were also characterized, from the perspective of cities in the Information Society, by the intensive and extensive adoption of e-government, defined primarily as the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the activities of public sector organisations (E-Government for Development ). The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) defines e-government as: “The use of information and communication technologies, and particularly the internet, as a tool to achieve better government.” (OECD, 2003: 23). E-government can also push the reform agenda (the modernisation of the administrations) and will promote at the same time economic policy objectives (OECD, 2003). It is generally accepted at present that e-government involves the automation or computerization of existing paper-based procedures that prompts new styles of leadership, new ways of debating and deciding strategies, new ways of transacting business, new ways of listening to citizens and communities, and new ways of organizing and delivering information (Wikipedia). Eventually, e-government is supposed to enhance access to and delivery of government services to benefit citizens. More important, it aims to help strengthen government’s drive toward effective governance and increased transparency to better manage a country’s social and economic resources for development. For almost two decades, debates on e-government have considered citizens mainly as users or clients of governmental services. As such, urban inhabitants should be satisfied. Satisfaction is measured in terms of approval of e-gov components, such as the provision of information in governmental websites, electronic transaction, transparency, and interactivity, among others. Measuring the level of citizens’ satisfaction has become crucial for many governments. For example, ForeSee’s quarterly report of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Government Satisfaction Index provides a yearly look back at the state of citizen satisfaction with e-government . Nevertheless, citizens’ satisfaction with digital services does not necessarily lead to urban well-being. According to Verdegem and Hauttekeete (2011), E-government strategies have been progressively more examined and questioned (OECD, 2005): “Many critics claim that the development of electronic public services have until now been primarily guided by supply-side factors, and that technological possibilities rather than user needs have determined all too often the design of online public services (Gareis, 2004). In reaction to this, (new) paradigms such as ‘user-centered e-government’ and ‘multichannel government’ receive more and more attention. A user oriented approach is proposed to improve the supply of (electronic) services.” This preoccupation for the “user” would raise the debates about Open government. 4. Open Government: the search for the “happy citizen” E-government and open data have bred a child: Open government. According to Heller (2012) Open Government combines three elements: ● “Information Transparency: that the public understands the workings of their government (including freedom of information initiatives; open data and Big [Public] Data efforts, including open data portals; procurement, budget, and policy transparency (e.g. voting records, meeting minutes, political finance transparency);
 ● Public engagement: that the public can influence the workings of their government by engaging in governmental policy processes and service delivery programs; and
 ● Accountability: that the public can hold the government to account for its policy and service delivery performance (including anti-corruption mechanisms – e.g. auditing, ombudsmen; conflicts of interest and influence peddling safeguards)”. Open Government strives for open access to information, information transparency, public engagement and accountability, all factors that may contribute (at least partially) not only to the users´ satisfaction, but to the population´s general wellbeing. “Citizens who believe their community’s information systems, government, media and such are performing well are more likely to be engaged in their community and are more satisfied with the quality of their community as a whole.” (Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP ). Satisfaction should be distinguished from happiness or wellbeing. The statement that open government may generate happy citizens (I participated in a Conference in Colombia about OG and citizens´ happiness) is in my view greatly over exaggerated. However, the Pew Report (2011) tends to prove the links between Open Government and happiness (Rainie and Purcell, 2011). This report is the fruit of an eight-month research effort pilot testing several research methods in Macon, Philadelphia, and San Jose to probe key parts of those systems. Some findings, especially in surveys conducted in the communities, were noteworthy:  “Those who think local government does well in sharing information are also more likely to be satisfied with other parts of civic life such as the overall quality of their community and the performance of government and other institutions, as well as the ability of the entire information environment in their community to give them the information that matters.  