Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: Best Cases VI

Abstract

The Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: Best Cases book series is a collection of books, each containing a set of chapters related to best practices of community quality-of-life indicators projects. Many communities (cities, towns, counties, provinces, cantons, regions, etc.), guided by their local planning community councils and local government, and other organizations, develop community indicator projects. These projects are designed to gauge the "social health" and well-being of targeted communities. These projects typically involve data collection from secondary sources capturing qualityof-life indicators (i.e., objective indicators capturing varied dimensions of economic, social, and environmental well-being of the targeted communities). The same projects also capture community wellbeing using primary data in the form of survey research. The focus is typically subjective indicators of quality of life such as community residents' satisfaction with life overall, satisfaction with various life domains (e.g., life domains related to social, leisure, work, community, family, spiritual, fi nancial, etc.), as well as satisfaction with varied community services (government, nonprofi t, and business services serving the targeted communities). The book series is intended to provide community planners and researchers involved in community indicator projects with prototypic examples of how to plan and execute community indicator projects in the best possible ways.

Evaluation of quality of urban life with emphasis on health; A case study in Mashhad city

“…Human population growth has led to uncontrolled and unplanned environmental changes and urbanization that has an influential effect on the quality of life (15). Hence, cities are faced with environmental effects such as water and air pollution, health services, wastes, and so on which exacerbate the environmental health risks for urban residents (16). Population density in cities and urban areas and disproportion between the growth of services and the urban infrastructure, particularly in developing countries, have converted urban areas to unhealthy and polluted places that have other various problems including sewage and waste disposal, water supply, etc (17).…”