Neighbourhood Attractiveness Research Articles

Retrofitting urban areas with wood: the origin of new projects in an emerging business ecosystem

Nurturing a low-carbon residential building stock requires businesses to create new solutions for markets. Wood material-based retrofits would be one solution but have remained rare in the urban context. Our study explores the structure and dynamics of an emerging business ecosystem (BE) of wooden retrofits in Finland. We study wooden retrofit projects, from the perspective of the initial steps of local-level development. By applying the concepts of BE and dynamic capabilities, we aim to shed light on the role of actors and their early-stage decision-making and use actor mapping and qualitative analysis of 27 thematic interviews with retrofit businesses and municipal actors. Results show that project initiation has relied on individual champions seizing opportunities as a main base in building dynamic capabilities. Builders and customers are key actors of wooden retrofit projects in local BEs in Finland. The identified actors are further involved with future plans for wooden retrofits, some with ambitious deep renovation with wood. Motivations for projects are driven from urban densification strategies, improvement of suburban neighborhood attractiveness and from the efficiency of space utilization. Results further elaborate a certain degree of difficulty in the early-stage decision-making. This study contributes to the scientific knowledge of both the BE and the dynamic capability perspective by exploring a path to material-driven sustainable construction in the Finnish context. We provide new information on this emerging retrofit construction business with potentially significant international implications if scaled up more widely.

Context-Specific, User-Centred: Designing Urban Green Infrastructure to Effectively Mitigate Urban Density and Heat Stress

<p>Green infrastructure plays a vital role for cities facing the challenges of urbanisation and climate change. It has the potential to mitigate the adverse effects of urban density and the heat island effect, enhancing the ecological and social resilience of cities and their inhabitants. This study identifies contextual, psychological, and social factors which influence people’s subjective evaluation of urban green infrastructure (UGI), density, and heat stress. Planning recommendations for effective, context-specific, user-centred design are developed to increase the social and health benefits of UGI in limited space. To do so, a mixed-methods approach that combines social surveys, GIS-analysis, and microclimate modelling was employed. The field studies were undertaken in two contrasting neighbourhoods in Munich, Germany: a densely built and scarcely vegetated inner-city neighbourhood and a declaimed “green and compact” neighbourhood at the outskirts. Both sites are assessed in terms of their supply of green infrastructure, building and population density, and outdoor summer heat loads drawing on geostatistical data and mean radiant temperature modelling. This assessment is compared to the inhabitants’ subjective evaluation thereof retrieved from face-to-face questionnaires, and semi-standardised interviews. The results indicate that the existence and the amount of UGI per se are not decisive for people’s perception of urban heat, density, and neighbourhood attractiveness. It is rather the perceived accessibility of green spaces, their design, quality, and contextual factors like traffic or the presence of other people that define its value for urban dwellers.</p>

Residential Location Choice in Istanbul, Tehran, and Cairo: The Importance of Commuting to Work

The determinants of residential location choice have not been investigated in many developing countries. This paper examines this topic, including the influence of urban travels on house location decision-making in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Based on 8284 face-to-face interviews in Istanbul, Tehran, and Cairo, the dummy variable of residential location choice, including two categories of mobility reasons and other factors, was modeled by binary probit regression modeling. By means of receiver-operating characteristic analysis, the cutoff value of commuting distance and the time passed from the last relocation was estimated. Finally, the significant difference between the value of these two variables for people with different house location reasons were tested by Mann–Whitney U-test. The results show that the eight variables of shopping-entertainment mode choice in faraway places, frequency of public transit trips, neighborhood attractiveness perception, age, number of driving licenses in household, commuting distance, number of accessed facilities, and the (walkable) accessibility of facilities influence the residential self-selections. People who chose their current home based on mobility commute a daily mean distance of 8596 m and relocated less than 15.5 years ago, while those who chose their home based on other reasons, such as socioeconomics or personal reasons, commute longer and moved to a new house more than 15.5 years ago. This shows how the attitudes of people about residential location have changed in the MENA region, but there are still contextual differences to high-income countries.

Mere presence of informal guardians deters burglars: a virtual reality study

ObjectivesThis study investigates the deterrent effects of incremental levels of guardianship on residential burglary and assesses how burglars differ from non-burglars in terms of their perceptions of opportunities for burglary.MethodsIn a virtual reality experiment, 181 incarcerated burglars and 172 non-burglars (university students) were tasked to appraise a virtual neighbourhood in search of a burglary target. During the appraisal process, participants were exposed to different levels of guardianship, ranging from the mere presence of a guardian to an intervening guardian.ResultsThe presence of a guardian deterred both burglars and non-burglars alike, with only negligible incremental effects for levels of guardianship. For burglars, guardianship increased the perceived likelihood of being caught and the perceived level of social cohesion, whereas it decreased neighbourhood attractiveness. The burglars differed from the non-burglars in terms of how they appraised the virtual neighbourhood, clearly reflecting differences in expertise between both groups.ConclusionsWith respect to residential burglary, the results suggest that guardians—in line with the original notion of guardianship developed by Cohen and Felson (American Sociological Review, 44(4), 588–608, 1979)—serve as a deterrent simply by being present.

