The Quality of Life in Latin American Cities

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.