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

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Book cover Investigating Quality of Urban Life

Part of the book series: Social Indicators Research Series ((SINS,volume 45))

Abstract

The chapter presents a case study illustrating how secondary analysis of aggregated spatial data is used to determine spatial variations in objective attributes of quality of life (QOL) across a large metro region in the USA. A set of QOUL attributes covering separate communities in the metro area are analyzed. The case study also uses longitudinal data on from previous household surveys in the metro area in weighting QOL attributes. The chapter discusses some of the methodological issues encountered in conducting this type of objective analysis including using the survey data to generate weighted aggregations of QOL attributes in order to rank communities by their overall QOL.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Data from the 2001 Detroit Area Study indicate that residents throughout the metro area varied greatly in their definition of neighbourhood. About a third of the respondents described their neighborhood as their block or the clustering of houses around them, another third defined their neighborhood as anywhere from 2 to 120 blocks around them, and the remainder described their neighborhood as a square mile or more. For a description of the Detroit Area Study, see Chap. 7.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, GeoDa Center for Geospatial Analysis and Computation, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287-5302, USA

    Subhrajit Guhathakurta

  2. School of City and Regional Planning, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanda, GA, 30332-0695, USA

    Subhrajit Guhathakurta

  3. College of Architecture and Environment, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China

    Ying Cao

Authors
  1. Subhrajit Guhathakurta
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  2. Ying Cao
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Subhrajit Guhathakurta .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst. Social Research, University of Michigan, Thompson St. 426, Ann Arbor, 48106-1248, Michigan, USA

    Robert W. Marans

  2. Network (AURIN), University of Melbourne, Architecture Building and Planning, Australian Urban Research Infrastructure, Melbourne, 3010, Victoria, Australia

    Robert J. Stimson

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Guhathakurta, S., Cao, Y. (2011). Variations in Objective Quality of Urban Life Across a City Region: The Case of Phoenix. In: Marans, R., Stimson, R. (eds) Investigating Quality of Urban Life. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 45. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1742-8_6

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