Urban quality of life in Istanbul: Priorities and segmentation

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to model the desires, expectations and priorities of the inhabitants of Istanbul, a city with a population of about 15 milion, from a multidimensional perspective. In this way, effective allocation of the city's resources can be achieved to improve the quality of life for such a large number of people, which is the primary concern of the local authorities as well as the urban planners. A survey is conducted in Istanbul so that the priorities of the inhabitants are revealed and the city where they would like to live is portrayed. The data obtained are used as input for hierarchical conjoint analysis, a decompositional multivariate data analysis technique frequently used in marketing. The survey is primarily based on the evaluation os hypothetical , orthogonally-designed city profiles for four different constructs and a bridging construcy on a 0-10 rating scale. The relative importance of the constructs and thier attributes are estimated at both the individual and the aggregate level. A segmentation is made on the demographic and social characteristics of the respondents to reflect different classes. The research is an interdisciplinary group work acting as a bridge between urban planning and multiattribute decision mak?ing, thus judgments of experts from different disciplines are used in every stage of the study