Review of Concepts, Tools and Indices for the Assessment of Urban Quality of Life

Factors Underlying Life Quality in Urban Contexts: Evidence from an Industrial City (Arak, Iran)

“…Quality Of Life (QOL) is a complex and multidimensional aspect of human societies [1][2][3]. QOL is defined as the interaction of human needs and the perception of their fulfillment [4][5][6].…”

“…In other words, the notion includes a condition that is perceived by local population and translated into varying degrees of a sense of wellbeing [2,17,18]. This is because 'quality of life' can be regarded as a genuine, subjective experience and hence makes the quantitative assessment more difficult [3]. In these regards, Lambiri et al [19] argued that "the social and physical environment of an area can influence the wellbeing of people residing in that area".…”

“…Being investigated in theory and practice, quality of life is increasingly becoming a 'hegemonic' notion in social science [3]. In this ambit, quality of life has become a particularly articulated issue including socioeconomic, cultural/ethical and political/institutional challenges [22].…”

“…In this regard, QOUL is considered a multivariate concept whose meaning and perception may differ across local contexts, because of the complex relation with socioeconomic factors such as income and wealth, welfare, local traditions, cultural and religious issues [3,45,46]. According to Marans [47], the QOUL experience of each individual is embedded in the social context of the evaluator.…”

“…To estimate QOUL in metropolitan contexts, two basic approaches have been proposed. The first approach quantifies QOUL through a set of diachronic indicators built-up from aggregated spatial data and variables derived from secondary sources (e.g., official statistics), such as population/housing censuses, or sampling surveys such as the labor force survey [3,28,58]. Specific information, such as household income and wealth, crime rates, pollution levels, or housing costs, can be directly or indirectly derived from such statistical sources [47].…”