City Prosperity Index: a comparative analysis of Latin American and Mediterranean cities based on well-being and social inclusion features

The paper analyses recent data provided by the City Prosperity Index (CPI). CPI (UN Habitat, 2016) made available baseline data to monitor Sustainable Development Goal 11 aiming at making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. It is an instrument based on UN-Habitat concept of urban prosperity as being composed by six dimensions: productivity; infrastructure; quality of life; equity and social inclusion; environmental sustainability, and governance and legislation. The City Prosperity Index is computed using city level data deriving from a set of commonly available indicators that exist among all cities. The global CPI is a weighted mean of standardized indices from each of the six dimensions. The study focuses on Quality of Life (QOL) and Equity & Social Inclusion (ESII) indicators as key data in order to monitor well-being and urban inclusion. Based on CPI’s units of analysis, this study performs a comparative analysis of cities from different countries belonging to two areas: Latin America and Mediterranean (including both European and Northern African cities). This allowed us to explore the different stages of modernization (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005) in relation to the dimensions of social inclusion and well-being. Cluster analysis grouping data by QOL and ESII indicators shows that Mexican and Brazilian cities have very similar performances, while Moroccan cities show a gap in QOL indicators compared to Southern European cities, even though Moroccan cities accomplish better results in relation to poverty rate and youth unemployment. An interesting result occurred using t-tests with 1000 bootstrap samples to compare the Latin American cities with the Mediterranean ones. The analysis does not show statistically significant differences concerning indicators relating to Education (Literacy Rate and Mean Years of Schooling), Social Inclusion (Slum Households) and Gender Inclusion (Equitable Secondary School Enrolment). Instead, youth employment rate turned out to be significantly higher in Brazilian and Mexican cities when compared to the cities belonging to the Mediterranean area. These analyses may suggest an incomplete but visible improvement of well-being and social inclusion features in the two most populous Latin American countries or, in other words, a shift towards a post-materialist perspective.