Thesis subject

MSc thesis topic: Urban scaling of well-being

With most of the world’s population already urbanized, and the urbanization trend continuing, cities have become humanity’s main habitat. On one hand, cities are powerhouses of economic growth and the way of life they offer makes them attractive places to live. On the other hand, urban areas pose challenges to well-being such as high pollution levels, heat waves and stress-inducing environments. Cities can affect urban resident well-being in many ways, one pathway being the urban environment. It is important then, to understand the impact of urban design on well-being, to build healthy cities for the future. This is underlined by frameworks including the SDGs, the UN New Urban Agenda (NUA) and the 2018 WHO declaration on healthier and happier cities for all, that call for creating cities that foster well-being for all. To create a balanced and comprehensive urban knowledge base, comparative analyses between cities are needed.

Background

Urban scaling analysis is a simple method that enables powerful comparative analyses of cities. It refers to the mathematical relationships that describe how various socio-economic, infrastructural, and environmental properties of cities change predictably as cities grow in population size. What they basically show, is that some city properties more than double when a city doubles in size, whereas other characteristics do the opposite. The simple urban scaling analysis enables us to see if city characteristics show a consistent relationship with city size. We found indications that aspects of well-being also scale with city size, for cities of The Netherlands. For instance, if a city doubles in population size, the number of smokers more than doubles.

It would be interesting to see if the same holds for cities in the UK, a very different context.

In addition, there are cities that deviate from the general scaling trend. They have less smokers than you would expect from their size e.g. It is interesting to analyse if urban environmental characteristics can explain these deviations. One example is urban green, which is reported in many studies to be important to people’s well-being. Do cities with more green have lower shares of residents that smoke?

Relevance to research/projects at GRS or other groups

With this research you will contribute to an ongoing PhD research project.

Objectives and Research questions

To explore urban well-being scaling relationships for cities in the UK

  • Do we see similar urban well-being scaling relationships for cities in the UK as for cities in The Netherlands?
  • How can we meaningfully quantify urban environment characteristics that are known to influence urban well-being?
  • Can urban environment characteristics explain deviations from the urban scaling trend for cities in the UK?

Requirements

  • GIS proficiency: Familiarity with GIS is essential. You’ll work with spatial data layers, perform analyses, and create maps.
  • R basics: Performing the analyses in R is a pre.
  • Remote sensing (GRS20306).

Literature and information

  • Bettencourt, L., & West, G. (2010). A unified theory of urban living. Nature, 467(7318), 912-913.
  • Liang, X., Hidalgo, C. A., Balland, P. A., Zheng, S., & Wang, J. (2024). Intercity connectivity and urban innovation. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 109, 102092.
  • Zhu, Z., Zhou, Y., Seto, K. C., Stokes, E. C., Deng, C., Pickett, S. T., & Taubenböck, H. (2019). Understanding an urbanizing planet: Strategic directions for remote sensing. Remote Sensing of Environment, 228, 164-182.
  • Acuto, M., Parnell, S., & Seto, K. C. (2018). Building a global urban science. Nature Sustainability, 1(1), 2-4.

Theme(s): Human – space interaction