What makes cities livable? Determinants of neighborhood satisfaction and neighborhood happiness in different contexts

Mental wellbeing and aging in place: The role of the built environment in promoting healthy aging

We analyze the built environment and its impacts on senior citizens' mental wellbeing. Through "Go-Along" method, 50 walking interviews were made to analyze the emotional experiences of elderly individuals in relation to the built environment. Results indicate that a highly walkable environment with local shops can generate a greater connection with the community, increasing individual tranquility and trust in public space. Natural elements like well-maintained gardens, consistent trees on sidewalks, varied tree leaf colors, and lush grass on streets positively influence seniors' mental wellbeing. These findings are crucial for urban design, offering valuable guidance to create inclusive environments that support healthy aging.

Walkability Versus Livability: Changes in Neighborhood Satisfaction After Relocation to a Walkable, Mixed-Income Community in Austin, Texas

Aim: This study examined significant knowledge gaps in understanding walkability-livability relationships. Background: The concept of livability focuses on perceptions of neighborhood environments in relation to quality of life. As walkable communities become increasingly promoted for their health and environmental benefits, questions remain about how walkability affects perceived livability across individuals with various backgrounds and preferences. Methods: We conducted a retrospective study with residents relocated to a community that is not only walkable but also mixed-income in Austin, Texas, U.S. Surveys were used to capture their satisfaction with perceived livability (i.e., "a good place to live" and "a good place to raise children") and specific neighborhood features, and relevant personal, social, and environmental factors. We used (1) paired t-tests to examine pre-post move differences, (2) binary logistic regressions to predict perceived livability, and (3) multiple linear regressions to predict the pre-post differences in perceived livability. Results: Relocation to this community demonstrated improved satisfaction with two overall livability measures and specific neighborhood features related to convenient transportation, access to services, environmental quality, and social cohesion. Affordable housing residents had more consistent satisfaction and greater improvements, suggesting improved residential equality in this mixed-income community. Improvements in perceived crime safety, natural surroundings, walkable destinations, and air quality predicted improvement in both livability measures. Denser streets improved satisfaction with a good place to live but were insignificant for the change in satisfaction with a good place to raise children. Conclusions: More research is needed to address distinct population outcomes and livability specific to raising children.

NordbØ EC, IhlebÆk C. Social sustainability in local communities in Norway: which factors are associated with people's satisfaction with their local community as a place to live now and in the future?

AIM

To investigate the associations between social sustainability factors and people's satisfaction with their local community as a place to live now and in the future.

METHODS

This study used data from the Norwegian County Public Health Survey conducted in Viken County, Norway, in 2021 (N = 97,323). The survey included questions concerning physical aspects (e.g. accessibility of services and facilities) and non-physical aspects (civic participation, social support, trust, safety, place attachment and well-being) of social sustainability in local communities. A new outcome variable was constructed to capture people's satisfaction with their local community as a place to live now and in the future. Hierarchical linear regression was applied to examine the relationships between physical and non-physical factors of social sustainability and this outcome.

RESULTS

All included factors were significantly associated with people's satisfaction with their local community as a place to live now and in the future, but the magnitude and direction of these associations varied. Place attachment (β = 0.53), safety (β = 0.15) and well-being (β = 0.11) were the strongest indicators of people's satisfaction with their local community. Non-physical factors accounted for 41% of the variance in people's satisfaction, while physical factors accounted for 14%.

CONCLUSIONS

Both physical and non-physical factors are essential for developing socially sustainable communities. This knowledge could be valuable for academics and policymakers, helping them better understand the complex relationships between various aspects of social sustainability and informing the development of socially sustainable local communities.

