By Richard Florida
CityLab
Location, location, location. When choosing where to live, we all make choices and tradeoffs between housing costs, commutes, and the kinds of amenities we need and want from communities—from better schools, safer streets, and warmer climates, to access to mountains or waterfronts, restaurants, and bars.
Just how much are we willing to pay for a better quality of life, and for the amenities and public services we believe will bring us that?
A new study published in the Journal of Urban Economics by economists David Albouy, of the University of Illinois, and Bert Lue, of the University of Michigan, provides important new insight on how much Americans are willing to pay to live in certain areas and to access the amenities that improve quality of life. The study looks at more than 2,000 neighborhoods across the country. I have written about quality of life indexes before, but the strength in the work of these economists lies in its specificity. Using people’s willingness to pay to live in specific areas as a measure of the quality of life there, the economists’ new index makes comparisons not just across metros, but within them.
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