Exploring the environmental quality of life for sustainable neighbourhood planning

Abstract

Human and environmental well-being is the main goal of sustainable development. Quality of Life (QoL) which is often used to measure human well-being, constitutes existential factors, but excludes attributes of people and local environment. In the absence of people’s perception towards the environment and satisfaction associated with environmental features, QoL remains an incomplete expression of human well-being. This study includes attributes of people and environment and has defined a new QoL metric – environmental QoL (QoLe) – to measure progress towards sustainability at neighbourhood scale. The QoLe model includes environmental attributes, perceived neighbourhood satisfaction and environmental attitudes of people, and explores the relationships between them. The testing of the model involved field work in an ecologically sustainable development (ESD) and a conventional neighbourhood from south-east Queensland, Australia. In the ESD, protection and enhancement of the natural environment was emphasised and the built environment is designed to be environment friendly and sustainable. Majority of the residents demonstrated a Preservation (pro environmental) attitude and expressed an overall high level of satisfaction with their neighbourhood. The conventional neighbourhood lacked sustainable planning and design features. Majority of the residents demonstrated a Utilisation (pro-utilitarian) attitude and they were relatively less satisfied with their neighbourhood environment quality. The QoLe allows exploration of congruity/ incongruity between neighbourhood environmental quality and the level of satisfaction associated with them. It will provide policy planners, developers and designers with an understanding of the conflicting interests between the neighbourhood environment quality and individuals’ expectations based on their environmental attitudes. The study highlights that environmental and human well-being requires people-environment congruity.