The usefulness of past crime data as an attractiveness index for residential burglars

AbstractThis study examines the effects of neighbourhood attractiveness on the residential burglar's crime location choice process using a discrete choice model. We show that past crime data are an important index of a neighbourhood's attractiveness and can be combined with other attractiveness indices adapted from previous studies. We used data from 369 solved cases committed by 70 offenders and related these data to 1,134 areas (500 m grid cells) in Sendai City, Japan. The results showed that residential burglars were attracted to the following potential locations for crimes: (a) areas in proximity to his or her own residence; (b) areas having many or at least a higher proportion of residential burglaries in the past; (c) areas having many residential units; and (d) areas having a higher proportion of single‐family dwellings. The results confirm the validity of past crime data as an index of a neighbourhood's attractiveness for residential burglary.

Effects of “hotspots” as a function of intrinsic neighborhood attractiveness

Would the positive effect of an urban park differ as a function of whether it is located in Beverly Hills or in South-Central? Would the negative effect of a noisy highway in Beverly Hills differ from its effect in South-Central? The present research investigates how changes in intrinsic neighborhood attractiveness modify the effects of intensely valenced locations – i.e., positive or negative “hotspots.” In two experiments, participants rated the attractiveness of target locations situated at increasing distance from a positive or a negative hotspot, within a neighborhood that is itself intrinsically attractive or unattractive. The results show that salient intrinsic neighborhood attractiveness mattered irrespective of the distance to a positive hotspot whereas for a negative hotspot it showed an effect only farther away. We conclude that intense negative influence propagates in the same way irrespective of the intrinsic neighborhood attractiveness whereas intense positive influence dissipates quicker with increasing distance in unattractive neighborhoods.

How do spatial characteristics influence well-being and mental health? Comparing the effect of objective and subjective characteristics at different spatial scales

The impact of spatial characteristics on well-being has received increasing attention over the past decade. In most studies, however, the emphasis has been on either cognitive well-being (life satisfaction) or mental health. In addition, studies differ in terms of using objective or subjective characteristics, and in terms of the spatial scale of spatial variables (neighbourhood vs. the wider urban environment). This paper first discusses these differences from a theoretical point of view, and then compares model estimates based on different well-being conceptualisations and using objective and subjective spatial variables. To this end, a survey was held in the Utrecht province in the Netherlands that focused on this issue. We find that significant differences in cognitive and affective wellbeing and mental health are observed between neighbourhoods, which can be explained from both neighbourhood characteristics and personal characteristics of the inhabitants. We find that life satisfaction and affective well-being are more affected by subjective spatial variables, and mental health more by objective variables. In particular, life satisfaction and affective well-being are mostly affected by neighbourhood attractiveness and social safety, whereas mental health is positively associated with a newer housing stock. In general neighbourhood characteristics appear to have greater impact on different forms of well-being than accessibility variables on the urban level.

A37 Does The Installation of Bicycle Boulevards Improve Residents’ Perceptions of The Bicycling and Walking Environment? A Panel Study

Abstract Background The causal relationships between the built environment, perceptions and active travel remain less well understood. This study aims to evaluate the effects of the traffic-calming infrastructure, bicycle boulevards, on improving residents’ perceptions of the bicycling and walking environment. Bicycle boulevard, also known as neighborhood greenway, is a low-traffic street with traffic calming devices that reduce the volume and speed of motor vehicle traffic and treatments at intersections with major streets that facilitate safe crossing. Methods This analysis uses data from the Family Activity Study (FAS). The Family Activity Study is a longitudinal study of the effects of traffic calming infrastructure (bicycle boulevards) on behavior. The study started with 335 households living in 19 study sites (nine treatments and ten controls). Surveys were conducted at two points in time: Pre and Post. The Pre (n=491 adults) and Post (n=385) surveys are approximately two years apart, with bicycle boulevard construction occurring in between. The surveys include personal and household socio-demographics, subjective perceptions of their neighborhood environment, travel attitudes, social norms, self-efficacy towards travel behavior, and self-reported biking and walking behavior. The difference-in-differences estimator was used to evaluate whether there is significant differences between the treatment and control groups in terms of the changes of perceptions before and after the installation of the bicycle boulevard. Results The model results indicated that three of the five interaction terms were statistically significant, suggesting that changes of perceptions of neighborhood attractiveness, changes of perceptions of walking accessibility, and changes of overall perceptions of the neighborhood environment were significantly different between treatment and control group. In particular, the perceptions of residents in treatment group increased after the treatment, while the perceptions of residents in control group decreased. Conclusions Installation of the bicycle boulevards might help to improve the perceptions of the residents on their neighborhood environment for walking and attractiveness. This is particularly evident for the improvement of the perceptions on neighborhood attractiveness and walking accessibility. Surprisingly, this study did not find the significant effects of the bicycle boulevards on improving people’s perceptions of traffic safety, which are thought to be the direct effects of a bicycle boulevard considering most of its elements are associated with traffic calming. This finding suggested that installation of the bicycle boulevards in neighborhoods might not have immediate effects on improving the perceptions of traffic safety.

