Urban Land Use Fragmentation and Human Well-Being

We study how land use fragmentation affects the life satisfaction of city dwellers. To this end, we calculate fragmentation metrics based on exact geographical coordinates of land use from the European Urban Atlas and of households from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Using ordinary least squares and fixed effects specifications, we find little effect on life satisfaction when aggregating over land use types. When looking at particular types, however, we find that life satisfaction is positively affected by lower average degrees of soil sealing, larger shares of vegetation, and more heterogeneous configurations of medium- and low-density urban fabric, especially in areas with higher population density.