What Makes a Liveable Neighborhood? Role of Socio-Demographic, Dwelling, and Environmental Factors and Participation in Finnish Urban and Suburban Areas

Quality of residential area, or neighborhood, is one determinant of overall quality of life and associated with health and health behavior. Ensuring that urban and suburban neighborhoods remain liveable and comfortable to reside in is a challenge amidst growing urbanization. Neighborhood quality has been associated with socio-demographic, dwelling-related, and subjective and objective neighborhood factors. However, only a few studies have additionally included participation in neighborhood decision-making and examined whether these associations are stronger among residents who are more settled in the neighborhood. We examined whether subjectively and objectively measured environmental factors and participation are associated with perception of neighborhood liveability and possible effect moderators. We analyzed survey data collected in 2021 among adults (aged 18-97) living in suburbs and urban centers in five Finnish cities (n = 2057; response rate 34%) with logistic regression models. Almost 80% of the respondents perceived their neighborhood as liveable or very liveable. The following factors were most strongly associated with perceiving the neighborhood as liveable: low area-level socioeconomic deprivation; central urban zone; green view from home; satisfaction with neighborhood safety, green areas, blue areas, and maintenance of traffic routes; and good or very good possibilities to influence decisions regarding the neighborhood. Only a few interactions between indicators of being more settled in the neighborhood (e.g., age group and dwelling ownership) modified these associations. In all, our study suggests that to maintain liveability, urban or community planning should consider local residents' favorable perceptions of safety, recreational areas, and engagement in decision-making.

"Instead of Building More Buildings, They Should Plant More Trees", a Photovoice Study of Determinants of Happiness and Sadness Among East London Adolescents

Globally, mental health problems in adolescents, alongside associated morbidity and mortality, have never been higher. Local living, working and environmental conditions, socio-economics, and intra-individual and inter-individual processes impact mental health. The risk of developing mental health problems is higher in certain areas, including East London. However, limited research explores East London adolescents' experiences of mental health. An in-depth and locally situated understanding of determinants shaping East London adolescents' happiness and sadness is needed. This study used Photovoice, a qualitative method within a community-based participatory research methodology, to generate photographic and textual data, which was analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. This method allows participants to be part of knowledge production and authors to present the data. Our findings underscore the bidirectional interplay between environmental factors and adolescents' happiness and sadness. Gratitude for nature was described as increasing happiness: adolescents connected to nature to memories, appreciation, and leisure opportunities. Adolescents were concerned about the fragility of nature in response to urban development. The urban environment was perceived as imposing, inspiring, and offering therapeutic benefits blighted by pollution. Beautiful areas were described as paradisical and lacking, revealing urban development and economic productivity disparities. Our research documents the voices of an under-researched group, revealing novel insights while empowering adolescents as co-producers of mental health research. This study indicates participatory research is valuable for granting adolescents autonomy and addressing misrepresentation. The findings implicate multiple stakeholders, including "Health in All Policies." By deepening our understanding of adolescent mental health in East London, our study can be leveraged to bolster the effectiveness and relevance of interventions for East London adolescents.

Relationships between students' perceived campus walkability, mental health, and life satisfaction during COVID-19

Improving walkability in the campus environment and socio-psychological environments can promote students' mental health and subjective well-being. This study aimed to propose a theoretical model to investigate the link of perceived campus walkability (PCW) with mental health and life satisfaction (LS), and to disentangle the mediating impact of socio-psychological environments and academic performance on this relationship, while simultaneously considering the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. We applied structural equation modeling to analyze the data collected through a questionnaire survey conducted at six universities and colleges in Yantai, China. PCW had both direct and indirect positive effects on mental health and LS. However, indirect effects are greater than direct effects. Walking attitudes, social capital, and academic performance were critical to the relationship between PCW, mental health, and LS. Academic performance had the strongest indirect effect on mental health, while social capital had the strongest indirect effect on LS. We also found that during the COVID-19 pandemic, body mass index and family income were significantly correlated with mental health and LS. The findings indicate that campus planners and policymakers should improve PCW and support the socio-psychological environment to promote students' mental and social health during situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Assessing the impact of mega-city construction engineering on urban livability: an explorative study of Yan'an

