GIS-based Livability Assessment: A Practical Tool, a Promising

Solution?

Anna Kovacs-Gyori

Department of Geoinformatics – Z_GIS, University of Salzburg, Schillerstr. 30, 5020 Salzburg, Austria

Keywords: Livability, Urban Form, Urban Function, Spatiotemporal Analysis, Social Media, Urban Planning,

Walkability.

Abstract: Livability is a complex phenomenon, describing urban quality in the light of dwellers’ needs and expectations

towards the urban environment. Accordingly, the conceptualization and assessment of livability have various

challenges, ranging from the subjectivity of the dwellers’ needs to the dynamics of urban life. The first part

of the paper briefly introduces these challenges and the key elements in the concept of urban livability. As a

follow-up, the rest of the paper provides potential approaches to grasp the complexity of urban quality and to

handle the challenges of livability assessment. GIS has a significant role in each of these approaches, thereby

the paper concludes with an evaluation of the advantages and relevance of GIS-based livability assessment.

Overall, the current summary supports the hypothesis that GIS-based livability assessment implies more than

a practical tool, by providing a general approach to understand and assess livability in a transferable way.

Thereby livability assessment is appropriate to support urban planners in the improvement of urban quality,

as well.

1 INTRODUCTION

Livability is a much-discussed concept in scientific

research for investigating city quality (Kamp et al.,

2003; Kashef, 2016; Ley and Newton, 2010; Pacione

2003; Ruth and Franklin, 2014; Veenhoven, 2000).

However, measuring livability is a challenging task

due to the complexity of urban environments and the

subjectivity of the human perception along with the

lack of a consensual definition of livability or its

factors.

The notion of livability has become quite popular

in the past few years, supposedly due to the so-called

“livability rankings” performed by various

companies and researchers (Giap et al., 2014; Kashef,

2016; Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2013). This rising interest

shows the relevance of the investigation of urban

quality, however, these lists are usually used rather

for city-marketing purposes than the actual

representative assessment of livability. The most

significant limitation of livability rankings is the lack

of intra-urban scale in their results and the

underrepresented importance of residents’ (often

subjective) needs. Overall, livability rankings tend to

represent the standard of living instead of actual

livability (Conger, 2015; IMCL, 2011; Kashef, 2016).

On the other hand, livability as a scientific

concept has much more to offer, not just by

representing differences between various socio-

economic groups and intra-urban scales but by

providing a transferable conceptual framework also

for planners aiming to improve urban quality (Brown,

2003; Conteh and Oktay, 2016; Kovács-Győri and

Reinel, 2017). This means that through livability

assessment, a city – or a given area within the city –

can be “diagnosed” before actual planning actions

take place, by providing an overview on the existing

challenges and insufficiencies of various urban

elements such as transportation or urban parks

(Kolcsár and Szilassi, 2018; Szell, 2018; Žlender and

Ward Thompson, 2017). However, because each city

and its urban system is unique, the assessment should

be robust and transferable to reflect the characteristics

of different places adequately (Albeverio et al., 2008;

Miller et al., 2013).

The improvement of urban quality – as a way to

respond to various urban issues with local or global

origin – is often a goal in international initiatives as

well such as the Sustainable Development Goals

(SDG) and the New Urban Agenda (NUA) (Caprotti

et al., 2017; Costanza et al., 2016; United Nations

General Assembly, 2015, 2016). However, it is often

Kovacs-Gyori, A.

GIS-based Livability Assessment: A Practical Tool, a Promising Solution?.

DOI: 10.5220/0007753702890296

In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management (GISTAM 2019), pages 289-296

ISBN: 978-989-758-371-1

289

challenging to assess the current conditions regarding

the affected population and the localization of the

problems within the city. Especially, because cities as

complex systems are hard to be evaluated in details

(Batty, 2013). As a conceptual framework, livability

can also support these endeavors of SDG and NUA

by depicting the complex urban system and its

components through the lens of the “person-

environment” relationship (Kamp et al., 2003;

Pacione, 2003). Based on Van Kamp et al. (2003) the

quality of this relationship is considered as a basic

definition of livability.

While livability can provide a conceptual

framework for urban quality assessment, GIS makes

the practical analysis possible and valuable (Onnom

et al., 2018; Pacione, 2003; Yin et al., 2018). First, by

using GIS, data can be collected, stored and analyzed

according to thematic groups representing various

elements of the urban system (e.g., transportation,

public spaces, urban green). Second, the

consideration of spatial and temporal aspects is

crucial in urban analysis, which is, of course, another

advantage of using GIS for livability assessment.

