Assessing Quality of Life Across Mexico City Using Socio-Economic and Environmental Factors

Abstract

Urban quality of life studies increasingly incorporate both socio-economic and environmental factors into their analyses, yet few studies have explored how the socio-economic factors relate to the environmental conditions or how to statistically describe the spatial patterns of quality of life as they relate to the socio-economic and environmental structure of a city. This paper evaluates a quality of life index for Mexico City that takes into account both social and environmental factors through a factor analysis and explores the relationship between the contributing environmental and social factors through a regression analysis. The spatial patterns of quality of life across the city are then examined using a geographic clustering technique. Results indicate that both socio-economic and environmental segregation characterize the physical structure of Mexico City and suggest that the peripheral areas of the city suffer from poor socio-economic conditions even though they have positive environmental conditions.