Yan'an City is a typical squeezed city in China and faces the challenge of limited living space. The adoption of the "Mountain Excavation and City Construction (MECC)" program was poised to elevate the city's livability. Despite the importance of megacity construction projects, few studies have examined their impact on urban livability. This study aims to fill this gap by analyzing the effects of MECC and the satisfaction characteristics of urban livability in Yan'an City, based on survey data from both old and new urban areas. Employing factor analysis and multiple linear regression, this paper assesses the influence of MECC on urban livability across different demographic groups, including age, educational background, and occupation. The empirical findings demonstrate a significant positive effect of the MECC project on urban livability. However, during categorization discussions, some respondents expressed concerns about its negative impact. The results of multiple linear regression indicate that factors such as career prospects, residential satisfaction, interpersonal relationships, and transportation level significantly influence livability (R2 = 0.607 in ND and R2 = 0.609 in OD).

Social media insights into spatio-temporal emotional responses to COVID-19 crisis

The Coronavirus pandemic has presented multifaceted challenges in urban emotional well-being and mental health management. Our study presents a spatio-temporal sentiment mining (STSM) framework to address these challenges, focusing on the space-time geography and environmental psychology. This framework analyzes the distribution and trends of 6 categories of public sentiments in Shanghai during the COVID-19 crisis, considering the potential urban spatial influencing factors. The research specifically draws on social media data temporally coinciding with the spread of COVID-19 and the pre-trained language model RoBERTa-wwm-ext to classify public sentiment, in order to characterize the distribution and trends of dominant urban sentiment under the influence of epidemic at different phases. The interactions between urban geospatial features and sentiments are further modelled and explained using LightGBM algorithm and SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) technique. The experimental findings reveal the subtle yet dynamic impact of the urban environment on the long-term spatial variation and trends of public sentiment under the epidemic, with green spaces and socio-economic status emerging as significant factors. Regions with higher permanent population consumption demonstrated more positive sentiments, underscoring the significance of socio-economic factors in urban planning and public health policy. This research offers the most extensive analysis to date on the influence of urban characteristics on public sentiment during Shanghai's epidemic life cycle also lays the groundwork for applying the STSM framework in future crises beyond COVID-19.

Mega-city construction engineering to residential satisfaction: new insights from Yan' an of China

Introduction

The contradiction among population, economy and urbanization has gradually intensified, and the Mountain Excavation and City Construction (MECC) project is one of the special solutions. Nevertheless, there are few comparative studies on the project index studies and effect of MECC projects on residential satisfaction. To remedy this deficiency, this study base on the Yan'an new district (YND) reconstruction project, attempting to analyze the specific influencing factors prerelocation and post-relocation from the perspective of residential satisfaction.

Methods

After conducting reliability and validity analysis on each dimension, multiple linear regression and paired t-test were used to analyze and compare the questionnaire data.

Results

The results show that the residential satisfaction index of the YND is indeed higher than that of the Yan'an old district (YOD). Concurrently, the decisive factors of residential satisfaction are also different. Specifically, the interpersonal communication, supporting facilities, community environment and economic income are significant in the YOD, but only the aspect of supporting facilities is negative significant. The supporting facilities, community environment, economic income and urban development are all positive significant in the YND. The satisfaction factors of middle-aged people in YOD and YND have the most significant differences, and the significance of each dimension is different.

Discussion

The research results of this study provide a comparative perspective at the micro-level for evaluating China's urban construction, and it supplies specific directions for future urban development and the improvement of old cities through the new residential satisfaction index.

