In this paper I assess the current state of knowledge about quality-of-place (QOP) analysis. I find that there are persistent problems in measuring QOP, highly personal links between individual QOP perceptions and aggregate QOP measurements, mostly unintended impacts of public policy decisions on QOP outcomes, and inadequate triangulation across model approximations and data limitations when building tools to support local decision-making. The analytical community should therefore acknowledge that people hold diverse preferences, increase efforts to detect and model the consequences of policies, look across levels of decision-making for influences on QOP, and build adaptive analytical capacity.
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