Measuring and enhancing well-being in urban environments - lessons learned from the Quality of Life Initiative pilot cities

The Quality of Life (QoL) Initiative focuses on well-being across five domains of urban life. The Initiative enables cities to develop data and measurement tools to benchmark themselves and advance work toward well-being and quality of life in all of their policies. By using both global and local indicators, the QoL Initiative seeks to ensure universal relevance, including alignment with the SDGs, while capturing unique local priorities and the different contexts of cities around the world. This proposed event will be a panel discussion highlighting the significant results of the initiative, with high-level city representatives sharing their insights on their experience with the QoL Initiative. Panelists are senior representatives from pilot cities from different SDG regions. They will discuss why they chose to join the initiative; what commonalities and differences they observe between cities; bottlenecks and opportunities for measuring of quality-of-life in their city; how the integration of subjective indicators and innovative data collection processes have enriched local analysis; and how the results from the pilot process will inform their local policies, plans, and priority-setting. The exchange will showcase innovative methodologies, measurement techniques, applicability strategies, and data visualization approaches across the QoL initiative. Additionally, it will share the real-world impact of the initiative across pilot cities in different regions of the world.

This 90 minutes event will expect up to 100 participants, including policymakers, urban planners, researchers, and civil society members. By fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange among diverse stakeholders, the event aims to ignite collective action toward shaping more equitable, sustainable, and resilient urban environments globally. Through this comprehensive presentation of the QoL tool and the initiative's principles and achievements, participants will gain valuable insights into leveraging data-driven approaches to enhance quality of life and drive positive urban transformations.