Last, the visualization of the results in the form of

maps can support planners and decision makers in the

further steps of urban quality improvement.

To utilize the advantages of GIS in livability

assessment, the concept of livability – by highlighting

its key elements and potential assessment factors –

should be investigated in a systematic way (Section

2). As a follow-up, Section 3 summarizes different

approaches to assess and evaluate a selection of these

factors, as well as their robustness and application in

urban planning. Finally, Section 4 gives a synopsis of

the possible data sources along with the advantages

and limitations of GIS-based livability assessment.

2 THE CONCEPT OF

LIVABILITY

This section provides an overview of the

conceptualization of livability and its assessment

describing the definition of livability and its key

elements in the form of a conceptual framework. This

framework corresponds to the first step in the

complex task of assessing the livability of cities, by

also considering the subjective perception of their

dwellers.

2.1 Definition

There is no general consensus on the definition of

livability. However, the various existing definitions

often share some of the important characteristics,

such as the quality of the urban environment in the

light of the perception and expectation of the dwellers

(Kamp et al., 2003; Pacione, 2003; Ruth and Franklin,

2014).

Based on Pacione (2003), Van Kamp et al. (2003)

and Ruth and Franklin (2014) I interpret livability as

the quality of the person-environment relationship in

the urban context, concerning the needs and

expectations of the residents towards the urban

environment. The perception of the people

profoundly influences these needs and expectations,

and their personal values, thereby making the

livability assessment highly challenging (Brown,

1975; Pacione, 1990; Veenhoven, 2000).

Although this general definition serves as a good

starting point for any further step in assessing

livability, a framework on the potential factors and

their systematic assessment is still lacking.

2.2 Key Elements

As mentioned in Section 2.1, I consider livability as

the quality of the person-environment relationship,

based on what this “environment” provides and how

it fulfills the needs and expectation of the residents.

In the proposed livability assessment framework,

I identified the key elements of this person-

environment relationship, to represent urban life

(Figure 1).

The upper part of the figure describes the

individual aspects regarding the dwellers’ needs and

values. These values usually depend on many

individual factors, e.g., the length of residency, sense

of place, or the degree of integration into society

(Bonaiuto et al., 1999; Fried and Gleicher, 1961;

Merton, 1968; Taube and Levin, 1971). Furthermore,

the needs and expectations themselves can vary

according to the level of development in an area. The

lower part of the figure depicts the urban

environment, consisting of the built and natural

environment along with the infrastructure as urban

form, whereas urban functions represent what this

environment can provide for the citizens.

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Figure 1: Key elements in livability.

2.3 Properties of Livability

Based on the person-environment relationship and the

key elements introduced in 2.2 (personal aspects,

urban form, urban functions) I identify three major

characteristics of these elements – and thereby the

properties of livability.

Figure 2: Use cases representing the properties of livability.

As Figure 2 illustrates, the use cases described in

Section 3 reflect given livability properties to grasp

the complexity of livability assessment. Thereby it is

possible to focus on the important characteristics of

livability in a systematic way. Similar to urban form

and urban functions, these properties are mostly only

separable on a conceptual level, whereas in the real

urban system, they are concurrent. Accordingly, all

use cases have a potential connection to all of these

properties, however in each case, one or two

characteristics are emphasized and the research

questions along with the analysis address the given

property.

 Spatial aspects: All livability factors and

elements have spatial characteristics, either in

absolute sense (e.g., location) or in a relative

way (accessibility). The ubiquity of spatial

aspects in the urban system is the reason why

applying GIS-based methods is appropriate and

beneficial in livability assessment. In 3.1 the

different spatial scales are further detailed,

whereas 3.2 elaborates on the details of

mobility and its role in livability assessment

also emphasizing the relevance of spatial

accessibility.

 Temporal aspects: The factors and elements of

livability will vary over time so it is important

to consider temporal sensitivity of livability

assessment (3.3). It can be done either by

identifying more dynamic factors (mostly in

the case of mobility and urban functions) or

emphasize the temporal aspects of the

residents’ needs and preferences. Similar to

spatial scales, we can also identify temporal

scales for the factors and the analyses, which

are significant for urban planning, and are

discussed further in 3.4.