Spatial and temporal characteristics of rural livability and its influencing factors: implications for the development of rural revitalization strategy

Building livable rural regions is a key objective of China's rural revitalization, and fostering coordinated and sustainable regional development in China necessitates investigating the geographical and temporal distribution and influencing variables of livability in China's rural areas. This paper compares the concept and connotation of rural livability based on regional economic development theory and sustainable development theory, integrates China's rural revitalization strategy, proposes an index system for evaluating rural livability in China, and conducts an empirical analysis of livable rural areas. Firstly, the level of rural livability development is measured by the entropy method; secondly, the aggregation effect of provinces is demonstrated by using the Moran I index, and finally, the spatial Durbin model is used to explore the influencing factors of rural livability and its spatial spillover effects. Findings of our study reveal that the results of the entropy method indicate that the livability of rural China is in a growing development trend in all provinces, but the livability shows some regional disparities. The Moran index reveals that there are obvious spatial autocorrelations in the livability of Chinese rural areas, and the most typical features are the "high" and "low" clusters. The spatial Durbin model suggests that the influences on the development of rural livability are diverse. Besides, other variables such as environmental pollution and per capita housing area show a negative association with rural livability, and investment in fixed assets, cultural atmosphere and medical health show a positive relationship with rural livability. Based on the study findings, it is proposed that in the rural revitalization strategy process, the formulation of monitoring system should be strengthened and intensify the promotion of coordinated inter-regional development.

On the relationships between auditory and visual factors in a residential environment context: A SEM approach

To understand the effects of specific elements that may enhance or detract residents' well-being, it is important to explore the relationships between auditory and visual factors, based on people's sensory experiences. Although residential environments provide natural experimental conditions to observe these relationships, the complexity of measuring sensory perceptions and their subsequent interpretation constitutes a challenge. This study aims to identify the influence of socio-demographics and residential location characteristics on three latent variables: noise-Sensitivity, sound-Pleasantness, and visual-Liveability in a Latin American city. The methodology is replicable and relies on a digital survey that displays environments in 360-format video and uses sound immersion techniques; it was applied to a sample of household heads in Quito, Ecuador. Based on an efficient experimental design, we selected different residential environments according to acoustic-visual attributes and the proximity to residential, commercial, and recreational land uses. Structural Equation Models (SEM) were estimated using mediating variables. Our results reveal the influence of noise-Sensitivity on sound-Pleasantness and, indirectly, on visual-Liveability. Further analysis shows that the impact of sound and visual perception changes with different socio-demographics and residential location characteristics.

The role of personality in neighborhood satisfaction

Urbanists have long been interested in understanding what makes people satisfied with their neighborhoods. However, relatively little is known about how residents' personality traits may affect their neighborhood satisfaction. In this paper, we explore the direct and indirect associations of personality traits with neighborhood satisfaction in a representative sample of adults in Michigan (USA). We find that each of the personality traits in the five factor model are associated with neighborhood satisfaction in the same way that they are known to be associated with subjective well-being. However, we fail to observe evidence that personality traits moderate the association between perceptions of neighborhoods and neighborhood satisfaction, or that personality's association with neighborhood satisfaction is mediated by neighborhood perceptions. We conclude that there is potential for drawing on theoretical and empirical developments in positive psychology for understanding neighborhood satisfaction, but observe that the underlying mechanisms for the association between personality and neighborhood satisfaction remain unknown.

Neighborhood satisfaction and reproductive status

Both urban planners and urban scholars have been keenly interested in identifying the characteristics associated with neighborhood satisfaction. One robust but surprising pattern is that the presence or number of children in a household has no effect on neighborhood satisfaction. To clarify this pattern, we measured the neighborhood satisfaction of a representative sample of 1,000 Michigan adults, whom we divided into six distinct reproductive statuses: co-parents, single-parents, empty nesters, not-yet-parents, childless individuals, and childfree individuals. We found that a simple parent vs. non-parent dichotomy hides significant heterogeneity among these groups. Specifically, we found that single parents and childfree individuals experience significantly less neighborhood satisfaction than other groups. We conclude by reflecting on the methodological and practical implications of differences in neighborhood satisfaction when more nuanced reproductive statuses are considered.

