Assessing places' liveability: informational entropy for the construction of a set of criteria and indicators

The growing interest in well-being as a quality-of-life paradigm has led to a critical revision of its traditional conception. It is no longer limited to indicators of material prosperity and physical health (objective well-being indicators) but also to individual perceptions of quality of life and happiness (subjective well-being indicators). In this new conception, the living environment plays a key role. The definition of well-being indicators based on the perceptual assessments of an urban environment crucially requires interdisciplinary skills. Using an investigative approach based on informational entropy, the objective of this paper is to construct a taxonomy that allows for the assessment of the quality of an environment to achieve adequate well-being standards and thus the improvement of quality of life. In detail, the article explains the construction process of a set of criteria and indicators for evaluating the characteristics of an urban environment and the physical and functional indices that contribute to achieving specific well-being thresholds. Through the involvement of a significant sample of 100 subjects, the results of the work consist of a set of 132 criteria and indicators for the assessment of liveability.