Criterion for Urban Needs & Just City
Last week’s weekly theme was a great success as we managed to generate a stimulating debate over a single issue. You can see the lovely result under the “Weekly Themes” in the blog.
Do check it out, it will encourage us even further to collaborate on such a collective conversations. It’s much more of a valuable archive when we contribute even a little bit.
This week our assignment is finding out the roots of the criteria used in surveys that judge cities as ‘the best’, ‘the most liveable’, ‘the most just (if there is any such survey)’ and ‘satisfying urban needs’.
Hence, its practical to let our weekly theme to revolve around the same issue. Let’s see how much we can find out about the criterion in such indices which proliferated in the last years.
This is a ranking of the quality of life in 79 European cities, as per the perceptions of those questioned. The basic premise of the study, which could inform our own, was to ask respondents dozens of questions to which they could answer “strongly agree”, “agree”, “disagree”, or “strongly disagree”. In short, it is applying a four-point scale to questions and subsequently quantifying and aggregating the results to build a composite index of the quality of life, at least in terms of perceptions.
One methodological issue at play is that in measuring the “just-ness” of a city, when is it more correct to investigate the perceptions of justice, and when is it more correct to investigate non-perception based indicators of justice? How to balance the two approaches?
http://ec.europa.eu/…/d…/studies/pdf/urban/survey2013_en.pdf
Hi everyone!
There is an obvious lack of Just City criterion and surveys in the net. The concentration of such work is more on livability and ‘best’ cities…
This work however serves as the fundamentals of creating a ‘just’ city:
http://www.globalbuiltenvironmentreview.co.uk/…/8.1%20Book%…
Hi guys. As we are going to revisit the vatiables/ critireion for a just city, I have been trying to have a better understaning/ priotization of elements for “livability”.
Finally, I find in short ” quality of life” can be a summarizing index for it , though being quite general. And it can be varied between studies
Anyway, here is quite all-round defination of it, though lacking peroper proitization/justifaicaiton of its conponents. It may be good to have the primary list for further discussion.
http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-li…/rankings_by_country.jsp
And here is one with more justification from the economist http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITY_OF_LIFE.pdf
And I eventually found sth interesting called “where-to-be-born-index” as well. here if the wiki page : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index
And for more serious studies for that, as prof and some of you have posted many rankings from the economist and monocole , for example. I do find the very accesible EIU report more percise with more detailed data and methodology
http://pages.eiu.com/rs/eiu2/images/EIU_BestCities.pdf ( like some of you have posted it as well)
BUT I cannot find the more updated one.
Also, we may talk about the variation fo ranking temporarily as well, as we can simply see the ranking has already been varied between the EIU one in 2012 and the upadated rankings.
Here is a ranking done in the US based on crime, economy, education, housing, environment, leisure, and infrastructure. I’m not sure this is exactly the type of ranking we are interested but I think looking at all these categories would give us good insight.
Read more: America’s 50 Best Cities to Live – 24/7 Wall St. http://247wallst.com/…/09/17/americas-50-best-cities-to-l…/…
hi everyone! So, last night, after posting something random on the blog I realized there are a lot of posts on rankings, so in the end I saw Markus’ email and started reading for my post on the subject. It is already on the blog for those interested. Because my timing is bad, I’ll just post the link to the ranking I have found interesting as a summary
The Ranking of Quality of Life 2014, created by the lifestyle magazine Monocle uses “the same unique Quality of Life metrics for which it has become famous. These include crime, healthcare, state-funded education and business climate, combined with a unique Monocle “liveability assessment.” This takes into account factors including the amount of green space, commitment to culture, hours of sunshine, electric car-charging points, the ease of starting a new business, and a high-street chain test that values the independents over the franchises. This year’s survey also added one new major metric “Libertarian paradise or stickler for rules?” with the aim of appreciating the intangibles that light up a community alongside the infrastructure that keeps it going.”
http://www.highsnobiety.com/…/monocles-2014-quality-of-lif…/
Alma Agusti ah! also, to show the other side of the argument, here is a defense of why the variables included in the Monocle ranking are not the important ones. Also a very interesting point http://www.forbes.com/…/cities-livable-elite-economist…
Onat Kibaroglu again Alma , never worry about timing. that’s why we have a blog not a collective-novel . this is a great share
I was walking home tonight through Place Stravinsky (by the Centre Pompidou) and came across this installation. I thought it was an art installation, but the woman explained that it was for an NGO promoting “World Toilet Day”. She had a lot to say about the lack of access to proper hygiene around the world, and the problems this creates for health, safety, human dignity, and other aspects of social justice. This isn’t something we’ve talked about a lot in class, but I feel like it really relates to this week’s topic regarding what makes a just city, as well as the broader issues of social and spatial justice. Because of stigma around bodily functioning, talking about access to toilets isn’t the first on the agenda for spatial justice, but the points made on the site (and by the woman at the installation) are really valid: not having access to this basic necessity is harmful to the health and well-being of the individual, to the health of others, and can create further stigmatization for those already facing marginalization. If you want to check out the installation, I’m pretty sure it’ll be in Place Stravinsky through the week, but there’s also a Twitter and Instagram hashtag #worldtoiletday that shows different posts of it (she explained that social media was their biggest way to get attention!). I couldn’t find the Paris-specific site she told me about, but I found this one which explains more about the project:
-
-
Gali Freund Wonderful. It is really a highly important issue. I also loved the context in which your picture puts it, just like importing a point of view.