Validation of the abbreviated indicators of perceived residential environment quality and neighborhood attachment in China

The purpose of this research is to utilize factor analyses to evaluate the reliability and factorial structure of an abbreviated version of the instrument that includes indicators of perceived residential environment quality (PREQ) and neighborhood attachment (NA) in Chinese urban environments. The instrument has 11 scales that measure PREQ and 1 scale measuring neighborhood attachment (NA). Architectural and urban planning aspects (three scales: Architectural and Town-planning Space, Organization of Accessibility and Roads, Green Areas), socio-relational aspects (one scale: People and Social Relations), functional aspects (four scales: Welfare Services, Recreational Services, Commercial Services, and Transport Services), and contextual aspects (three scales: Pace of Life, Environmental Health, and Upkeep and Care) are all covered by the 11 PREQ scales. A total of 1,332 people living in Chinese urban cities completed a self-report questionnaire that included these 12 scales. A calibration sample and a validation sample that were randomly split from the total sample verified the factorial structures of this instrument, and the abbreviated instrument had acceptable reliability and validity. The validated abbreviated version of the PREQ and NA instruments allowed for a more reliable and manageable tool that might lessen respondents' exhaustion of a large number of items, this also contributed to the policy-making for urban planning and practical architectural design.

Towards the analysis of urban livability in China: spatial-temporal changes, regional types, and influencing factors

The increasing drift of urbanization and its impact on urban human settlements are of major concern for China cities. Therefore, demystifying the spatial-temporal patterns, regional types, and affecting factors of urban livability in China is beneficial to urban planning and policy making regarding the construction of livable cities. In accordance with its connotation and denotation, this study develops a systematic evaluation and analysis framework for urban livability. Drawing on the panel data of 40 major cities in China from 2005 to 2019, an empirical research was further conducted. The results show that urban livability in China has exhibited a rising trend during the period, but this differs across dimensions. The levels of urban security and environmental health are lower than those of the three other dimensions. Spatially, cities with higher livability are mainly distributed in the first quadrant divided by the Hu Line and Bole-Taipei Line. Cities in the third quadrant are equipped with the lowest livability. In addition, the 40 major cities can be divided into five categories, and obvious differences exist in terms of the geographical distribution, overall livability level, and sub-dimensional characteristics of the different types. Furthermore, the results of the System GMM estimator indicate that the overall economic development exerts an inhibiting effect on the improvement of urban livability in present-day China, but this logical effect exhibits obvious heterogeneity in different time periods and diverse city scales. Finally, there are also differences in the influencing direction and degree of specific economic determinants.

Indicators as Mediators for Environmental Decision Making: The Case Study of Alessandria

The design of urban public open spaces plays a key role in the development of micro-scale reactions to global phenomena (pandemic, climate change, etc.) that are currently reshaping the human habitat. Their transformability and healthy influence on the urban environment make them strategic nodes for acupunctural regeneration with systemic effects. Several methods, models, and indicators have been developed to face the complexity of these spaces, made up of tangible and intangible layers; however, there is a gap between theoretical investigation and the need for public administrations to devise feasible solutions, strategies, and guidelines. The paper focuses on this mediation, presenting, as a case study, an adopted methodology and the first results achieved according to guidelines for the regeneration of the system of squares in the historical center of Alessandria (Piedmont, Italy). In this case, a multidisciplinary approach and a Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) method, supported by geospatial analysis and GIS technology, have been employed to work as mediators for a participatory process which will involve public administration, stakeholders, experts, and researchers. The paper presents an overview of the workflow, with a focus on the first set of thematic indicators and an open conclusion. It will explain how they have been defined, integrated, and turned into a dialogic tool, with the aim of laying the foundation for the next stage of involvement by the public administration and stakeholders. Specific attention will be paid to the key role of vegetational and environmental parameters, which represents the requalification strategy’s backbone, for both local and systemic scales.