The Quality of Life in Latin American Cities

Markets and Perception

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

• Publisher: World Bank Publications
• Year: 2010
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9780821382134
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

A growing number of cities around the world have established systems for monitoring the quality of urban life. Many of those systems combine objective information with subjective opinions and cover a wide variety of topics. This book assesses a method that takes advantage of both types of information and offers criteria to identify and rank the issues of potential importance for urban dwellers. This method—which combines the so-called 'hedonic price' and 'life satisfaction' approaches to value public goods—was tested in pilot studies in six Latin American cities: Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Lima, Medellín, Montevideo, and San José of Costa Rica. It provides valuable insights to address key questions such as, • Which urban problems have the greatest impact on people's opinions of city management and the most widespread effects on their lives? • Do gaps between perception and reality vary from one area of the city to another, especially between high- and low-income neighborhoods? • Where can homebuilders most feasibly seek solutions to problems such as inadequate road infrastructure, a lack of recreational areas, or poor safety conditions? • Which problems should government authorities address first, in light of their impact on the well-being of various groups of individuals and given private actors' abilities to respond? • Which homeowners benefit the most from public infrastructure or services? • When can or should property taxes be used to finance the provision of certain services—or the solution of certain problems? 'The Quality of Life in Latin American Cities: Markets and Perception' proposes a monitoring system that is easy to operate and that entails reasonable costs but also has a solid conceptual basis. Long the ideal of many scholars and practitioners, such a system may soon become a reality and have the potential to make a significant contribution to the decision-making processes in any city concerned with the well-being of its residents.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• 1 Latin American Cities: Their Origins, Achievements, and Problems
• 2 Measuring Quality of Life in Latin America’s Urban Neighborhoods: A Summary of Results from the City Case Studies
• 3 Toward an Urban Quality of Life Index: Basic Theory and Econometric Methods
• 4 Well-Being at the Subcity Level: The Buenos Aires Neighborhood Quality of Life Survey
• 5 Quality of Life in Urban Neighborhoods of Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia
• 6 Pricing Amenities in Urban Neighborhoods of Costa Rica
• 7 Influence of Individual, Urban, and Civil Society Spheres on Quality of Life in Metropolitan Lima, Peru
• 8 Housing and Neighborhood Satisfaction in Montevideo, Uruguay
• Index
• Figures
• Tables