Go! The race is on to become the kindest city in the world…

Could NYC shake off its too-busy-to-spare-change vibe? Will Miami ever be known for its super-synced community instead of just the city old people get most psyched about? A story in a local CBS newspaper about two people trying to make Pittsburgh the kindest city in America caught my eye this weekend – and not just because their lofty ambition deserved a big gold star from pplkind.

The two guys, Bert Dorazio and Kevin Bright, initially wanted to take part in World Kindness Day. So they did what I hope all of you did… they went into a local grocery store and paid for a stranger’s shopping. Inspired by the obvious gratitude of their recipient, they then invited their friends and community to take part in a day of kindness this weekend, which, to cut a long story short, led to the launching of the Pittsburgh Kindness Initiative.

Speaking to CBS, Bert said: “I think everybody knew that putting kindness into somebody’s life you would make that person happy. What I don’t think they realized is how happy they would be themselves by doing that.” And while what Bert says is pretty much the secret sauce of charity giving – it gives you a killer buzz – it’s the idea that one city should get all the glory that stood out to me.

Because, it struck me that all of America’s cities should be competing for the kindness title, not just Pittsburgh. Why? Well, why should we just celebrate towns that have ‘the greenest spaces’, ‘best shops’ or ‘tastiest food’ – do these things alone contribute to the success of a city’s attraction to tourists, or well-being of its residents? And why just compare states for their economic or population growth when we could also explore, in depth, how our cities are doing on the kindness front? After all, it’s just as an important a theme to measure as the recently popular ‘happiness indices’ are. And actually, happiness and kindness are quite closely related; who wants to live in a city where you’re scared to walk alone at night or avoid certain roads at all? Kindness leads to a better community, safer streets, happier citizens.

Being proud of being good is not something we should be ignoring. Sure, it makes for a cute story in a local paper and gives a fun project to kids to help them learn good behaviour in classrooms. But being kind reflects a larger and most necessary movement in human consciousness and our wider civilisations across the planet.

We can’t go on living side by side in cities bursting at the seams with people, problems and pollution, all the while avoiding eye contact and keeping ourselves to ourselves thank you very much. We, as individual people and collective inhabitants of the same urban places, should be – and are – very much beyond that negative behaviour inside. It just takes a little visible change to make change happen on the outside. Seeing others be kind has been proven to influence kindness in people.

And a little healthy competition couldn’t hurt, to push us to be more actively good to each other, either. Is your city up for vying for the title of kindest city with Pittsburgh? I’ll bet there’s some that are more than up for the challenge.

If you knew you were living in the kindest city in America, or Europe, or the world, you’d be proud of that. And that’s a start: pride in our evolved state as people of a planet that is ready to shift to the next, urgently needed stage of evolution. The race is on to become the kindest city in the world. And just maybe, we’ll work on being the kindest world in history, too.

Place your bets now.

Inspired? Search and give to kindness causes now.