Introduction
At a structural level, the city environment has been radically changed. No longer is the city the main focus of work or the location of basic services such as retailing in the high street or the city centre. As developed nations experience a shift from a manufacturing base towards a dominant service economy, greater spatial flexibility has resulted in employment being moved out of the city to new locations within "out of town" or "edge of town" parks and centres. One consequence has been the depletion of those services which were once the cornerstone of city living. At the social level, to many people life in the urban area has become synonymous with the negative features of a developed, post-industrial society - insecurity arising from high crime rates and fear so that people are afraid to walk about at night in large parts of the city; an increasingly polluted atmosphere as traffic congestion is compounded by commuting by car; social isolation as communities are broken up through poorly planned developments; and rising levels of deprivation as housing quality and basic service provision decline.
It would be inaccurate to argue that such negative images of the city are new. What has been perceived to have changed is the scale of the urban crisis and its impact on people; a point manifest in the continuing desire amongst urban populations to escape from the city. From the early industrial city and later in the Victorian period, cities were seen to have significant disadvantages when compared with the more idyllic "rural" areas, but these problems were often perceived by the majority of people as outweighed by the advantages of being located close to employment and facilities in the city.
Throughout this century social scientists have noted a pattern of population movement away from the large cities as people have sought alternative locations to avoid the problems of urban living and as the opportunities to separate work and home life have increased. The outward migration of people initially to suburbia, gave way in the 1960s and 1970s to the "rush" - counterurbanisation - to smaller towns and cities at the expense of the larger metropolitan regions. Both these phases of population movement reflect a collective feeling that the quality of life in the city continues to decline. But the outward dispersal of people and the associated housing and employment growth into the surrounding areas has itself increasingly raised new problems about land-use planning and management. Once people have moved to achieve a higher quality of life, they tend to be possessive of that environmental quality. The NIMBY syndrome, coined in the Thatcherite Britain of the late 1980s, encapsulates this desire to retain exclusivity to a higher quality of life.
Ironically, at the same time as this exodus from the city has occurred, gentrification has been a major component of the revival of areas at the heart of the city. Through the upgrading of districts such as Clapham in London, and the redevelopment of waterfront warehouses in Liverpool, Swansea and London, there has been, in the most severe cases, a reversal of the social status gradient of the city. This has resulted in a landscape recaptured by the young, professional élite. Although the extent and impact of the process of gentrification is disputed, there is little doubt that this movement into the city indicates that, for some important groups in society, the city is still seen as offering the potential for a high quality of life.
So what is it that people are seeking in terms of their quality of life? As the contrary trends in population redistribution into and out of the city indicate, any evaluation of quality of life will be complex and potentially contradictory. Both academics and practitioners have failed to reach an unambiguous resolution of the question; a point clearly shown in Part 1 of the book.
Quality of life has been described as a vague entity and conceptualising quality of life has proved difficult. Nevertheless it remains a very popular conception, held by many people in the postmaterialist society of the 1990s to be of importance as a yardstick of their satisfaction with life and as a factor shaping their behaviour patterns. There appears to be a consensus that in defining quality of life there are two fundamental sets of components and processes operating: those which relate to an internal psychological mechanism producing a sense of satisfaction or gratification with life; and those external conditions which trigger the internal mechanisms.
Consequently, any assessment of quality of life in the city has to be conducted at two levels. First, at a personal level where each person assesses their own level of satisfaction with life within their life sphere and, second, an evaluation of the components of the city environment which help to create the sense of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction). Although some people find it difficult to articulate what they mean by quality of life, it continues to be a significant motivating influence in human behaviour. The evidence in the United Kingdom may not yet support the widespread presence of 'disamenity compensation' in wage differentials, but in the United States economists have identified the need for employers in some cities to offer higher wages in order to offset differences in the standards of quality of life. Research evidence does exist, however, to suggest that quality of life factors are of significance in influencing patterns of population movement. One recent national attitudinal survey in Britain carried out by the Quality of Life Group has identified that, for more than 70 per cent of respondents, quality of life factors were very important in the selection of migration destination.
Of course, not everyone is able to choose freely their residential location and thus put into action their preferences for a higher quality of life. As Young and Grayson point out in this book, quality of life measurements are not just relevant to those contemplating a relocation of their household or business. Life quality also has an important policy role allowing the identification and evaluation of which factors have the greatest impact on an individual's current quality of life and which are amenable to improvement. This more policy-oriented use of the concept has been trumpeted as a key reason for studying quality of life since the early development of social indicators research in the 1960s. Social measurement and social accounting were seen as the means of directing social planning towards an improvement of quality of life for people. These promises have, for the most part, been unfulfilled - the result largely of poor data provision and inappropriate indicators of need; an unwillingness by those conducting the survey to include the opinions of local people; and a consequent scepticism by local decision makers to adopt social indicators in leading planning and policy. As Part 1 of Quality of life in cities reveals, the lack of a clear theoretical and methodological base for quality of life research remains a significant barrier to the research findings being applied effectively to enhance people's life quality.
But this is only one issue. Central to the ongoing debate about the practical significance of quality of life studies is the growing awareness that life quality cannot be evaluated merely in terms of the provision of services and facilities. To encapsulate the full meaning of quality of life, it is not sufficient to consider only the process of provision of, and access to, the city environment and its facilities. Rather, quality of life also includes a more consumer-oriented perspective, concerned with the manner of delivery of the service or facility and the quality of environment or experience of enjoyment which arises from the consumption of that environment/service. As Young and Grayson acknowledge towards the end of the book, the recent political focus on the citizen - within such initiatives as the Citizen's Charters - provides an attempt, albeit imperfect, to move forward from the planning of the provision of the city environment to include some statement about its manner of delivery and management. This still falls far short of concern about the environment of consumption and its enjoyment; but it is a start.
The quality of life associated with the environment of consumption within the city includes not only the physical characteristics of the place in which people live but also the social attributes of that environment - the sense of community and neighbourhood and company. For cities to regain their attraction as places to live, both of these components need to be addressed. As such, the challenge to put quality back into the city requires a partnership between local authorities and community groups. Good planning of the city alone does not guarantee a high quality of life if the social heart of the city is removed in the process, but equally, the agenda of the political Right towards individualism and free market economics is unlikely to foster the desired quality of urban environment.
Quality of life as a concept is destined to remain at the centre of the political and academic agenda, shaping and reflecting the life chances and lifestyles of residents in cities in the 1990s and beyond. As the authors of this book note in the following chapters, the way forward in the search for the "good city environment" depends on successful improvement of those features which determine the quality of life experienced by people in their daily lives within the city.
Robert Rogerson
Quality of Life Group
Department of Geography
University of Strathclyde