Does Quality Matter in Local Consumption Amenities? An Empirical Investigation with Yelp

The possibility that local consumption amenities provided by bars, restaurants, and other retail services improve neighborhood or city attractiveness has received increasing attention in the literature. Empirical research thus far has focused on the number of establishments in an area. This paper proposes and tests a method for differentiating consumption amenities along a quality dimension, based on either consumer ratings or price estimates from Yelp.com. Appealing to the implicit market model of Rosen (1974), consumption amenity is capitalized in the value of nearby housing. The results demonstrate that both the quantity and quality aspects of consumption amenities matter, and that consumer ratings are more informative about unobservable restaurant amenity than price estimates. Furthermore, comparisons between the results for the pre- and post-Yelp periods show that such capitalization differentials are only observed when information on quality is readily available to and widely used by the public. The method used in this paper to measure the quality of consumption amenities could be applied to other private retail businesses or even local public goods.

A system dynamics model to simulate sustainable interventions on chronic disease outcomes in an urban community

Socio-demographics of urban US populations have been associated with poor health status and chronic disease. Patterns of rising chronic disease prevalence have persisted in populations with lower socio-economic status despite substantial and costly public health efforts to the contrary. In this paper, we used a system dynamics model to simulate chronic disease prevalence, along with potential interventions, for a low-income urban community in Chicago, Illinois. We hypothesized that the ‘triple bottom line’ of sustainability—addressing economic, social, and environmental issues—would be key to mitigation and reduction of chronic disease over time in such a community. The aim was to inform decision making about urban design and public health programme planning towards formulation of approaches—some beyond the traditional boundaries of health interventions—to improve community chronic disease outcomes over time. We found that single interventions on the constructs of Income and Employment, Neighbourhood Attractiveness, and Social Cohesion were most impactful in reducing or reversing the rise of chronic disease prevalence. Increasing Housing Capacity allowed the Neighbourhood Attractiveness intervention to have a greater impact. In addition, interventions in Neighbourhood Attractiveness and Chronic Disease Prevention produced a greater combined mitigating effect on chronic disease prevalence than the sum of the individual intervention effects. Findings suggest that socio-environmental conditions should be addressed, with consideration of population migration dynamics, in formulating viable and sustainable solutions to improve community-level health outcomes such as chronic disease prevalence.

Selective mobility, segregation and neighbourhood effects

Selective mobility, segregation and neighbourhood effects

Selective mobility, segregation and neighbourhood effects

Selective mobility, segregation and neighbourhood effects

Selective mobility, segregation and neighbourhood effects

Selective mobility, segregation and neighbourhood effects

Modeling Social Ties and Household Mobility

Underlying the aggregate phenomena of persistent problems such as urban sprawl and spatial socioeconomic disparity is the individual choice of where to live. This study develops an agent-based model to simulate social and economic influences on neighborhood choice. With Danville, Illinois, as an empirical context, a pattern-oriented approach is employed to examine the role of social ties in shaping intraurban household mobility. In the model, household agents decide whether and where to relocate within the community based on factors such as neighborhood attractiveness, affordability, and the density of a household's social network in the prospective block group. Social network and neighborhood choices are encoded with logit utility functions. The relative influence of factors affecting the formation of social ties in the simulated social network, such as geographic proximity, similarity of income, race, and presence of children, are adjusted using parameter variation to create alternative model settings. Simulated migration patterns resulting from different network and neighborhood choice coefficients are compared with observed migration patterns over a two-year period. Based on 1,000 simulation experiments, a regression of homeowner migration error (the difference between simulated and observed migration) relative to the parameter settings revealed components of social network choice such as income, race, and probability of local ties to be significant in matching observed migration patterns. A nonlinear effect of simulated social networks on household mobility and thus migration error was exhibited in this study.

