Changes of Social Situation and the Conditions of Life in the City: The Case of the City of Poznan

The main aim of the paper is the attempt to explore relationships between the trends involving the improvements in the social situation in the city (incomes, affluence, level of unemployment) and the subjective indicators of life-quality in selected areas: housing conditions, safety in public space, social security. The study is going to be based on a longitudinal project of monitoring life quality “Quality of life indicators of the citizens of Poznan” conducted by the Quality of Life Centre of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan together with the Poznan City Council since 2002. In this period, 9 general measurements utilising uniform methodology were conducted as well as 3 monographic research-projects focusing on the issues of safety, civic engagement, and on social exclusion. The research program comprises twelve areas of city life, each of which is based on two sets of indicators: a. indicators derived from public statistics and b. indicators based on quantitative surveys of a representative sample of citizens. The systematic nature of the project (it has been running for 15 years), as well as its large scale – both in terms of desk research, and in the survey effort, allows for accessing large amounts of data. As the period of conducting the research involved vast improvements in the social conditions in the city: dynamic increase in the per capita GDP, significant decrease of unemployment, large improvement in the level of household affluence, hence, those changes would seem to constitute important factors modifying the subjective quality of life perceptions among the citizens of Poznan.