An Investigation of Quality of Urban Life: A Case Study of Quba Municipality, Medina City, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The term quality of urban life (QoUL) usually refers to the well-being of people and the quality of the environment in which they live. Over the past three decades, there has been an increasing interest in the study and an investigation of QoUL, which has attracted the attention of researchers in several fields, such as geography, psychology, economics, politics and sociology. In general, outputs of QoUL investigation can be used to diagnose previous policy strategies and to design future planning policies. The investigation of QoUL provides a basis of data that helps identify issues concerning the urban environment, causes of dissatisfaction, people’s priorities in their daily lives, as well as monitoring and assessment of the efficiency of policies and strategies related to QoUL. Despite the large body of QoUL literature, there is still no agreed definition, or agreement over the way in which QoUL is investigated. However, there is wide consensus that QoUL has both subjective and objective dimensions. Although QoUL has been of interest in many disciplines around the world during the past three decades, it is relatively unexplored in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, this research aims to investigate the QoUL in the city of Medina, the case of Quba Municipality. To this end, this research uses different conceptual approaches, namely functionalist and postmodernity approaches, in order to provide an overarching understanding of the QoUL characteristics in the study area. Such understanding involves identifying the most influential aspects of the physical, economic, social and cultural domains, and exploring the impact of these aspects on QoUL in the study area. In so doing, this thesis tries to address some key challenges related to the current approaches to QoUL and provides a research framework of investigation that may lead to rethinking about QoUL.