Investigating the Relationship between Objective and Subjective Indica-tors of Public-Services Domain of Urban Quality of Life in Hashtgerd New Town

Urban Quality of life can be measured either by subjective indicators using surveys of residents’ perceptions and evaluations of urban life satisfaction or by objective indicators using secondary data and relative weights for objective indicators of the urban environment. The three distinct objectives of this study are to investigate the possible relationship between accessing to urban public-services, improvement in subjective accessibility and life satisfaction; to investigate the access to public trans­portation system and satisfaction with public transportation as well as life satisfaction; and finally to see the degree of influence of accessibility to urban public services on life satisfaction in Hashtgerd New Town. After reviewing the related theoretical as well as empirical literature on the public-serv­ices domain of the quality of life, 18 subjective indicators for measuring the three subjective latent sub-domains of accessibility, transportation and life satisfaction and also 14 indicators were chosen to measure the objective latent sub-domains of accessibility, transportation and life satisfaction. Hasht­gerd New Town is consisted of four Phases. This study takes place in Phase I of the Hashtgerd New Town which is the most populated phase of the town. By applying the simple random sampling tech­nique, a total number of 125 samples were identified as the total number of samples needed to under­take this study. A systematic sampling technique was applied to gather the needed data by designing a questionnaire. A factor analysis was first applied to the data to calculate the factor weights for each of the said indicators. While subjective and objective indicators of urban quality of life are rarely related to each other, in this paper, these two types of indicators were linked through Geographical Informa­tion Systems (GIS) to gather objective indicators on responders’ urban environment within the same region with regard to urban services, facilities and public transportation. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), the strength of the relationship between these objective indicators and subjective indicators was examined. The obtained results show that improvement in objective urban QOL plays a very important role in improving the subjective urban QOL. Also, satisfaction as a result of objective accessibility to public urban services affects the subjective quality of life in a meaningful and positive manner which is statistically significant. It also shows that there is a statistically significant relation­ship between objective and subjective indicators of urban public services and life satisfaction in the Hashtgerd New Town. These findings indicate the importance of objective indicators of the quality of life and remind and urge the urban planners that the relationship between subjective and objective indicators of public urban services domain of quality of life plays an important role in determining life satisfaction in urban areas.