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

0524397 - ÚVGZ 2021 RIV CH eng J - Journal Article
Pazhuhan, M. - Shahraki, S. Z. - Kaveerad, N. - Cividino, S. - Clemente, M. - Salvati, Luca
Factors Underlying Life Quality in Urban Contexts: Evidence from an Industrial City (Arak, Iran).
Sustainability. Roč. 12, č. 6 (2020), č. článku 2274. E-ISSN 2071-1050
Institutional support: RVO:86652079
Keywords : of-life * sustainable development * multivariate-analysis * growth * satisfaction * indicators * urbanization * sprawl * cities * well * field survey * subjective indicators * industrial city * emerging economies
OECD category: Ecology
Impact factor: 3.251, year: 2020
Method of publishing: Open access
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/6/2274

Cities play a vital role in local development providing a high education level, specialized jobs and advanced services. When assessing living conditions and wellbeing in cities, economic indicators alone are generally unable to evaluate the inherent complexity of the 'quality of life' issue in urban environments. With rapid urbanization, shortage of infrastructures and services emerged in metropolitan regions of developing countries, leading to disadvantaged settlements, urban poverty, lower citizens' satisfaction, and an overall decline in life quality. Based on these premises, the present study illustrates a subjective investigation of life quality in an emerging economy such as Iran, focusing on Arak, the fourth largest industrial pole of the country. Based on a literature review on quality of life in industrial cities of emerging economies, subjective indicators of citizens' satisfaction on living quality in Arak were identified and quantified using empirical results from a field survey. Results of our study show that the overall satisfaction for living quality in Arak is rather low, reaching the lowest rank in the issues of environmental sanitation and public transportation. Lack of investments in urban infrastructure justifies the low citizens' perception of life quality in Arak city. The paper concludes outlining the urgent need of homogeneous and comparable macro- and micro-data on multiple aspects of quality of life at both city-level and metropolitan-level in emerging economies.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0308753