Recent years have shown an increasing interest in local factors shaping the happiness or attachment of citizens in regard to their daily living environment, sometimes also coined city love or neighborhood love. This new strand of literature—often framed in the context of the “geography of happiness” or the “economics of happiness”—means an extension of quantitative socio-psychological or socio-economic research on determinants of people’s affection for their living environment, including local quality-of-life, sense of community, place-based social capital, attachment to “urban ambiance,” and so on. The present paper conceptualizes the nature and composition of urban characteristics of place attachment and appreciation (city love) in terms of two constituent factors, viz. city soul (indicators on the perceived intangible attractiveness of the city and its neighborhoods) and city body (indicators reflecting the tangible attractiveness features of the city). This analytical approach will empirically be tested for four Swedish cities. Resident surveys were conducted among a total of 2,573 respondents; the multidimensional relationships between outcome variables and background factors were tested through a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM), which revealed significant effects of Aesthetics, Amenities, Accessibility, Safety and Health, and City Image on place attachment and appreciation (“city love”). A more detailed city level analysis revealed salient place-specific differences. In general, Aesthetics seemed to be the most universal driver for city love, while City Image was the most important factor to contribute to city soul.

近年来，人们越来越关注影响公民在日常生活中的幸福或依恋的局部因素，有时还创造了城市之爱或邻里之爱。这一系列新的文学作品（通常是在“幸福的地理”或“幸福的经济学”的背景下进行的）意味着对人们对生活环境的影响的决定因素的定量社会心理学或社会经济研究的扩展。当地的生活质量，社区意识，基于地点的社会资本，对“城市氛围”的依恋等等。本论文对地方依恋和欣赏的城市特征的性质和构成进行了概念化（城市爱情。）的两个构成要素，即 城市灵魂（指示城市及其附近地区无形吸引力的指标）和城市主体（反映城市实际吸引力特征的指标）。该分析方法将在瑞典的四个城市进行经验测试。在总共2,573名受访者中进行了居民调查；结果变量和背景因素之间的多维关系通过偏最小二乘结构方程模型（PLS-SEM）进行了测试，该模型揭示了美学，便利设施，可及性，安全和健康以及城市形象对场所依恋和欣赏的显着影响（“城市之爱”）。更详细的城市水平分析显示了特定地点之间的显着差异。总的来说，美学似乎是推动城市热爱的最普遍动力，而城市形象是促进城市灵魂的最重要因素。