Perceived urban quality of life in Timișoara’s neighbourhoods

The city of Timișoara holds one of the lowest levels of quality of life compared with other European cities, where citizens are not satisfied with the level of pollution, according to mass-media and other previous studies (Morais & Camanho, 2011). Our study is part of a bigger project where our objective is to assess the level of urban quality of life in Timișoara, and compare it with the city of Salzburg, Austria. The analysis of differences between the two neighbourhoods in terms of subjective advantages and disadvantages, the general level of urban quality of life, and the level of neighbourhood and community quality of life, are presented. We applied the questionnaire on urban quality of life adapted by Alexander Keul (2008) after Detroit Area Study developed by Robert Marans (2001), on 90 citizens (N=90) from Timișoara, 38 respondents from Soarelui and 52 from Circumvalatiunii neighbourhood. Results show significant differences between the two neighbourhoods for the general level of urban quality of life (t=2.04, p<.05), and for the perceived quality of the neighbourhood (t=.277, p<.05). There are no significant differences for the level of perceived quality of the community (t=.19, p>.05). In conclusion, the citizens from the neighbourhood Circumvalațiunii have a higher degree of urban quality of life when compared with the citizens from the neighbourhood Soarelui. Also, citizens from Circumvalațiunii are more satisfied with the quality of their neighbourhood than citizens from Soarelui. The qualitative and quantitative results and further directions are discussed in this article.