 Personal aspects: Either in the form of

preference and need or perception and

cognition, livability will always be a concept

with high level of subjectivity, which should

not be neglected in any of the analyses, but the

degree to what these aspects are emphasized

can vary. Therefore, personal aspects do not

necessarily equal to individual preferences or

perception, but depending on the type and goal

of the analysis, individual aspects can be more

crucial. “Personal” in this sense means that it is

able to reflect the person-environment

relationship to some degree. The assesment

platform (3.1) and the concept of walkability

(3.5) strongly considers personal aspects next

to spatial ones.

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3 GIS-BASED LIVABILITY

ASSESSMENT APPROACHES

This section provides an overview of different

approaches aiming to assess livability. This includes

different contexts, such as online platforms, planned

events or social media data, to evaluate various

elements and properties contributing to livability

(Figure 1 and 2).

3.1 Livability Assessment Platform

Existing assessment approaches often focus either on

a city or a region (Antognelli and Vizzari, 2018;

Conteh and Oktay, 2016; Saitluanga, 2014) or

provide frameworks for ranking cities through

complex indices (Giap et al., 2014; Okulicz-Kozaryn,

2013). The former group is usually quite detailed and

applies GIS methods, but they often lack

transferability or holistic view, thereby they cannot be

directly adapted to other cities. Whereas the indices

developed by the latter group often neglect spatial

aspects, especially considering intra-urban

differences. More importantly, most of the existing

assessment platforms or rankings lack subjective

aspects, or as an alternative, factors that represent the

person-environment relationship, instead of merely

statistical, quantitative factors, such as number of

shops or crime occurrence. Using statistical factors –

depending of the purpose of the assessment – is not

necessarily a disadvantage, however if we consider

the basic concept of livability we can see that these

assessments would then reflect standard of living

instead of livability (IMCL, 2011). This is a common

challenge of livability assessment platforms: to

represent the expectations and preferences of the

dwellers’ and at the same time consider spatial

aspects of the measured factors.

An assessment platform developed by Kovács-

Győri and Reinel (2017) attempts to overcome these

challenges by providing a framework that integrates

spatial and individual aspects of livability into the

evaluation process. The work also summarizes a set

of possible livability factors along with their

assessment and possible data sources to extract them.

The result is a platform where residents can be asked

about their preferences regarding the livability of the

environment; thereby it also supports participatory

planning and research on the human perception of

livability. Due to the emphasis on spatial aspects, it is

important to define spatial scales for the provided

factors, not just regarding data availability but also to

investigate the effect of each factor on the perception

of livability. There are three main spatial scales

according to Kovács-Győri and Reinel (2017):

 Fine spatial scale: factors in this category

affect people’s perception only within the sight

distance. Therefore, these factors also require

input data with rather high spatial resolution.

Factors of urban form assessment belong to this

category, such as building height, shop

windows, or urban green.

 Neighborhood scale: this category consists of

urban function factors. In theory, a livable

neighborhood provides all necessary functions

in a relatively short distance (such as grocery

shops, recreation or meeting facilities).

 City scale: only a few facilities are relevant on

this scale, mainly those of having a higher

importance in a comparison between cities (i.

e. livability ranking) such as hospitals, airports

and cultural facilities (theaters, museums).

Also, because in the case of these facilities the

functionality overrides the accessibility,

mainly due to the lower frequency or higher

relevance of the visit.

3.2 The Role of Mobility and Street

Network

On Figure 1, mobility is highlighted, as an element of

the livability concept that suggests higher relevance.

The figure also represents that mobility has a

connection with each livability element. For example,

human needs and urban functions have a strong

influence on the destination what one might visit,

whereas personal values determine transportation

mode by affecting residents’ preferences. Lastly,

urban form will influence the route taken by a person,

due to the characteristics of the infrastructure or even

aesthetics.

Another way to support the importance of

mobility is to investigate livability-related planning

actions performed by practitioners. The findings of

NARC (Young and Hermanson, 2012) confirms that

transportation-related goals and actions are more

common in planning practice than in the case of any

other fields ranging from policy to environment.

Changes in the transportation system usually have an

immediate effect on dwellers. Furthermore, they are

often easier to perform (less time or resource

consuming) than changes of other urban

characteristics such as perceived safety or access to

healthcare.

