Dataset Information

Are urban landscapes associated with reported life satisfaction and inequalities in life satisfaction at the city level? A cross-sectional study of 66 European cities.

ABSTRACT: With more than half the world's population residing in urban areas and this proportion rising, it is important to understand how well-planned urban environments might improve, and reduce inequalities in, quality of life (QoL). Although studies suggest city-level characteristics hold independent influence on QoL, they generally lack a theoretically informed approach to understanding how the whole city landscape might be implicated, have paid scant attention to inequalities in QoL and often focus on small numbers of cities or countries. We applied theory and methods from landscape ecology to explore associations between cities' land cover/use, residents' reported life satisfaction and within-city socio-economic inequalities in life satisfaction. We joined individual-level responses to the European Urban Audit (EUA) Perception Surveys (2012, 2015) with city-level data from the European Urban Atlas classifying land cover/use into 26 different classes. Our sample included 63,554 people from 66 cities in 28 countries. Multilevel binary logistic models found that specific land use measures were associated with life satisfaction, including the amount of a city which was: residential (OR:0.991, 95%CI 0.984-0.997); isolated structures (OR:1.046, 95 CI 1.002-1.091); roads (OR:0.989, 95%CI 0.982-0.996); pastures (OR: 1.002, 95% CI 1.002-1.003) and herbaceous vegetation (OR:0.998, 95%CI 0.997-0.100). A more even distribution of land cover/use (?: 1.561, 95%CI -3.021 to -0.102) was associated with lower inequality in life satisfaction. This is the first study to theorise and examine how the entire urban landscape may affect levels of and inequalities in wellbeing in a large international sample. Our finding that more equal distribution of land cover/use is associated with lower levels of socio-economic inequality in life satisfaction supports the idea that city environments could be equigenic - that is, could create equality. Our findings can aid urban planners to develop and build cities that can contribute to improving, and narrowing inequalities in, residents' life satisfaction.

SUBMITTER: Olsen JR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6481515 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Are urban landscapes associated with reported life satisfaction and inequalities in life satisfaction at the city level? A cross-sectional study of 66 European cities.

Olsen Jonathan R JR Nicholls Natalie N Mitchell Richard R

Social science & medicine (1982) 20190319

With more than half the world's population residing in urban areas and this proportion rising, it is important to understand how well-planned urban environments might improve, and reduce inequalities in, quality of life (QoL). Although studies suggest city-level characteristics hold independent influence on QoL, they generally lack a theoretically informed approach to understanding how the whole city landscape might be implicated, have paid scant attention to inequalities in QoL and often focus ...[more]

PMID: 30898372

Similar Datasets

Project description:Background Understanding how urban environments influence people’s health, especially as individuals age, can help identify ways to improve health in the rapidly urbanizing and rapidly aging populations. Objectives To investigate the association between age and self-reported health (SRH) in adults living in Latin-American cities and whether gender and city-level socioeconomic characteristics modify this association. Methods Cross-sectional analyses of 71,541 adults aged 25–97 years, from 114 cities in 6 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala), as part of the Salud Urbana en America Latina (SALURBAL) Project. We used individual-level age, gender, education, and self-reported health (SRH) data from harmonized health surveys. As proxies for socioeconomic environment we used a city-level socioeconomic index (SEI) calculated from census data, and gross domestic product (GDP) per-capita. Multilevel Poisson models with a robust variance were used to estimate relative risks (RR), with individuals nested in cities and binary SRH (poor SHR vs. good SRH) as the outcome. We examined effect modification by gender and city-level socioeconomic indicators. Results Overall, 31.4% of the sample reported poor SRH. After adjusting for individual-level education, men had a lower risk of poor SRH (RR = 0.76; CI 0.73–0.78) compared to women, and gender modified the association between age and poor SRH (p-value of interaction < 0.001). In gender stratified models, the association between older age and poor SRH was more pronounced in men than in women, and in those aged 25–65 than among those 65+ (RR/10 years = 1.38 vs. 1.10 for men, and RR/10 years = 1.29 vs. 1.02 for women). Living in cities with higher SEI or higher GDP per-capita was associated with a lower risk of poor SRH. GDP per-capita modified the association between age (25–65) and SRH in men and women, with SEI the interaction was less clear. Conclusions Across cities in Latin America, aging impact on health is significant among middle-aged adults, and among men. In both genders, cities with lower SEI or lower GDP per-capita were associated with poor SRH. More research is needed to better understand gender inequalities and how city socioeconomic environments, represented by different indicators, modify exposures and vulnerabilities associated with aging. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-022-13752-2.

Dataset Information

Are urban landscapes associated with reported life satisfaction and inequalities in life satisfaction at the city level? A cross-sectional study of 66 European cities.

Publications

Are urban landscapes associated with reported life satisfaction and inequalities in life satisfaction at the city level? A cross-sectional study of 66 European cities.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets