Quality of life and social cohesion: methodological discussion and implications in planning[1]
ABSTRACT The objective of this paper is to argue for the inclusion of analysis of quality of life in regional planning and point out useful methods. The paper is divided in three parts. The first one refers to a description of how the concept quality of life has historically been approached in the Swedish urban planning. In terms of European Community policy, social cohesion appears to be a new way to deals with quality of life issues. A discussion of regional and local policies focusing on the effects of social in-cohesion composes the second part of this paper. Finally, the third part refers to the use of quality of life methods for analysing social cohesion issues in urban areas. Special attention is paid to the potentiality of the spatial dimension in social analysis. Advantages as well as the continuous challenges in using techniques for spatial analysis, such as Geographical Information System (GIS), are also discussed. The paper concludes with a brief list of research questions that could be addressed as subject of study in the future.
Introduction
Nowadays the term quality of life has been used in a variety of ways to characterise our daily life. In the mass media, mainly in marketing, it can be associated with the quality of a product or used as a keyword in a political platform. When considered academically, it has received a large number of definitions based on different approaches. Evidently, the attempt to give a precise formulation of the term quality of life must capture its ambiguity and complexity rather than hide or eliminate it.
‘There are as many quality of life definitions as there are people’ (Liu, 1976). Independent of which community it refers to, the quality of life question is a complex and multifaceted one. In general, the concept includes the distribution of benefits and human rights that a society, in a certain period of time, judges to be essential. It also includes a series of collective benefits of a less tangible nature but also very important to social welfare (Guimarães, 1984).
Due to the complexity of the term, quality of life, it has often been associated with numerous other concepts, among others, welfare, living conditions, level of living, well-being, life style, environmental amenities (Díaz, 1985). The word welfare, in Swedish välfärd, in Danish velfaerd, in Norwegian velferd, and the Finish hyvinvointi, thus in all Scandinavian languages, covers basic elements of human well being and level of living, working as a general synonym of quality of life but with different connotations. Often, quality of life has been used as level of living (in the Swedish traditional approach) related to the analysis of individual's resources and well being (in the Finnish approach) associated with people's needs and aspirations, both named as welfare studies. Quality of life studies vary also in the scale of application, sometimes applied to a whole country (Bernow, 1982, Levnadsförhållanden, Levekårsundersögelsen, Levevilkår in the Nordic countries) or to regions (Siirilä, 1984), cities (Knox, 1982, Rogerson et al. 1989) or even residential areas (Abaleron 1987,1995).
The increasingly rapid changes of society have also determined a quite radical change in the definition of quality of life. On one side, quality of life today does not mean simply availability of resources but also easy accessibility and use of them. Time issues, information elements, level of competence in using technological every-day-devices, level of freedom of making choices between different solutions constitute important elements to be considered in order to measure people well being. In Sweden, real income have first increased for a long period and then decreased. The country is suffering from a relatively high rate of unemployment. Those who have a job tend to travel longer distances than before to get to their place of work. People have become more mobile than in previous decades. They seem to spend time in a variety of environments. These changes have not only brought about a problem for the established service provision paradigm but also difficulties concerning the validity of methods of analysing changes in life quality. People live in one place, work in another and may spend their leisure time in yet another part of the city.
On the other side, large inequalities between groups of population create places in many European cities where the effects of social in-cohesion are evident. These disparities are more evident between different social economic groups but are not less important than those between men and women. Gender issues associated with equal opportunities, especially in labour market, have also become more and more important for analysing quality of life. Even though the nowadays reality requires new ways to approach social cohesion, methods applied to quality of life analysis developed during the last three decades seem to be a potential for helping to face the challenge of analysing its effects.
The purpose of this article is to argue for the inclusion of analysis of quality of life in regional planning. The paper is divided in three parts. The first one refers to a description of how the concept quality of life has historically been approached in the Swedish urban planning. In terms of European Community policy, social cohesion appears to be a new way to deals with quality of life issues. A discussion of regional and local policies focusing on the effects of social in-cohesion composes the second part of this paper. Finally, the third part refers to the use of quality of life methods for analysing social cohesion issues in urban areas. Special attention is paid on the case studies developed in Nordic countries where the quality of life studies have often been an instrument for evaluating the efficiency of welfare state investments. There has also been a growing awareness of territorial bases of inequality in society, and policies designed to ameliorate these inequalities have assumed explicit spatial dimensions. Geographical Information Systems has been considered as a useful tool for spatial assessments, of which social analysis seems to be a potential research field.
For the purposes of this article, the concept of region as unity-focus of policy will shift in size from small geographical areas to larger ones. At the national level, region will be addressed as, for instance, neighbourhood in a city, metropolitan area-context and in other cases, region will be considered as counties or any other geographical unity object of policies for regional development. At European level, region means NUTs or eventually, a whole country. However, since the focus is on the Swedish urban planning, region is mostly synonymous of urban spaces in this paper.
