The Evolution of Integrative Approaches to the Analysis of Quality of Urban Life

Abstract

The focus in the chapter is on modeling relationships between attributes of urban environments and peoples’ subjective evaluations of QOL/QOUL at different levels of scale. This integrative approach has gained increasing attention in research on QOUL and has been greatly enhanced through the use of GIS technology. Much of the research has aimed at testing linkages between satisfaction with urban living and objective characteristics of the urban environment. That requires increasingly sophisticated research designs to understand the complex relationships between then objective conditions and situations and the subjective evaluation or assessment of the urban environment in which people live.