Broadband users are sometimes less satisfied than others with community life. That raises the possibility that upgrades in a local information system might produce more critical, activist citizens.  Social media like Facebook and Twitter are emerging as key parts of the civic landscape and mobile connectivity is beginning to affect people’s interactions with civic life. Some 32% of the internet users across the three communities get local news from social networking site; 19% from blogs; 7% from Twitter. And 32% post updates and local news on their social networking sites.  If citizens feel empowered, communities get benefits in both directions. Those who believe they can impact their community are more likely to be engaged in civic activities and are more likely to be satisfied with their towns”. (Rainie and Purcell, 2011). 5. From Digital Cities to Smart cities Digital City (considered by many as “the city of the XXIst Century”) refers mainly to a locally focused online network, which delivers local (city-based) content such as local governmental information, community events, nightlife, localized yellow pages, entertainment, visitor's guide, and e-commerce. Some may be considered a Web portal. The degree of interaction allowed to citizens varies widely between the different cases. Digital City Amsterdam was born in 1994. According to Cocchia (2014: 16) Amsterdam is the first Digital City in the Netherlands and in Europe. Nowadays, “it is usually taken as example of a successful project in that field”. A major part of its success depends on the use of a virtual metaphor of city, because “the use of appropriate navigation metaphors can help to make the structure of modern information systems easier to understand and therefore easier to use”. From this success, other cities tried to repeat the Amsterdam experiment contributing to spread the metaphor of “Digital City” (Cocchia (2014: 16). Digital city can be defined as the transformation of cities and urban areas through the use of modern technologies to provide novel and interactive city-wide services, which provide information and transactions to governments, citizens and business (Ishida and Isbister, 2000). Komninos (2006) takes a different approach: “digital city is a community digital space, which is used to facilitate and augment the activities and functions taking place within the physical space of the city”. The availability of modern and high quality ICT infrastructure was considered a key point for the successful implementation of a digital city. As stated by Romualdo (2012) technological infrastructure plays an important role either in the success or decay of cities. It was expected that these innovative solutions could improve the quality and efficiency of urban traffic, inhabitants’ mobility, infrastructure and services throughout the digital city . The Motorola Ranking of Digital Cities (p. 3) defines digital cities as: “Cities in which public administration, individuals and enterprises make an extensive and intensive use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the exercise of their everyday life activities, rights and responsibilities. A digital city does not resemble a futuristic city: it is a city which takes maximum profit of existing technologies”. Urban inhabitants are still considered as users who have to be relatively satisfied. Mitchell (2007, quoted by Komninos, 2009) argues that the new intelligence of cities resides in the increasingly effective combination of digital telecommunication networks, ubiquitously embedded intelligence, sensors and tags, and knowledge management software. “This technological construction did not appear all at once, but came through continuous evolution starting with the development of the theory of digital interaction, the invention of packet switching, the Arpanet, Ethernet, the internet and the World Wide Web, the rapid expansion of wired and wireless communications, the appearance of laptop computers and other end-user communication devices, mobile phones, blackberries and ipods, tiny embedded microprocessors, digital sensors and tags, minuscule digital cameras and microphones, RFID tags, GPS and other positioning devices” (Komninos, 2009). It is believed that in digital and smart cities, the fact of organizing such intelligent environments, communities, cities and regions can address the major challenges of contemporary development related to innovation and competitiveness, employment, energy and the environment. The logic for creating the enlarged innovation environment is the same, besides the differences from sector to sector. Within these environments, each company can build its specific physico-virtual innovation ecosystem, combining its internal knowledge capabilities with those of other companies and research organisations (Komninos, 2009). Nevertheless, at least in Latin America, Digital cities were mostly limited to platforms which supported locally focused online network, conveying local content and facilitating e-government functions. According to the Motorola Ranking of Digital Cities (2011), a study based on 220 Latin American cities, almost all of them show at least one