Along with not having accessible toilets, many of the same people haven’t got one other thing that goes alo
ng with it – soap. Recommending this video, which helps demonstrate just how useful is that thing that we take so much for granted:
Myriam Sidibe is a warrior in the fight against childhood…YOUTUBE.COMAlma Agusti I agree so much with this post. It is commonly something that is usually avoided or ignored, even in Western countries… It is incredible how many cities do not have public bathrooms in good conditions, which can be used by homeless people or even peo…See MoreGali Freund Alma, thanks for sharing that. it happens so often we don’t even notice, that IS a necessity, and I wish it could be taken less lightly.This survey identifies the criteria of a “great” city rather than a “just” city. However the position if the Mc Kinsey experts is interesting if we consider their approach of “client service” as an urban need in itself. The substitution of the citizenship link towards the the city, by an *arguably equivalent*, client-to-provider relation forces the city to evaluate more precisely the effects of its urban policies. The survey also assesses the importance of access to green spaces and of a multi-scalar approach to cities. To such extent, these criteria of a “great” city may provide an interesting basis for our project of a “just” city’s criteria.
I’ve been looking everywhere for an index that compares liveability in African cities (out of interest) and the closest I’ve found is the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which assesses the quality of governance across African countries (not cities), but I think it’s criteria is fitting enough to measure liveability and relative justness as well.
It defines governance as “the provision of political, social and economic goods that every citizen has the right to expect from his/her state, and that the state has the responsibility to deliver to its citizens”.
To measure this it uses 4 dimensions (each of which have more specific categories):
a) Safety and Rule of Law
b) Participation and Human Rights
c) Sustainable Economic Opportunity
d) Human DevelopmentMauritius has the highest ranking. Interesting.
www.moibrahimfoundation.org/iiag/
This may seem obvious but I would definitely say one characteristic of a just city is affordability. Here’s an article about it! http://www.forbes.com/…/03/11/americas-most-affordable-cit…/
They measured affordability of housing this way: Weighing median prices for homes sold against median income levels to determine the percentage of homes that are affordable to residents making the median income.
And they measured affordability of living this way: using Sperling’s Best Places Index, which factors in the cost of food, utilities, gas, transportation, medical expenses, and a host of other daily expenses for each area.
I think it’s really important that they considered average income, not just overall cost. It concludes that Buffalo, NY is America’s most affordable city. This is definitely not the most appealing city because it is freezing. Other factors should most definitely be considered too!
Looking for measurements of good and bas city, I came across this “Best cities ranking and report” by The Economist:
http://pages.eiu.com/rs/eiu2/images/EIU_BestCities.pdf
Surprisingly, they have decided to reduce the weight given to the previous 5 criteria: Stability, Healthcare, Culture and Environment, Education and Infrastructure, in order to add a new one, the Spatial characteristics (25% off total score). This sixth criteria includes: urban form (sprawl, green space), the geographical situation of the city (natural assets, isolation and connectivity), cultural assets and pollution.
They use the term “liveable” cities which is more subtle and politically correct than “just” cities, but it is a step in the right direction.This analysis is from 2012, and is the only one I’ve found with this detailed explanation of the components of the data. In the 2014 report they seem to have dropped it, maybe it’s in the full (payed) document: http://www.eiu.com/Handlers/WhitepaperHandler.ashx…
And some fun updated infographics from the 2014 report: http://www.economist.com/…/graphicde…/2014/08/daily-chart-13
Onat KibarogluA good example of explaining the criteria regarding our theme on ‘best cities to live in’ and similar indices:
http://livability.com/best-places/top-100/…/ranking-criteria
Ranking Criteria
The LivScore for each city is a composite of more than 40 data points. Those data points were grouped into the eight categories below. The methodology gives a good overview of how we calculated the score. But why did we focus on demographics, amenities, education and the others? How do they actually influence livability? How can transportation make a city a best place to live? Read these stories for a more detailed discussion.
acsvietnam2014
almaagusti
carolinesecola
elinfroesell
ellenspicer
farahaltaher
Gali
hmaiga
laisgomide
manfungleung
martinchellet
minnnng
nigelwodrich
olicolaus
Onat Kibaroglu
philippanesbitt1
silvinhaom
stuti93
wongchakman
SPATIAL JUSTICE IN URBAN ENVIRONMENTS 