Variations in Objective Quality of Urban Life Across a City Region: The Case of Phoenix

Abstract

Resumen aparcido en la revista: Quality of life (QOL) is a fundamental concern for every inhabitant of planet Earth. Consequently, for more than half a century QOL issues have been a focus for academic research across a variety of disciplines including geography, planning, architecture, sociology, and psychology. Marans and Stimson’s edited collection, part of the respected Social Indicators Research Series, sets out to provide an overview of research into the quality of urban life (QOUL) by presenting discussions on the conceptual and methodological foundations of research, complemented by a number of empirical case studies designed to illustrate the practical applications of research. Marans and Stimson set three objectives for the collection. The first is to provide a detailed overview of approaches to the study of QOL in general and QOUL in particular. The approaches include, on the one hand, ones focusing on the objective measurement of QOL and QOUL using secondary analysis of aggregate data and, on the other hand, ones focusing on the measurement and analysis of subjective evaluations and appraisals of QOL and QOUL. The editors also direct attention to efforts to integrate objective and subjective approaches, efforts that have been enhanced by the application of geographic information systems (GIS) technologies. Second, drawing on the editors’ own empirical research in Detroit and Queensland together with studies employing similar surveybased approaches elsewhere, they aim to offer a set of case studies that illustrate the application of QOUL research in a variety of settings. Third, they give particular attention to introducing some new methodological approaches to analyzing and modeling QOUL and, in particular, to illustrating methodological advances that contribute to integrating the objective and subjective approaches. These three objectives inform the structure and content of the volume. In the initial chapter the editors present an overview of research that is a concise and useful introduction to the field.Here they attach particular emphasis to the importance of place to underline the causal relationship between environmental context and QOL, and to the concept of scale of analysis to illustrate the differing settings and geographical levels for QOUL research. Significantly, for the potential application of QOUL research beyond academia, Marans and Stimson underline the relevance of QOUL research for policy and planning. Following the introductory chapter, the book is organized into four main parts. Part I has detailed reviews of three specific approaches to the study of QOUL, part II has two empirical studies of objective measures, and then part III complements the objective perspective with eight empirical studies of subjective measurement. Part IV contains four examples of multivariate methods such as principal components analysis and cluster analysis, and GIS-based methods. In a concluding chapter Marans and Stimson review the book’s content and, on that basis, identify several challenges for future research. In part I the first chapter is by Stimson and Marans and is a review of objective measurement of QOL using secondary data analysis. They place particular emphasis on the social indicators movement, on the use of territorial social indicators, and on the weighting of objective measures. In the next chapter Rod McCrea, Marans, Stimson, and John Western switch the focus to subjective measurement of QOL using primary data collection and analysis of survey data. They discuss a range of theoretical frameworks used to measure and model the subjective evaluation of QOL and to appraise aspects of QOUL, including frameworks to investigate QOL domains at various scales ranging from the dwelling and neighborhood to the city and region. The evolution of integrative approaches to analyzing QOUL is the subject of a chapter by McCrea, Stimson, and Marans, who focus on attempts to investigate empirically the relationship between objective environmental indicators, on the one hand, and personal evaluations of overall QOL and of physical and social aspects of urban environments, on the other. The authors also demonstrate how statistical and GIS tools are being used to enhance the capability of researchers to model and test hypothesized links between objective and subjective indicators. Overall, part I presents an informed conceptual and methodological review of QOUL research that establishes a sound basis for subsequent chapters. In part II the first empirical study, by Gordon Mulligan and John Carruthers, is concerned with the links between amenity/disamenity, QOUL, migration, and regional development. Mulligan and Carruthers focus on investigating urban environmental and other amenities using the compensating differentials principle, and they also consider the use of hedonic price models to identify desirable and undesirable attributes of places that affect overall urban amenity, regional development, and employment performance. In the second empirical study Subhrajit Guhathakurta and Ying Cao offer insight into intrametropolitan variations in QOUL in Phoenix, Arizona. There are eight empirical studies of subjective measurements in part III, the subjects being Detroit, Brisbane-South East Queensland, Istanbul, Famagusta (Northern Cyprus), Dhaka, Salzburg, the state of Washington in the United States, and a comparison of metropolitan, regional, and rural areas in Queensland. All are multiauthored, with 18 authors in all. Each case details the research design, summarizes the situational context, and reviews the key findings. Many of them employ variations on the survey methodologies developed by Marans and Stimson in the cities of Detroit and Brisbane. That provides an interesting commonality across some of the studies while retaining the unique insights into particular urban contexts. Thus, in chapter 9 authors Handan T¨ urko˘glu, Fulin B¨olen, Perver Korc¸a Baran, and Fatih Terzi borrow from the survey instrument used in the Detroit Area Survey of 2001 to investigate the subjective assessment of aspects of community life in Istanbul. They also examine how different types of housing can affect the assessment of QOL in general and aspects of QOUL in different Istanbul neighborhoods. A similar focus on neighborhood quality as a major component of residential satisfaction underlies Abul Mukim Mozammel Haque Mridha and Gary Moore’s case study of Dhaka. In part IV econometric and GIS-based methods are illustrated using empirical data from the well-known Detroit Area Survey 2001 and the 2003 South East Queensland studies directed by the editors. Robert Marans and Robert Stimson are to be congratulated for bringing together a sound overview of theory and methodology in the first chapters and for bookending the volume with a concluding chapter highlighting some of the emerging issues and challenges for QOUL research. The main body of the book comprises the 10 chapters of case studies. While they are uniformly of interest there is an imbalance in the coverage, with only two exemplars of objective measurement counterpoised with eight chapters focused on subjective measurement; a balance that presumably represents the research interests of the selected contributors. This is a perennial, if not inevitable, problem with edited volumes, which in itself does not detract from the quality of the work. The imbalance is also reflected in the geographical location of the case studies, two-thirds coming from Australia and the United States. That criticism, however, should be viewed less as a critique of their value and more as an expression of disappointment that the opportunity to demonstrate the methods and utility of QOUL research across a wider range of topics and urban contexts was not accepted. In a similar vein, the scope and appeal of the book would have been enhanced by greater attention to QOUL in relation to particular social groups differentiated by, for example, age, gender, and social class, as outlined in my own five-dimensional model for QOL research discussed in the chapter on subjective measurement using primary data and the chapter on the evolution of integrative approaches. Furthermore, while the book is focused explicitly on QOUL research, and while I acknowledge publishers’ limitations on length, an additional chapter on the relationships between QOUL research and concepts of well-being, satisfaction, happiness, liveability, and even aspects of sustainable urban development would have provided a welcome bridge to cognate research within the broad community of QOL researchers. These few criticisms notwithstanding, the book is an authoritative collection of essays that provides a valuable introduction to the field of research on QOUL, identifies key conceptual and methodological issues, and presents a number of well-written and informative empirical case studies that together illustrate the value and relevance of the research for the citizens of our contemporary urban world. One final question for readers: Is the subjective enhancement in your QOL to be derived from the book sufficient to overcome the objective price of £126? Formany, the link between objective and subjective assessments is likely to result in a library recommendation rather than a personal purchase.