Citizens’ Indicators of Wellbeing – Recife

Who gets to decide what wellbeing means? In Recife, Brazil, population 1.6 million, it’ll be the people of the city who decide.

In this exciting new collaboration between Hot or Cool, the Prefecture of Recife, Rede Conhecimento Social, Delibera and the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, we are organising our second deliberative mini-public, a Citizens’ Assembly to move beyond GDP.

There is strong consensus that GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is not an adequate measure of how well a country is doing.  And yet, in 2026, it still plays a central role in policy analysis and political debate. 

Hot or Cool has argued since 2023 that two factors are holding back initiatives to move beyond GDP:

1. they are too complex, involving large unwieldy dashboards of indicators;
2. they have no democratic legitimacy and little public support, with only cursory citizen engagement. 

Earlier this year we ran the world’s first deliberative mini-public to go beyond GDP in Kerava, Finland. 35 residents of the town came together to select five headline indicators of a good life.  

Now, we’re scaling up, and turning to, Recife, the capital of the state of Pernambuco in Brazil, with a population of 1.6 million inhabitants. We’ll be choosing 40-60 residents through a process of sortition (democratic lottery), who will meet over three days, contemplate, listen to experts, talk with policy-makers, discuss their definitions of a good life, and set their priorities in order to identify the five most important components. With input from statisticians, we’ll then help the Assembly select an indicator to measure each of these components. 

The Prefecture of Recife has committed to considering the panel’s recommendations seriously and providing a formal response. 

If you’re interested to find our more about what we’re doing in Recife, or in replicating this process in your city or town, please contact us on hello@hotorcool.org.