Green spaces in housing development – buyers’ preferences

Abstract

Globally, extreme weather events are occurring more often, with increased intensity due to anthropogenic climate change. For example, in July 2022, monthly average temperature in Spain was 2.7 C above average, and UK has recorded temperatures above 40 degrees for the first time. It has been proven that implementation of green spaces in cities helps to address environmental, social, and even economic problems by providing ecological services, reducing temperature, and attenuating the heat island effect, providing aesthetic enjoyment, recreational opportunities and decreased stress levels. However, green infrastructure is rarely prioritised by developers. It has been argued that, due to space constraints, green infrastructures are an inefficient land use, costly to maintain, and that there is uncertainty if green infrastructures are valued by the market. This paper reports on results from a study examining the attractiveness and the effect of green spaces on housing market customer’ perceptions. To analyse the impact of green spaces, we worked with landscape architects and residential housing developers designing a multi apartment building with a courtyard. The courtyard area was designed accordance to The Green Area Factor resulting in five courtyard designs, each with a different level of greenery. All five designs were presented in dynamic virtual views and embedded in a survey questionnaire. Maintenance costs of all five green spaces were calculated. The findings shows that greenery does effect the perceived attractiveness of residential development. Maintenance costs for the courtyards, with lowest and highest level of greenery, differ by approximately 10 percent of the total maintenance costs. These findings are applicable in the context of new housing construction and renovation projects.