Modeling Quality of Urban Life Using a Geospatial Approach

Abstract

The rapid global urbanization of the past century poses several challenges for planners and policy makers. In particular, the conflation of social and urban issues must be understood to create sustainable and livable urban places. In this regard, it was our aim to model and understand the relationship between urban characteristics and peoples’ perceived quality of urban life (QoUL) using statistical analysis and geospatial modeling. We selected objective variables representing urban characteristics based on literature and used principal components analysis to develop uncorrelated components. These components served as the independent variables in a multiple linear regression analysis. The subjective, dependent variables were extracted from a QoUL survey. Results indicated that only the Education/Income component is related to QoUL (R2 of 0.46). Using only single independent variables in a linear model explained 46% of the total variance—over 10% higher than any previously determined relationship between objective variables and subjective QoUL. Furthermore, we found that subjective high QoUL and subjective low QoUL were not strongly correlated, indicating that they are affected by different objective variables, respectively. This suggests that future efforts of increasing QoUL need to define their goals more precisely, as measures for increasing perceptions of high QoUL are likely different from measures for decreasing perceptions of low QoUL.

Instrumento de medición del Índice de Calidad de Vida Urbana: Barrios Urbano Marginales, Perú / Instrument for measuring the Urban Quality of Life Index: Marginal Urban Neighborhoods, Peru

“…Percepción de la situación económica de la población del BUM: Mide la percepción popular de la situación económica de la población habitante del BUM, lo cual permite interpretar la capacidad de aportar a un fondo de inversión común. Indicador adaptado de los propuestos por Merschdorf, et al (2020). MRD: FP.OI.…”

“…Blaschke, 2020; y tomando en cuenta las características de un sistema de indicadores válido, se desarrolló una comparación de ellos frente a las Características de un Barrio Urbano Marginal. Adicionalmente, se hizo la selección de algunos otros indicadores aplicando el método inductivo, lo que implicaba el estudio de la realidad de un BUM como caso de estudio.…”

The Use of New Techniques in Spatial Modeling and Analysis of Urban Quality of Life: Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis and Gis

“…AARP livelihood index (AARP-AARP public policy institute, 2018), QoL assessment indicators (Dehimi and Hadjab, 2019) index (intelligence, 2015), livable city index (Onnom et al, 2018) indicator (Mittal et al, 2020) (quality of life index (LQI)) QoL index (Dissanayake et al, 2020) to name but a few. QoL is an interdisciplinary field where sociologists, psychologists, socio-geographers, and economists attempt to assess living conditions objectively and subjectively on the basis of available data, whether objective or subjective (Domin et al, 2010;Merschdorf et al, 2020;Mittal et al, 2020;Abd el karim and Awawdeh, 2020 ;Garau and Pavan, 2018 ;Dissanayake et al, 2020) in recent years there has been a lot of interest in the QOL issue in the field of geography however, it is difficult to find an agreed definition or measure it, and the reason for the difference in the approaches and goals of scholars (Ištok and Martin, 2012. ) Researchers associate QOL with satisfaction with life (well-being), and QOL is understood as the quality of a place.…”

“…The idea behind QoU studies is to measure and evaluate the relationship between social and urban characteristics of a place and perceived QoL (Merschdorf et al, 2020). We believe that this approach is beneficial for establishing a balanced development, as QOL research reveals in terms of spatial disparities and disparities, regional disparities affect inequality between regions, regions, and settlements .Previous researchers have made a number of attempts to define, evaluate, measure, and quantify QoL or well-being within different types of perspectives, including :QOL is an issue that has caught considerable attention in the urban geography because it is difficult to find an agreed-upon definition or to measure it (Massam, 2002).…”

“…Besides, the researcher focused in his interviews with the experts on implementing only GeoVis which did not state clearly the shift from AHP and the spatial ranges of QoL. In his study (Merschdorf et al, 2020), which aims to develop a model for predicting the urban quality of life (QoUL), based on the analysis of objective indicators (economic, social, and environmental), the researcher used his research variables from the previous QoUL. Surveys based on GIS have been experimentally demonstrated to predict service quality.…”