ABSTRACT
Urban quality of life is a multi-dimensional concept that is defined and measured in many different ways in the social sciences. This chapter presents an application of the Life Satisfaction Approach to measure quality of life in Italian cities. The analysis provides a ranking of Italian cities along several dimensions of quality of life. In recent years the Life Satisfaction Approach has been extended to measure the economic value of several non-market goods. A large number of authors have used the Life Satisfaction Approach for environmental evaluation. Colombo and Stanca use the hedonic approach to measure the monetary price of social relations capitals in Italian cities, focusing on time spent with friends, active participation in associations and frequency of going out for leisure activities. Focusing on Italian cities, they used micro-level data for subjective well-being and individual characteristics, together with city-level data on local amenities, to estimate the well-being valuation of local amenities.
