Measuring the Liveable City

With the instigation of new technologies, of many of the sensory qualities in the urban environment that directly affect quality of life have become measurable. It is argued that a more sophisticated approach to measuring these 'liveable' qualities of the environment will in turn lead to more balanced and nuanced decision-making, but that first a considerable investment and political will is required. Concern with the quality of the large-scale built environment emerged in the 1950s and 1960s as American cities were being rebuilt with the stimulus of large-scale federal urban renewal and highway construction programmes. The field of urban design as a distinct specialty developed in response to these activities. Many cities prepared plans that attempted to go beyond traditional planning foci, such as land use and trans portation, to deal with the character and quality of the city as a whole: streets, public spaces, the urban landscape, historic districts, waterfronts, and possibilities for enhancing or preserving the special qualities of the city. Some cities have a long tradition of dealing with quality in the built environment, such as Boston and San Francisco, while others have been more market-driven, such as Atlanta, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Houston (which has never even allowed zoning), facilitating development in certain areas while ignoring the state of much of the city San Francisco was one of the pioneers of the citywide approach to assessing and managing urban environmental quality. Its 1970 urban design plan is notable for its systematic analysis of several environmental qualities across the city: views, maintenance, visual interest of street facades, block varia tion, presence of nature, distance to open space, microclimate, compatibility of traffic, and clarity of local image. The process was tedious, requiring a team of surveyors to study and evaluate each of the 1500 blocks of the city firsthand, either on foot for complex areas, or by automobile in less complex ones. The relative quality of different parts of the city was assessed for each of the dimensions, block by block, on a 5-point scale. Deficient areas became the focus for improvements (figure 1). This was an attempt to deal with quality in an equitable manner for the city as a whole regardless of a property's tax value or social status. Unfortunately, this attitude is quite rare in American planning, for precedence is most often given to districts with the most power while the needs of the less fortunate neighbourhoods are ignored.