2026/04/14 by Greg Edwards, Rhys Jones · 1 voice
Decision Sciences · Social Sciences · #Healthcare innovation and challenges #Social Issues and Policies #demographic modeling and climate adaptation
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/1523908x.2026.2653658
openalex publication_date 2026/04/14 · openalex created_date 2026/04/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
The Welsh Government’s Well-being of Future Generations Act represents a ground-breaking attempt to improve well-being, social justice, and sustainability across Wales. The implementation of key parts of the Act is devolved to the local authority level where Public Services Boards (PSBs) conduct well-being assessments for their areas using a ‘place-based’ approach. In this paper, we critically evaluate the spatial methodologies used by PSBs to make well-being ‘legible’ at a local level through their well-being assessments. We discuss how the practice of aggregating data to spatial units is prone to distortions and masking effects associated with the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP), and how this issue is compounded by the multi-stranded vision of well-being contained within the Act. Drawing on mixed methods and a comparative case study, an alternative ‘grounded’ approach is explored using near-disaggregated data to inform the definition of spatial units. In this alternative approach, spatial units are considered as the analytical categories that result from analysis, rather than preconstructed units to contain the analysis. We conclude this ‘grounded’ approach produces a more spatially sensitive analysis that minimises MAUP effects, and that the Well-being Act needs to accommodate a plurality of spatial units for well-being to be maximised.