Where to live in Britain in 1988

Quality of Life in Urban-Classified and Rural-Classified English Local Authority Areas

“…Although in a study on well-being distribution Dorling (2006) reported findings in line with those presented here in terms of the North/South spatial segregation amongst cities, our findings suggest that these inequalities affect urban areas more intensively than rural areas. Moreover, compared with two similar QOL studies conducted twenty years ago amongst major (Findlay et al, 1988) and intermediate (Rogerson et al, 1989) British cities, which concluded that the highest QOL tends to be found away from the South East, our study suggests that the urban areas of the South East currently enjoy some of the highest QOL conditions. In contrast, such Northern localities as Liverpool and Manchester continue to be ranked amongst the least attractive areas.…”

“…Recent analyses of 2001 British census data by Phillips (2007) and Hoggart (2007), for example, reveal major social differences within rural locations which would be masked by our local authority level of analysis. At the same time, however, there is a long history of academics using local authorities (Wong, 2001), along with cities (Findlay et al, 1988;Rogerson et al, 1989), for the purpose of studying`public' based QOL conditions and, in this sense, our study provides a fairly broad-based view of its`telescopic' social mosaic (Smith, 2007). In addition, our chosen unit of analysis is especially fitting in the current policy context given that local authorities are the leading partners in sustainable community strategy formation and even have scope to create cross-boundary local area agreements to coordinate initiatives beyond their own jurisdictions (CLG, 2006).…”

“…Attention is drawn to the politically significant urban (DETR, 1999a) and rural (DETR and MAFF, 2000) dimensions of the previous Labour government's sustainable development (SD) operation, whose QOL backdrop is evaluated using 73 performance indicators defined by the Audit Commission, collected from 208 urban-classified and 144 rural-classified English local authorities. In comparing the formally reported urban and rural QOL conditions at various statistical, spatial, and conceptual scales, we not only add an important contribution to existing large-scale public based QOL research (Dorling, 2006;Findlay et al, 1988;Rogerson et al, 1989; Wong, 2001), but also consider the policy implications of our results.…”

Assessment of transport quality of life as an alternative transport appraisal technique

“…Assessment of TQoL followed Rogerson et al's methodology used in the study of quality of life in the UK (Findlay et al, 1988;Rogerson et al, 1989aRogerson et al, , 1987. Although twenty years old it was used in the TQoL model conceptualisation because there has been no further successful development of the perpetual weighting of QoL.…”

Planning as Urban Therapeutic

“…Concerns to promote better conditions of life in many Western urban cities (such as in Auckland above), centre on a particular reading of the good as`the best quality of life' for a small group of residents (Findlay et al, 1988) or for nonresident entrepreneurs. To this end, in his widely influential work Florida (2000; focuses on provision of amenities, environmental quality, and social tolerance; all factors which can be``changed for the better, given the correct urban policies'' (McCann, 2004(McCann, , page 1911.…”