The Quality of Life in LatinAmerican Cities : Markets and Perception

Lora, Eduardo ; Powell, Andrew ; Praag, Bernard M.S. van ; Sanguinetti, Pablo

Washington, DC:Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank

关键词: ACCESS TO ELECTRICITY;    ACCESS TO HEALTH;    ACCESS TO SANITATION;    ACCESS TO SERVICES;    AIR QUALITY;   

DOI  :  10.1596/978-0-8213-7837-3
RP-ID  :  54431

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This book suggests how that explorationshould be undertaken, and how a monitoring system that has asolid conceptual basis and is both easy to operate andreasonable in cost can then be put into practice. Long theideal of many scholars and observers of urban problems, sucha system may now be close to realization. In this book,examples of Latin American cities are used as case studies.As argued in the first chapter, there are good reasons toconcentrate on Latin America: it is the world region withthe most rapid urban development and is the most urbanizedregion in the developing world. In contrast to residents ofcities in poorer regions, Latin Americans have managed todemocratize homeownership and to extend basic services tothe majority of households. That means that improving theQuality of Life (QoL) in Latin American cities is no longerprimarily a matter of bricks and mortar. But the challengesare as large as they are diverse. Chapter two introduces thereader to the hedonic price and the life satisfactionapproaches and presents a comparative summary of theconclusions of the six case studies. This chapter, like thefirst, is essential for the policy maker or activist inurban affairs who wants to understand the possibilities ofthe new systems for monitoring the quality of urban life.Chapter three is a concise and self-contained introductionto the economic theory on which the hedonic pricing and lifesatisfaction approaches are based and which forms thebackbone of this book. Chapters four-eight then summarizethe most notable findings of the case studies, eachemphasizing a different topic and focus.