Kwaliteit van de leefomgeving en leefbaarheid; Naar een begrippenkader en conceptuele inkadering

The National Institute of Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands (RIVM) and RIGO Research and Consultancy BV (Amsterdam) performed a major literature review to identify various concepts in the literature concerning environmental quality, the relationships between these various concepts, as well as their respective theoretical bases. This report summarises the outcomes of this survey. First the history of concepts related to environmental quality is sketched from different perspectives such as city-planning, architecture, sociology, economics, well-being and health over the past 150 years. The development of these concepts is placed in a broader framework of societal development. It reviews the main (types of) concepts of livability, environmental quality, quality of life and sustainability, and presents examples of underlying conceptual models. Different notions and concepts are compared along the dimensions of domain, indicator, scale, time-frame and context as described by Pacione. It is concluded that a multidisciplinary conceptual framework of environmental quality and quality of life that will go beyond the disciplinary differences found in the current literature is needed if the field is to advance. In order to support the policy-making needs and goals of the Dutch Ministerial projects NMP4 and MILO some directions for future research are identified