ABSTRACT
Among managers of the built environment, interest in quality is rapidly increasing. Because of the continuously increasing pluriformity of house-hold types and styles of living, it is realized that the quality of products which are offered (dwellings and neighbourhoods) should also be differentiated. Quality is, according to ISO 9000: ‘the whole range of properties and characteristics of a product or a service which are important for the compliance to set requirements or obvious needs’. From this definition it can be derived that a product in itself does not have quality, but that the (potential) user defines the quality by his or her judgement of that particular product. If this definition of quality is applied to the built environment, it must be concluded that the quality of dwellings and neighbourhoods (the meso-scale) is a complex one. After all, users base their judgement on a great number of criteria, not only because dwellings and neighbourhoods are composed of various parts, but also because they perform different functions (see also Rapoport, 1989).
