Why Isn't My Town on the Map

Why Isn't My Town on the Map?

Ava Warfel

We all want to be healthy, and we all want to be happy, right? Well, according to Time, the true determiner of happiness, you are only happy and healthy, or unhappy and unhealthy, if you were lucky enough for the Time gods to select your very town for their survey on happiness. According to Time, 189 communities were chosen and ranked for their health, happiness, and community and financial security. From this data, Time claims to have found, “The Happiest and Healthiest Cities in America.”   

Let’s pause for a moment. According to the 2010 United States census, there are 19,522 cities incorporated in this nation. That means that this happiness survey only focused on less than 1% of US cities. How can one claim to have found the happiest city in the US if you only survey 1% of US cities? Further, comes the issue of the map. These 189 cities were placed on a map with a bubble to indicate city size and a color code to indicate relative happiness percentile. When viewed on a map, the issues of this survey become increasingly evident; is there no one living in Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota? Additionally, why is there only one city interviewed in Kentucky when its smaller counterpart Connecticut has 4 cities that were interviewed? How does Lancaster, PA make it on the map when Lancaster, Ohio, or Lancaster, California don’t? Someone who knows little about US cities may look at this map and assume that these are the major cities in the nation, or that these are the only cities that have an impact on the nation. Someone may look at this map and assume that since Lancaster, PA made it on the map, it must be a major US city. While I love Lancaster and highly recommend that you visit and eat Amish Whoopie Pies while there, Lancaster is NOT a major US city. Simply stated, the sample cities from this map do not provide an accurate representation of the health and happiness of US cities and provide too much room for interpretation that can screw one’s understanding of the data being presented. As one scrutinizes this map closer, it becomes evident that if you truly want to understand the health and happiness of US cities, one must look elsewhere to see the whole picture. 

The point here is not to scrutinize Time or to bash healthy cities, but rather to engage the idea that humans are biased, and that humans are the ones who create maps. Therefore, maps are inherently biased. When a map is created, it is done to display the information that the creator wants it to show. Maps were essentially created to exert and display power over one another by setting boundaries and guidelines for one’s autonomy. We also know that maps are not always accurate, lately, there has been a surge in inaccurate labeling of maps. How can we trust, without fail, something that is made by creatures that make mistakes? I am not implying that there is no value to maps, but rather that one must always consider the bias of the map, and know and understand that maps, just like humans, are not perfect. The author of this map has most likely never heard of Lancaster, Ohio, and Lancaster, California, and therefor had no personal reason to include these two cities in their map of health and happiness. While the motive was not to ignore these two cities, in leaving these cities and so many others out of what is meant to be a “nationwide” search for the country’s happiest city, this search essentially becomes a “random 189 city” search for the nation’s “Happiest and Healthiest Cities.”

One may claim that it is impossible to truly analyze the health and happiness of every city in the United States, and I do not disagree with this point. However, in choosing which cities to sample, one must have a method and then provide the readers and viewers with a clear explanation of that method so that there is no discrepancy in the validity of the data and the relevance of the sample size. 

While the information displayed on this map is extremely clear, and one can easily distinguish which of the cities on the map is bigger/smaller or healthier/unhealthier, the lack of diversity and range in the cities displayed provides an inaccurate idea of health and happiness across the nation. What on this limited map may appear to be a trend in happiness and health, may only appear to be so because of the limited data. To further this idea, if there are, for example, 10 cities in the made up state of Happylandia and you survey two that are extremely happy, it will appear that the whole state is happy. However, if you survey the other eight and cities and find out that they are miserable, the trend that originally seemed to be positive is now complete inaccurate. This map also assumes that one understands the criteria used to score these cities, when in reality, the map provides zero explanation of the methods and/or scoring categories used to create the map and to judge the healthiness of these cities. 

As for me, being a recent transplant to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I feel pretty proud to find this small town on the map. Looking at the ranking, I find myself quite elated to know that Lancaster, PA ranks as the “28th happiest city in the US.” While I’m not sure what qualified it to be there, I can rest assured that I should find myself significantly happy and healthy while living there. As for the 19,333 cities that didn't make it onto this map, I guess that you will have to be the judges of your own happiness. With that, I wish you the best of luck.