Regarding the assessment of livability, the

analysis of mobility provides a way also to analyze

qualitative urban characteristics quantitatively by

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using data that are more “tangible” on characteristics

such as accessibility. However, it does not mean that

mobility should only describe quantitative features

(e.g., proportion of sidewalks), because mobility

analysis can reveal important aspects of perceived

safety, health or even economic conditions in a city

(Frank and Engelke, 2001; Gehl, 2010; Saelens et al.,

2003). As an example, the quality of the environment

can be assessed based on the time spent there, or the

preferences of the people (e.g., the route they take,

transportation mode) (Gehl, 2010; Gehl and Svarre,

2013).

Another demonstration of the role of mobility is

the following example: there are two areas with a

similar number (and quality) of functions, such as

grocery shops. In one of these areas the accessibility

of the shops is considered better, for example, they

are in a 10-minute walking distance, or they are not

merely accessible by car. This area with better

accessibility will be considered more livable, as better

functionality alone could not compensate the lower

accessibility. Thereby, although mobility has a clear

connection to every livability property (spatial,

temporal, personal), when it comes to general

livability assessment, the focus slightly shifts toward

the spatial aspects, by assessing the available

infrastructure and considering the accessibility of

specific functions as a first step.

3.3 Introducing Temporal Sensitivity

Livability assessment also has temporal

characteristics, as cities are dynamic systems. While

an area can be considered livable among given

circumstances, it is interesting to investigate how the

perception of the people might change if these

circumstances change temporarily. Although

disasters and other unplanned events can be highly

influential and usually induce a significant decrease

in livability, even for a longer period, the situation

might be different in the case of planned large events,

such as the Olympic Games (Kovács-Győri et al.,

2018). Another aspect of investigating the temporal

properties of livability is illustrated in 3.4, where

different temporal patterns of an urban function is

analyzed.

To trace this temporal sensitivity for example in

the case of planned events, the required data sources

should be able to reflect fine spatial and temporal

scales along with the perception of the people.

Although there are limitations regarding data

representativeness, social media data (particularly

from Twitter) can provide information in a larger

amount about the preferences and emotions of the

people, with sufficient spatial and temporal

resolution.

The results of the spatiotemporal analysis of the

tweets during the Olympic Games in London has

shown that Twitter data can represent differences in

the emotions and topics of residents and tourists while

tweeting. Furthermore, the sentiment of the tweets

before and after the event will be different from the

patterns during the Olympics. The analysis included

sentiment extraction and the visualization of the

results in the form of hot spot density maps to

represent intra-urban differences. The workflow and

the methods applied can also be used for planning

purposes, by extracting information about the

spatiotemporal behavior and sentiment of the visitors

and residents during large planned events. Moreover,

the extraction of topics from tweets was also part of

the workflow, which can also be utilized by further

investigation for planning purposes, such as the

observation of topics reporting problems (e.g., traffic

jam, service delays).

3.4 The Spatiotemporal Patterns of

Urban Park Visits

Urban parks have a prominent role in the urban

system not just by providing a place for social contact

or recreation but they are also beneficial for the

environment and the physical and mental health of

visitors (Bertram and Rehdanz, 2015; Chiesura, 2004;

Hartig and Kahn, 2016; Picavet et al., 2016).

However, due to this complex role, it is often time-

and resource consuming to provide a general

overview of the perception of park visitors and their

spatiotemporal behavior all over the city. Like the

case of planned large events, Twitter data can offer

meaningful insights also for this instance. It is

possible to extract spatial and temporal patterns of

park visits, while also considering the sentiments of

the tweets, which is useful to represent the perception

of the visitors for planning purposes (Kovacs-Györi,

et al. 2018).

In their study, Kovacs-Györi (2018) used over 11

million tweets along with polygons representing

urban green extracted from OpenStreetMap, to

analyze the spatiotemporal patterns of park-related

posts and the users who posted them. Based on the

temporal frequency of a user’s tweets, the authors

identified potential residents. After the preprocessing

steps, the spatial analysis involved the measurement

of the average distance between a Twitter user’s main

activity center and a tweet posted from one of the

identified urban green areas. Then content analysis

was performed by using a dictionary and assigning

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sentiment scores to each word in a tweet.

Furthermore, using a similar method, an emotion was

also assigned to each tweet, where the algorithm

made it possible. As a last step, temporal analysis was

performed to identify the daily, weekly, and seasonal

patterns of park visits.

Based on the analysis of these spatiotemporal and

affective patterns, the classification of park users

became possible. The study found that many visitors

tweet from a park located 3-4 km away from their

main activity center (derived from tweeting activity).

