Camilla Lenzi (p), Giovanni Perucca

Jaewon Lim

The identification of the existence of a geography of discontent has been frequently interpreted as one of the most dramatic consequences of the surge of interregional disparities in the last decades, both within and outside the European Union (EU). This paper aims at contributing to this burgeoning field of research by understanding the role played by urbanisation in mediating the relationship between inequalities and the geography of societal discontent. By pooling data sourced from several Eurobarometer waves, this paper shows how urbanisation can mitigate the negative effects of inequalities on discontent in highly peripheral regions.

Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn (p)

Camilla Lenzi

Urbanization, arguably the most significant disruption of human habitat in our species history, has
received surprisingly little attention in terms of Subjective WellBeing theory. We know that across the
developed world urbanites are less happy, yet we miss theory: what can be the mechanism? This article
aims to start filling this gap. We have reviewed SWB urban literature to find out the mechanisms of
urbanness affecting SWB. An apparently surprising empirical finding that people are less happy
in cities should not be surprising given that happiness theories indicate at
least some urban happiness penalty.

Paolo Veneri

Lower levels of housing and neighborhood satisfaction have been related to constraints in income, housing tenure, household type, housing attributes, and neighborhood conditions. However, socioeconomic profiles and objective housing and neighborhood characteristics cannot explain all the variations in the satisfaction gap between migrant and native households. This paper sheds new light on the role of neighborhood attributes, specifically the migrant composition, in shaping the migrant gap in neighborhood satisfaction in the Netherlands by investigating whether there exists an integration effect of migrant status by migrant composition. The study runs ordered logistic regressions using data from the comprehensive national survey on housing conditions and satisfaction in the Netherlands. Without adding the interaction terms, the result shows that migrant households are similarly satisfied with the living environment when living in a home and neighborhood of the same quality. However, after the inclusion of the interaction effects between the variables of migrant households and neighborhood migrant composition, the key results indicate that the migrant gap in satisfaction varies as the migrant composition changes: migrant households express less satisfaction with the neighborhood’s living environment than their native counterparts when the neighborhood migrant composition is less than 17%. Constraints in migrant households’ accessibility to particular amenities and social interactions are possible explanations for this satisfaction gap in native-dominated neighborhoods. The finding provides insights into using housing satisfaction data to research migrants’ housing preferences and constraints and has important implications for migrants’ integration into the settlement society.

Boglárka Barsi (p)

Weiyi Cao

The foundation of happiness in political thinking dates back to Aristotle’s ethics (Arisztotelesz 1997), where happiness (eudaimonia) is in the centre, and the question is how can we achieve the highest level of happiness in the society. In modern political thinking, especially in utilitarianism, happiness has continued to play a central role (Ludassy 1991), as the maximisation of happiness and minimisation of pain and suffering is the most important goal in both individual and community levels. According to Csíkszentmihályi (1992) people evaluate every other goals in that aspect how it is contributing to their happiness.
Various evaluation methods, models for understanding and conceptualizing happiness of nations, and subnational settlement levels, have been developed to explain happy city concepts, which aim to define their scope, objectives and architectures. The multidimensionality of happiness coupled with cities’ complexity, calls for specific assessments able to distinguish between different dimensions of happiness.
The usages of Indexes, indicators and rankings have several advantages. We can determine “leaders” and those, lagging behind, performing better and least settlements. Indicators and indexes are useful tools of preparation of location choices for enterprises or investments. They are also aiming at positioning cities according to their competitiveness, strength and weaknesses. Indicators are helping to elaborate strategic priorities and development possibilities. There are many advantages of using indicators and indexes. City rankings attract lot of attention in both scientific and public life. They generate discussion and debate on smartness, competitiveness, quality of life, helping to rethink formerly elaborated strategies and development priorities. They also allow to position cities, can be marketing tools in city promotion and contribute to the success of city leaders (Giffinger-Gudrun 2010). The usage of indicators is relatively simple, clear, easily interpretable, easy to understand, visualize, compare and reproducible in time and space.
Still, from the review of different city rankings and indexes some limits and problems can be derived:
• The problems of data collection.
• The weighing and aggregation of indicators will greatly influence the final results.
• The problems of transparency.
• The correlation among indicators and different fields of analysis are quite strong.
• The problems of comparison.
• The lack of dynamic analysis.
• The lack of individual aspects.
Methodological limits, practical and economical obstacles of data collection at settlement level are affecting the elaboration of better evaluation system. More specific, focusing on city’s vision, strength and weaknesses, assessment methods are needed.

Zeynep Elburz (p), Karima Kourtit, Peter Nijkamp

Boglárka Barsi

The aim of this study is to provide a new quantitative perspective on the geography of well-being using an urban/rural typology and city size elements in order to detect where people are happier, and to examine the determinants of well-being by considering both temporal and spatial effects. We use 81 NUTS 3 regions and the time period 2012-2019 to analyse the geography of well-being in the Turkish case. Our results show that, living in urban area in general, makes people happy, but that density negatively affects well-being. In addition, city size matters for enhancing well-being. We also analyse the determinants of well-being by using material and social well-being indicators. Next, the a-spatial and spatial model results based on spatial-econometric regressions show that education, health, employment, and income are all important for well-being, while also indirect effects (spillovers) of these indicators exist. Our results indicate that ignoring spatial effects causes an underestimation of the effects of critical determinants of well-being in geography.

Jaewon Lim (p), Andres Rodriguez-Lombeida

Zeynep Elburz

Happiness and well-being are intrinsically subjective terms and statuses human beings may find a variety of definitions. In this perspective, a wide range of measures has been developed and used to measure this subjective happiness and/or well-being. Especially, with the promotion of place-based subjective well-being (and happiness) by many institutions, there has been a growing interest in regional science about how to measure place-based subject happiness. For instance, some recent empirical studies of European cities in Sweden and the Netherlands, are the responses to the call for the 2020 European Strategy aiming to promote the placed-based well-being of human beings. Even with these recent efforts, it is still not possible and will never be possible to build "one-size-fits-all" types of measures and/or approaches to estimate the subjective level of happiness. In the U.S., measuring the placed-based level of social capital accumulation has been an important research subject for regional inequality studies mainly funded by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture). A county-level social capital index has been developed and updated by a group of scholars at the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development. They selected the list of variables to construct a composite index to measure the county-level social capital for the years, 1990, 1997, 2005, 2009, and 2014. This index clearly shows the shiting trend of spatially heterogeneous distribution of social capital accumulation over time. More recently, many of the privately-funded research consulting firms in the U.S. have published various types of rankings based on the happiness of places. WalletHub, for example, developed another composite index measuring the level of happiness among the 182 largest cities in America. Both Social Capital Index and WalletHub's Happiness Scorea are composite and standardized indices but at the same time still subjective. This study aims to compare these two and some other widely used composite scores developed to measure the level of place-based happiness in the U.S. The main question is if the social capital level (developed by Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development) matters for the happiness of cities. Additionally, if so, how much it matters? This study utilized the ESDA (Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis) for descriptive spatial analyses and specify a set of spatial regression models to answer these questions.