Happiness and quality of city life : The case of Milan, the richest Italian city

In this paper we made use of an ad hoc survey on different aspects of city life conducted in 2006 in ten metropolitan areas of the developed word. We investigate the relationship between eight indicators of quality of urban life and subjective well-being expressed by the interviewed citizens, showing that the subjective well-being is strongly correlated with the opportunity of personal relationships, which are given both by the town physical structure (availability of meeting places, accessibility of local shops, mobility) and by the existing social organisation of life (local meeting opportunities, volunteering).