feature of the Digital City . However, this partial approach does show that scarcely any city can fully qualify as a “digital city” considering the above quoted definitions. For example, in Latin America there are several “successful” examples of this piecemeal approach. In Gran Concepcion, Chile, the Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunication recently deployed the “Smart City Gran Concepcion.” This project has five components designed to improve local and municipal service delivery with open innovation and lay the framework for the development of a local and sustainable innovation ecosystem. In Brazil, the city of Curitiba is also working on a new light rail system which will be interconnected to their widespread BRT system. Curitiba is also working to address climate resilience by creating green spaces which, during rainy season, are used to absorb runoff and in dry season, function as parks for use by locals and tourists. Rio de Janeiro has invested in an integrated operations center that hosts connected software, allowing for real-time monitoring of meteorological, crime, traffic and emergency data as well as live camera feeds. Sensors in the hillsides combined with meteorological data and new communications tools equip the center to warn communities in advance by predicting natural disasters such as mudslides and hurricanes. Officials have also begun hiring local teenagers to take digital images of problem areas in order to create a digital map of hot spots and enabling city staff to begin tackling challenges such as removing accumulated trash, which attracted mosquitoes and contributed to higher incidences of dengue fever. In Mexico City, Mexico, city officials have started looking at technology that would allow buildings to absorb nearby smog, creating a cleaner, safer city atmosphere. In Santiago, Chile, they are testing everything from smart grids to electric vehicles (EVs) and starting a pilot program to support an EV car-sharing, which would be the first of its kind in Latin America. Santiago’s Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunications (MTT) has also started testing several smart solutions that include variable automated toll pricing on the highways and developing control centers to monitor traffic in real time through USB sensors that track traffic congestion. These cities are considered examples of Digital City. Digital cities were swiftly outsmarted by smart cities, even if both terms coexist at present. As indicated by Cocchia (2014), concentration in cities increased traffic jam, carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases emissions and waste disposal with consequences on health conditions, and hence in wellbeing. City dimension drives energy and natural resources demand, the need of territory redevelopment and adequate infrastructures availability. In this scenario, to save the earth and people health, the idea of smart cities emerges, that is, cities able to solve urban issues paying attention to the environment. For this reason, in the nineties, the concept of smart growth has begun to spread: it implies a community-driven reaction to solve traffic congestion, school overcrowding, air pollution, loss of open space and shooting up public facilities cost [2]. In the international context, in order to achieve the objectives established in the Kyoto Protocol, the Smart City concept was born and has been adopted by many institutions (e.g. UNESCO, European Commission, Setis-EU, OECD, etc.) which categorized as “smart” initiatives and projects relevant to cities sustainability. Smart cities do consider citizens quality of life as a key issue. In the nineties, the concept of smart growth has begun to spread: it implies a community-driven reaction to solve traffic congestion, school overcapacity, air pollution, loss of open space and rapidly climbing public facilities cost (Cocchia, 2014). At the present time, however, a unique definition of Smart City does not exist yet. Pardo and Nam (quoted by Cocchia, 2014) organizes these definitions in dimensions: 1. Technology dimension; it is based on the use of infrastructures (especially ICT) to improve and transform life and work within a city in relevant way. 2. Human dimension; it is based on people, education, learning and knowledge because they are key drivers for the smart city. 3. Institutional dimension; it is based on governance and policy, because the cooperation between stakeholders and institutional governments is very important to design and implement smart city initiatives. Cocchia discerns that Digital City is defined as a wired-city based on Internet, in which it is possible to deliver public and private services to create socio-economic value for customers, citizens and the civil society. Consequently, the Internet diffusion is one of the main drivers of interest regarding the Digital City concept; fewer relationships are found between the Internet and Smart City. Key 'smart' sectors comprise transport, energy, health care, water and waste. A smart city should be able to react faster to city and global challenges than one with a simple 'transactional' relationship with its citizens . Smart Cities are hence related to environmental