People’s quality of life is an indicator of how well a city serves its residents, and a measure of progress from a people-centred perspective. However, the concept remains complex and constantly changing. Cities require a dependable and flexible framework to accurately assess how policies and investments genuinely affect people’s daily lives.
The Quality of Life Initiative was launched by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), with the support of the Saudi Arabia Quality of Life Program. It introduces an international, standardized approach for measuring well-being in cities — giving local and regional governments actionable insights into how their policies affect people’s lives.
Why quality of life matters
As urbanisation accelerates, the question of how people live, work, and thrive in cities becomes more urgent. UN-Habitat’s Strategic Plan (2020–2025) envisions “a better quality of life for all in an urbanising world,” recognising that advancing human well-being is essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Against this backdrop, the Quality of Life Initiative assists cities in measuring and improving both the objective conditions and subjective experiences that define urban well-being. It enables decision-makers to grasp the real effects of their policies by utilizing human-centered data, capturing what people truly value.
By promoting a holistic, human-centered approach to urban measurement, the initiative helps cities turn global commitments into local actions, creating environments where all residents can enjoy prosperity and fulfillment.
Principles that guide the initiative
The Quality of Life Initiative is grounded in four key principles that redefine how cities think about development and data:
- First, human first — valuing what matters. The initiative extends beyond conventional metrics, encompassing both objective and subjective factors that influence people’s sense of well-being and satisfaction.
- Second, evidence-based decision making — actionable insights for change. Through innovative data collection, organization, and visualization, the initiative helps governments better understand local needs and design informed, data-driven policies.
- Thirdly, pioneering — learning from partner cities to scale up actions. Extensive consultations with governments, partners, and development actors for the measuring tool design, testing, co-creation, and validation will occur in cities worldwide. A joint assessment of residents’ quality of life will identify key areas for monitoring and improvement, offering new insights to build resilient, compassionate, and thriving communities.
- Fourthly, globally relevant, locally applicable — establishing new global standards for local change. The initiative proposed an innovative measuring tool that addresses the fact that quality of life means different things to different people in different places. It will help local decision makers better respond to their own challenges and priorities with the aim of improving the quality of life for their residents.
What the initiative offers: the Quality of Life Index
At the heart of the Quality of Life Initiative is the Quality of Life Index — a flexible measurement tool that helps cities assess residents’ well-being and track progress across multiple aspects of urban life, putting people’s experiences at the forefront of urban development. The Index helps governments identify gaps, prioritise investments, and align their actions with the Urban Monitoring Framework (UMF) and the SDGs. It uses quality of life to promote sustainable policies, investments, and community-focused innovations through globally relevant, locally applicable data collection and analysis.
The index provides a portfolio of indicators for cities to evaluate community priorities and guide actions across nine domains:
- Basic services & mobility
- Culture & recreation
- Economy
- Education
- Environment
- Governance
- Health & well-being
- Housing
- Social cohesion
The index adopted a dual-layer structure that ensures global relevance and local applicability.
- The first layer is the global layer, which is universal indicators that reflect quality of life dimensions relevant to most cities.
- The second layer is the local layer, encompassing community-specific indicators that reflect the unique needs, values, and priorities of each city.
Cities also interpret results through eight thematic lenses — accessibility, affordability, choice, connection and belonging, equity, safety, inclusion, and satisfaction — to provide a deeper understanding of what drives well-being for different groups.
Implementing the Quality of Life Index
To support cities in applying the Index, UN-Habitat has published the “Quality of Life Initiative Implementation Guidelines”. These guidelines provide step-by-step recommendations for adopting the framework and using it to inform policy. The process includes:
- Onboarding: introducing cities to the benefits of the Quality of Life Index and formalizing participation
- Planning: engaging stakeholders to define what quality of life means to the city’s inhabitants
- Learning about the Index: familiarizing cities with the Global and Local Layer indicators
- Indicator development: conducting workshops to identify local indicators that reflect the city’s unique priorities
- Data collection and index computation: gathering and analysing data to compute the Quality of Life Index
- Interpretation and management: using data insights to drive evidence-based policy and investment decisions
A Quality of Life Impact Platform is created to help local governments monitor and improve well-being, while also supporting quick decision-makingal operating system. It includes four technological solutions: city dashboard, impact map, AI city assistant, and federated data system. through a digit
Credit: the Quality of Life Initiative
Getting involved
Cities can engage with the initiative in several ways.
- Firstly, contributing to the consultation for the creation of the tool. The initiative works closely with local governments, academic institutions, and experts from across the public and private sectors with the aim of identifying best practices and sharing experiences for scaling up.
- Secondly, joining as a pilot city to ensure the initiative’s robustness, global relevance, and local applicability. Technical consultations will explore possibilities for innovation in data collection, generation, transformation, and visualization.
- Thirdly, adaptation of the tool. Local governments are encouraged to use the tool to tackle human rights and social issues, especially those affecting vulnerable groups.
- Fourthly, strategic partnership. The initiative is refined through lessons from consultations, including expert group meetings, roundtables, and city workshops, to enable it to become a new global standard for measuring the quality of life in cities.
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Credit: the Quality of Life Initiative
Towards a future of well-being for all
The Quality of Life Initiative signifies a shift in how cities evaluate progress and development — moving beyond just growth and infrastructure to prioritize human experience and satisfaction. By connecting data with empathy and aligning global standards with local realities, it provides cities with a way to make well-being both measurable and actionable.
As more cities adopt the framework, the initiative will gather important insights into what truly promotes happiness, health, and fulfillment in urban life, paving the way for more inclusive, resilient, and compassionate cities worldwide.
