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作者

Ana Paula Barreira, Carla Amado, Sérgio Santos, Jorge Andraz, Maria Helena Guimarães

来源

INTERNATIONAL REGIONAL SCIENCE REVIEW,

语言

英文

关键字

作者单位

1Center for Advanced Studies in Management and Economics (CEFAGE) and Faculty of Economics, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal;2Instituto de Ciências Agrárias e Ambientais Mediterrânicas (ICAAM), University of Évora, Núcleo da Mitra, Évora, Portugal

摘要

The quality of life (QoL) in cities has increasingly been used as a symbol of urban success. Studies addressing this issue tend to focus, however, on large cities and/or on cities from different countries. By using a set of data from a single country, comprehending cities with different population sizes and densities, observations for 11 performance dimensions, and an approach combining the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique and multivariate regression modeling, this study analyses the QoL of Portuguese cities and explores some of its determinants. The results of this analysis show that both small and large cities can offer high levels of QoL with “transport and accessibility,” “safety,” “housing,” “education,” and “culture and entertainment” being the dimensions that most contribute to the QoL assessment. While Lisbon and Oporto (the two largest Portuguese cities) are benchmark cities, some of the highly populated cities located in their Metropolitan Areas present the most potential for improvement in terms of QoL. The results also show that cities located in the hinterland tend to present higher QoL scores than those on the coast. Equally, cities with lower population size and density, those that are district capitals and those with higher per capita current public expenditures present higher levels of QoL. These findings suggest, therefore, that the cities’ typology, their population size and density, and their dependence from local governments’ public expenditures can significantly contribute to the differences identified in their QoL performance.