Quality of Life – A local scale approach: An ongoing project

Abstract

The Research Project “Costs and Benefits of urban dispersion on a local scale” aims to compare costs and benefits of different forms of land use in two urban areas in Portugal: Aveiro and Évora. Concerning the costs, it will look at public infrastructure and mobility, while the benefits will be assumed and assessed as Quality of Life (QoL). We expect that such data, expressed in monetary terms, will provide new input for the decision-making process in urban planning and design, contemplating objective data, as well as different perceptions and valuations of urban contexts. This paper will briefly go through the Project’s purposes, emphasising those specific to the task on the definition and the assessment of QoL. Methodologically this task has three main steps: i) to provide background information on the multidimensionality of the QoL concept and its operationalization (problems and difficulties); ii) to develop a new concept of QoL at the local level (to identify the main attributes that explain the QoL in different settlement types - dispersed and continuous); iii) to develop, conceptually, a methodology to measure QoL on a local scale. A final note is due to state that no results will be presented, only methodological developments achieved so far.