Quality of urban spaces and wellbeing

What constitutes quality in an urban context is subjective and open to interpretation. This chapter begins by looking at the ways in which definitions of quality have been applied to the urban environment. It identifies that much research has focused on objective indicators including social indicators of poverty, and the geographical distribution of housing types. However, others, such as Pacione, provide a more context-dependent interpretation which allows for the assessment of the quality of urban spaces and their relationship to wellbeing to be considered in a more holistic way. This chapter follows this interpretation by taking a sensory urbanism approach and turns its gaze on the experiential aspects of urban spaces, the perceived quality of such spaces, both objective and subjective, and the relationship between the physical, the experienced, and wellbeing.

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