Twitter users were also more likely to be more

positive while tweeting from a park compared to

other areas in the city, which supports the significant

role of parks in urban livability. However, there might

be slight differences between parks in terms of

temporal and intensity patterns of the positive

sentiments. Regarding the temporal characteristics of

tweeting in parks, the authors concluded that

afternoons, weekends, and the summer are

particularly popular for park visits. Interestingly, in

some cases, a given park was more popular during the

winter than in fall, which might also be significant

information for urban planners.

3.5 Walkability

Just like parks, walking also has its priority when it

comes to good urban quality and livability.

Walkability has a special role even within mobility,

as it is considered “human-scaled” and brings a

different perception of the surrounding urban

environment than other transportation modes (Gehl,

2010). However, to utilize the role of walking in

improving urban quality, walkability should be

adequately represented in the transport system, both

in terms of infrastructure and statistics, which is often

not the case. The integration of walkability

assessment into planning routines can provide a

valuable addition to urban quality improvement by

demonstrating the effect of walking both

quantitatively and qualitatively (Dörrzapf et al., n.d.).

Just as in the case of livability, walkability also

lacks a clear definition, including key factors and

their assessment. Dörrzapf et al. provided a

framework to define and evaluate walkability from

the perspective of pedestrians’ perception. The

integrated approach combines GIS methods and

biosensor technologies to represent how pedestrians

feel and perceive the environment when walking. By

utilizing biosensors and GPS receivers, researchers

are able to connect physiological body responses

(e.g., stress moments) to given locations while

walking. If this measurement procedure is repeated

with many participants in the same area, it is possible

to identify hot spots with similar physiological

responses. Thereby, walkability has high relevance

for planning by grasping qualitative aspects of

walking in a systematic and measurable way.

4 DISCUSSION

Beyond the traditional role of GIS in collecting,

storing and visualizing data and results of the spatial

and temporal analysis, the current position paper

introduced the further potential of GIS-based

livability assessment. On a conceptual level, it was

shown that spatial and temporal aspects are essential

to adequately represent the person-environment

relationship because the complexity and dynamics of

urban systems require it. Concerning the practical

side of livability assessment, the paper highlighted

some use cases where GIS analysis using various data

sources were used. All the examples were constructed

in a way to represent either a specific segment (e.g.,

temporal sensitivity, urban parks) or the whole

assessment process by focusing on the person-

environment relationship, and the perception of

people, instead of merely statistical factors such as the

number of grocery shops or average income levels.

However, as it is often the case, livability

assessments have also some limitations. These

limitations can be inherent, such as the subjectivity of

human needs and perception, which raises the most

challenges in livability assessment, but at the same

time, can be considered essential in the process.

Whereas other issues are more related to the input

data, whether they are available at the right scale and

for the right temporal extent, or they are representing

the phenomena examined. These are just some

general limitations; however, it can vary from case to

case depending on the circumstances and goal of the

project.

Section 3 provided an overview, among others, on

a set of GIS-based analysis techniques and data

sources for assessing various aspects of livability.

Questionnaires in the form of an assessment platform,

social media data by analyzing the spatiotemporal and

affective content of tweets, and biosensors to quantify

human perception are all promising ways to assess

elements of the person-environment relationship by

extracting relevant information from data, also for

planning purposes. By considering the spatial and

temporal characteristics of the data using GIS,

researchers, decision-makers, urban planners and

other stakeholders can gain valuable insights on urban

livability, also by identifying less well-performing

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areas and elements. The “diagnosis” of the city in this

regard, along with various visualization techniques,

and the support of participatory planning all raise

awareness about the situation of the residents and

their needs and expectations, thereby supporting

transparency. Hopefully, these evaluations are also

able to make urban quality improvement actions more

effective through detailed assessment and planning,

followed by systematic monitoring of the progress

and results.

5 CONCLUSION

Livability assessment due to its complexity requires a

holistic approach by considering both its key

elements and different properties. As a first step, I

identified these elements and properties, and then

provided use cases to illustrate the relevance and

potential analysis methods for each of them. The

dominance of the spatial properties in livability

assessment indicates the potential of applying GIS

methods. The identified livability properties also

define the required characteristics of the datasets used

for livability assessment. Beyond spatial and

temporal information, any potential dataset should

provide personal aspects, at least by representing any

aspect of the person-environment relationship.

Thereby, the application of GIS methods are

especially helpful for social media data or sensor

measurements, in livability assessment. Although this

approach also has its limitations, it can still be useful

in urban planning to “diagnose” a city before and after

performing actual planning actions in the process of

urban quality improvement.

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