Toward a resource-based view of city quality: A new framework

Abstract

Based on an extensive literature review on intelligent cities, smart cities, and happy cities, and on their conceptual connections with citizens’ well-being, quality of life, and happiness, we developed a resource-based view on City Quality: the PESNAT (political, economic, social, natural, artificial, and technological) framework. The concept of City Quality rests on the idea of cities interconnected sub-habitats—PESNAT—which are powerful analytical categories needed for understanding cities as complex and intricate loci. This framework eventually aims at assessing the cities’ power to attract businesses and people, to contribute to a sustainable development of the city and an increased quality of life. Furthermore, two hypotheses are outlined regarding the level of importance of each sub-habitat in relation to happi ness, and the level of controversy of each one for citizens, city planners, and decision makers.