Positioning quality of life in the Swedish urban planning
Studies of quality of life have a central role in the Swedish model of spatial planning. When new residential areas have been planned one of the criteria has been to provide the areas with appropriate levels of public services. The idea of this policy has been to give every district a decent starting point in the life of the residential areas. The policy has been applied throughout the country, both in the suburbs of the metropolitan regions and in the smaller cities and towns where the whole supply of services in the settlement is within reach. The provision of medical care, day-care centres, schools and other public services have been prominent examples of this widely practised policy. This planning philosophy, as a main concrete example, was part of the so-called million homes program during the 1960-1970's. However, the quality of a place assessed today is not only a pure reflection of the planning philosophy behind its construction, something that is ready and finished in the past. This quality has also been part of an open process, in continuous development and change. Locally, it is a product of interplay between space and those who live there over time.
The living place is not an isolated entity. Its quality depends on a broader context in which the city, the region, is embedded and that also changes over time. There have been marked changes in Sweden as a whole during the last decades that have impacted on quality of the living place. Building activity has been substantially reduced, especially regarding residential areas. The Swedish planning paradigm of equal service provision to everyone everywhere has not been generally extended to the existing building stock. Maintenance of the quality of these areas has varied from place to place, and, in some cases they have deteriorated for lack of economical resources.
As in other European countries, geographical segregation patterns[i] have become more evident during the last few years, especially in the largest Swedish urban areas. Suburban rental housing areas with a high unemployment rate, mainly with a low educated labour force and immigrants, are geographically separated from areas of highly educated people, mostly composed of Swedes, living in valorised areas. This socio-economic and ethnic segregation has for different groups caused an unbalanced access to economic resources that, in the near future, may produce differences in opportunities in life as a whole. Many anticipate an irreversible social exclusion pattern.
Shifting paradigms: an historical overview of quality of life in the Swedish cities
Contemporary Stockholm County is a concrete example of how urban planning has been performed during decades in order to promote a good quality of life for its inhabitants, see Table 1. The urban structure has not only been a product of the economic conditions, the land availability or technological developments at different periods of time. This quality has of course been part of an open process that goes beyond the initial planning. It has been a product of interplay over time between space and those who live there, the inhabitants, in continuous development and change. The focus here is primarily on those responsible for the city construction. Planners, architects, constructors and/or politicians received influences from different urban theories and models. Based on some pragmatic utopia, they decided what the city structure should be like in order to have good quality. They did not only define how many buildings the city should have but also the size of apartments, the streets' widths, the heights and types of housing, the distances to the underground stations or to main services and the configuration of the open spaces.
Initially urban planning was an attempt to overcome the most urgent problems, which arose in the increase of industrialised society in the end of 1800th century. Land use regulations, high density areas, increasing numbers of squatters and slums, lack of basic infrastructure, and risks of fire were some of the problems which needed to be solved by the urban planning. The quality of life concept was a class-related concept. Quality of life was related to the difficult task of working and surviving in the city.
Housing shortage was still a problem in Stockholm during the World War I. Overcrowding was often associated with high mortality rates in those places. During World War I, housing construction came to an almost complete halt. In this critical situation the State and local authorities were forced to intervene. For the first time Sweden developed a national housing policy and housing became regulated by local authorities. When government loans stopped, the National Federation of Tenants' Savings and Building Society (HSB), and the Swedish Union of Tenants were formed (Thiberg, 1990). After 1919, the Health Care Statute was created defining the minimum requirements concerning indoor air conditions, heating and protection against humidity. Referring to overcrowded places, the committee should only intervene if there was a risk for general common health. According to Alfredsson and Viklund (1981), these ordinances had no practical meaning because there were seldom replacement houses to go to for the families who lived in this deficient housing stock.
In the 1930's economic depression, theories were developed about state control and regulation of the free-market economy. In this environment in Sweden, the public planning system was launched. Economic and physical planning developed successively into a tool that would regulate larger and larger sectors related to human conditions, such as housing, living environment, services and transports.
After the Second World War, considerable progress was made as the housing provision, construction of schools and location of industries were important driving forces in the municipalities. The Building Ordinance aimed to increase the standardisation of the dwellings through requirements for the housing construction industries. There was a general requirement that all dwellings should have an entrance-hall, wardrobes and suitable connections between rooms. Dark or badly lit areas should if possible, be avoided and all rooms should have as much sun as possible. Ventilation of flats was required together with a minimum room floor-area of 10 m2 with a minimum height of 2.5 m. Later, requirements regarding rooms, room sizes, dimensions and furnishing of kitchens, toilets and bathrooms were also included. Overcrowding was defined as more than 2 persons per room, excluding kitchen. Housing rent for a two-room apartment would decline in order to compose no more than 20 percent of an industrial worker's average salary. Overcrowding should be abolished via state financing and housing allowances for families with children and retired persons.