sustainability. Citizens are given a key role in Smart Cities: “Smart cities require smart citizens if they are to be truly inclusive, innovative and sustainable. The promise of the information society is proving to be a challenge, as not everyone is getting equal access to the skills and opportunities to play a fuller and more equal role in emerging governance systems through access to dynamic internet-enabled services.” (SMARTiP project – Creating a People’s Digital Agenda for Europe:2 ). The European Network of Living labs (ENOLL ) is currently focusing on the challenge of the challenge of how to redefine the Smart City as an environment of innovation, empowerment and participation of citizens, businesses and other stakeholders in shaping their future, through the choices they have and decisions they make. It’s White Paper on Smart Cities as Innovation Ecosystems' also debates how European cities are presently developing strategies towards becoming “smarter cities” and the lessons which can be drawn for the future. Such strategies are based on an assessment of the future need of cities and innovative usages of ICTs embodied in the broadband Internet and Internet-based applications nowadays and anticipated for the future. These strategies are also based on a new understanding of innovation, based on the concept of open innovation ecosystems, global innovation chains, and on citizens’ empowerment for shaping innovation and urban development. These new ways of innovation are characterized, firstly, by a high level of citizen involvement in co-creating Internet-based applications and services in all sectors of the economy and society; secondly, by the emergence of new forms of collaboration among g local governments, research institutes, universities s, citizens and businesses (e.g. Public-Private-People Partnerships). Such strategies and the resulting in urban “innovation ecosystems” are becoming progressively pertinent given the need to tackle growing social, economic and societal issues that cities are currently facing. The concept (and practice) of Smart City has also been criticized. Adam Greenfield states that real Smart City projects are yet not completed. “There are various injections of smartness into contemporary urban spaces – often piecemeal agglomerations of data collected or repurposed for a specific service” . Greenfield disapproves the claims of efforts to build cities in “empty” spaces: brand new urban complexes, or in one case in an “undeveloped” rural valley in Portugal. Carlsson (2014) says that “The three big corporations at the heart of this below-the-radar industrial fantasy are IBM, Cisco Systems, and Siemens AG (of Munich, Germany). … They have all brought software- and hardware-linked systems to the market, offering urban planners a turnkey “solution” for everything that faces a generic municipal government”. As Greenfield points out, these corporate schemes show a significant neglect for both history and actual knowledge about how cities really function. Cities are the built environment translation of tensions and cooperation between individuals, social groups, ethnics. Castells defines space as a material product, in relationship to other material products – including people – who engage in historically determined social relationships that provide space with a form, a function, and a social meaning. Time and space cannot be understood independently of social action (Cevik, 2012). Also, as it was mentioned earlier in this paper, a city cannot be studied, or even planned, as a whole undivided entity. Since most current cities are fragmented, unequal access to urban infrastructure and equipment, including connectivity and telecommunications infrastructure also define new tensions, particularly in developing and in multi-ethnic countries. The consequence is a construction of cities made up of spatially coexisting, socially exclusive groups and functions, which live in an increasingly uneasy tension which emerges as a result of social cohesion (Castells, 1994). This social action, these tensions, these fragments, this heterogeneity, are not considered to my knowledge in smart city plans 6. Identity, multiculturalism, and well being Ethnic identity plays a crucial role in someone’s cognitive well-being. Studies show that “both social psychological and developmental perspectives suggest that a strong, secure ethnic identity makes a positive contribution to cognitive well-being”.[11] Those in an acculturated society are able to feel more equal as a human being within their culture, therefore having a better well-being. This is also a crucial aspect when adapting to a new society. 7. Wellbeing in the South American cosmovision 8. Adding up 9. ICTs and urban wellbeing http://www.eitictlabs.eu/innovation-areas/ Ideas: 1. a good or satisfactory condition of existence; a state characterized by health, happiness, and prosperity; welfare: to influence the well-being of the nation and its people. Conclusions Construction of a multidisciplinary conceptual framework of digital media for urban well-being and quality of life is essential to advance the field of urban wellbeing, and human wellbeing. 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