Composite Index for Quality of Life in Italian cities: an application to URBES Indicators

Il Benessere Equo e Sostenibile nelle città (URBES) Report, drawn up by the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) offers a set of relevant indicators to assess the quality of life (QoL) in fourteen big Italian cities. These indicators belong to the twelve dimensions of well-being identified by Benessere Equo e Sostenibile (BES), the dashboard of indicators provided by ISTAT and the National Council of Economy and Labour (CNEL) in 2013 to evaluate the differences in well-being among the Italian regions. Our paper uses this set of data to highlight the Italian urban situation, through the construction of a composite indicator. The selected methodologies to do that are additive model, factorial analysis and Borda method. We obtain a ranking that shows what context can allow positive levels of QoL. This study drops in a critical phase: Italian territorial administration is going to be modified and “Metropolitan Cities” will assume an increasingly important role.