Methodology for Establishing Well-Being Urban Indicators at the District Level to be Used on the CityScope Platform

Abstract

The MIT Media Lab City Science Group reshapes and reevaluates well-being as an emerging key indicator due the social challenges that cities are facing, such as inequality, police violence, and breaches to safety and security. Well-being in urban environments has been studied extensively, yet most research focuses on one aspect of well-being rather than multiple dimensions of well-being. Existing well-being indices that are used to compare well-being between different countries or to set a standards for well-being consider a variety of aspects that affect well-being, yet they are not specific to urban environments. When considering that no holistic and comprehensive research has been specifically conducted on well-being in urban environments, we research the relationship between the built features of an urban environment and well-being. In this paper, we propose a Well-Being Index composed of five urban indicators—Community Connectedness, Safety & Security, Physical Health, Mental Health, and Diversity—which are each described by a set of urban attributes that enhance well-being. Each attribute is quantified using a calculation formula. In addition to quantifying well-being, the Well-Being Index emphasizes specific urban features that urban planners should consider for future decision-making. We apply the Well-Being Index to predict well-being in Boston, Massachusetts, and Kansas City, Missouri, and we speculate that Boston has higher levels of well-being in terms of the city’s urban features. Based on our results, we provide suggestions for future choices in urban planning and design to improve the areas of well-being that we were able to identify with the Well-Being Index. We emphasize that the Well-Being Index can be applied to any city in the world, and can inform future decision-making for building urban environments through the CityScope platform; a novel methodology of interaction and collaboration by using a data-driven platform that simulates the impacts of interventions on urban ecosystems prior to detail-design and execution.

Energy retrofitting of non-residential buildings with effects on the indoor environment: a study of university buildings at NTNU in Trondheim, Norway

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Towards a Virtual Planning Support Theatre for City Planning and Design

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Indicators for local policies of cultural welfare: content, dimensions, and quality criteria

“…The Canadian Index of Wellbeing is built upon eight domains, one of which is devoted to Leisure and culture, with four main components: participation in leisure, recreation, arts, and cultural activities; perceptions/feelings about leisure activities, including why people participate, which needs are being met through participation, and how leisure and culture participation benefits them; Leisure experience, or the meaning it holds for people in relation to their quality of life, and the provision of leisure and culture opportunities, such as access to recreation facilities, open spaces and parks, and other arts, culture, and recreation sites (Canadian Index of Wellbeing 2016 ). Indexes for measuring wellbeing in cities have been published in recent years (Orii et al 2020 ; Pineo and Rydin 2018 ; Gaffaney 2017 ; The Wellbeing Project 2017 ; Chadha et al 2015 ). However, only a few of them include culture and the arts as fundamental dimensions of wellbeing.…”