Uploaded on 2016-08-25 by Jack Hyland

1. How would you define livability? A qualitative or quantitative measure of how well a built environment supports its people’s needs in areas like: Fostering community, social cohesion Ease of movement safety , justice Ability of the individual to engage with and contribute to how their neighbourhood or city is run Health - environment and access to healthcare Economic growth and stability 2. Opportunity Housing Transportation Neighbourhood Environment Health Engagement City Livability Customized Diff. Seattle 63 51 -12 Albuquerque 53 41 -12 Jackson, MS 51 39 -12 5. I chose Opportunity as the most important metric and it went down for all three of my cities - Seattle, Albuquerque and Jackson, MS. Looking at the details of how this metric is devised, I was surprised to see that Seattle performing poorly for Opportunity. Looking at the criteria chosen to define this: -income equality -jobs per worker -high school graduation rate -age diversity I see that Seattle is above average in jobs per worker but below average for the rest. Subjectively, I would see Jobs per Worker to be the key one here and would question the inclusion of things like Age Diversity. I suppose this exercise points to the understandable skepticism about using quantitative data to produce a single grade in such a subjective concept as livability, which although definable, can be weighted in countless ways according to different people’s needs, culture etc.