Editorial: Quality of life in cities

摘要

Over the past decades, quality of life (QOL) and more specifically, quality of urban life, has become a central issue for those who plan and study cities or places where people live in response to growing pressures on urban communities, concern about the impacts of urbanisation and the effects of this on the wellbeing of residents. Although QOL is an elusive concept, it can be accepted Is the state of social wellbeing of an individual or group, either perceived or as identified by observable indicators (Pacione, 2005: p. 673). Considering the quality of life at the city scale, Mulligan et al. (2004) provide a more appropriate interpretation. They define QOL as the satisfaction that a person receives from surrounding human and physical conditions, conditions that are scale-dependent and can affect the behaviour of individual people, groups such as households and economic units such as firms.