Are We Happy in Densely Populated Environments? Assessing the Impacts of Density on Subjective Well-Being, Quality of Life, and Perceived Health in Montreal, Canada.

Compact city development has been increasingly promoted as a tool to encourage urban sustainability and reduce humans’ environmental footprint. The impacts of such on subjective well-being (SWB), Quality Life (QOL), perceived health—non-monetary metrics prosperity—have not extensively explored in the North American context. This paper delves into relationship between density happiness by analyzing travel survey distributed Montreal, Quebec, Canada (n = 4,148). A cumulative logit model assessed levels happiness—as measured SWB, QOL, health—against confounding variables age, gender, household size, marital status, education, income levels, residential self-selection, while including neighborhood our main policy variable. Results do show that population affects health or SWB. However, small inverse QOL was observed. Analyzing characteristics through their effect provides further evidence links landscape happiness, study’s results can inform zoning land-use policymaking.