Some Remarks on the Environmental Determinants : Factors Affecting the Quality of Urban Life

Abstract

Actually, a number of arguments arising from the actual experience of performance as a whole in developed areas and indications of cross-cultural differentiation in developing areas prove that there are certain limitations in implementing environmental policies and international commitments aimed at steering a course towards sustainable futures for European regions. Since the choice of a particular method for a specific project assessment depends on the cultural context, in addition to the political and administrative structures, public participation becomes fundamental in playing more effective roles in environmental decision procedures in European regions.In fact, among the number of approaches in human geography, positivist and humanistic approaches used together seem particularly meaningful in respect to regional differentiation in efforts leading to ecologically sustainable development. From the viewpoint of ecology, location and public participation, in other words for a bottom-up approach to European integration through international cooperation, the human eco-centric view seems the most appropriate viewpoint, since it is based on the human relationships and place dependencies. However, without explicit environmental premises, the sustainability debate seems indeterminate.Just as, certain findings verify the hypothesis that the community perception of urban health risks is key to understanding how a community perceives health risks, so is it recognized that not take into account the responding behavioural reactions to urban health risks for the affected community results in a failure to obtain objective measures of risk to design urban and regional environment projects.Specifically, from the standpoint of an ecologically sustainable development, it may be useful to examine the satisfaction rates of people in certain urban areas by utilizing selected models in order to evaluate likely planning decisions. In this paper, the performance of the Istanbul metropolitan area is examined by using a number of independent variables covering housing conditions, accessibility conditions, social and cultural parameters and environmental impact as a whole, besides also utilizing some European experience in this field.JEL Classification: R10, Q56, C31