Neighborhood Street Scale Elements, Sedentary Time and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors in Inactive Ethnic Minority Women

BackgroundCardiometabolic risk factors such as obesity, excess percent body fat, high blood pressure, elevated resting heart rate and sedentary behavior have increased in recent decades due to changes in the environment and lifestyle. Neighborhood micro-environmental, street scale elements may contribute to health above and beyond individual characteristics of residents.PurposeTo investigate the relationship between neighborhood street scale elements and cardiometabolic risk factors among inactive ethnic minority women.MethodWomen (N = 410) completed measures of BMI, percent body fat, blood pressure, resting heart rate, sedentary behavior and demographics. Trained field assessors completed the Pedestrian Environment Data Scan in participants’ neighborhoods. Data were collected from 2006–2008. Multiple regression models were conducted in 2011 to estimate the effect of environmental factors on cardiometabolic risk factors.ResultsAdjusted regression models found an inverse association between sidewalk buffers and blood pressure, between traffic control devices and resting heart rate, and a positive association between presence of pedestrian crossing aids and BMI (ps<.05). Neighborhood attractiveness and safety for walking and cycling were related to more time spent in a motor vehicle (ps<.05).ConclusionsFindings suggest complex relationships among micro-environmental, street scale elements that may confer important cardiometabolic benefits and risks for residents. Living in the most attractive and safe neighborhoods for physical activity may be associated with longer times spent sitting in the car.

The influence of urban design on neighbourhood walking following residential relocation: Longitudinal results from the RESIDE study

The design of urban environments has the potential to enhance the health and well-being of residents by impacting social determinants of health including access to public transport, green space and local amenities. Commencing in 2003, RESIDE is a longitudinal natural experiment examining the impact of urban planning on active living in metropolitan Perth, Western Australia. Participants building homes in new housing developments were surveyed before relocation (n = 1813; 34·6% recruitment rate); and approximately 12 months later (n = 1437). Changes in perceived and objective neighbourhood characteristics associated with walking following relocation were examined, adjusted for changes in demographic, intrapersonal, interpersonal and baseline reasons for residential location choice. Self-reported walking was measured using the Neighbourhood Physical Activity Questionnaire. Following relocation, transport-related walking declined overall (p < 0.001) and recreational walking increased (p < 0.001): access to transport- and recreational destinations changed in similar directions. However, in those with increased access to destinations, transport-related walking increased by 5.8 min/week for each type of transport-related destination that increased (p = 0.045); and recreational walking by 17.6 min/week for each type of recreational destination that increased (p = 0.070). The association between the built environment and recreational walking was partially mediated by changes in perceived neighbourhood attractiveness: when changes in ‘enjoyment’ and ‘attitude’ towards local walking were removed from the multivariate model, recreational walking returned to 20.1 min/week (p = 0.040) for each type of recreational destination that increased. This study provides longitudinal evidence that both transport and recreational-walking behaviours respond to changes in the availability and diversity of local transport- and recreational destinations, and demonstrates the potential of local infrastructure to support health-enhancing behaviours. As neighbourhoods evolve, longer-term follow-up is required to fully capture changes that occur, and the impact on residents. The potential for using policies, incentives and infrastructure levies to enable the early introduction of recreational and transport-related facilities into new housing developments warrants further investigation.

Body Mass Index, Safety Hazards, and Neighborhood Attractiveness

Neighborhood attractiveness and safety may encourage physical activity and help individuals maintain a healthy weight. However, these neighborhood characteristics may not be equally relevant to health across all settings and population subgroups. To evaluate whether potentially attractive neighborhood features are associated with lower BMI, whether safety hazards are associated with higher BMI, and whether environment-environment interactions are present such that associations for a particular characteristic are stronger in an otherwise supportive environment. Survey data and measured height and weight were collected from a convenience sample of 13,102 adult New York City (NYC) residents in 2000-2002; data analyses were completed 2008-2012. Built-environment measures based on municipal GIS data sources were constructed within 1-km network buffers to assess walkable urban form (density, land-use mix, transit access); attractiveness (sidewalk cafés, landmark buildings, street trees, street cleanliness); and safety (homicide rate, pedestrian-auto collision and fatality rate). Generalized linear models with cluster-robust SEs controlled for individual and area-based sociodemographic characteristics. The presence of sidewalk cafés, density of landmark buildings, and density of street trees were associated with lower BMI, whereas the proportion of streets rated as clean was associated with higher BMI. Interactions were observed for sidewalk cafés with neighborhood poverty, for street-tree density with walkability, and for street cleanliness with safety. Safety hazard indicators were not independently associated with BMI. Potentially attractive community and natural features were associated with lower BMI among adults in NYC, and there was some evidence of effect modification.

P1-394 Healthy commuting: individual cognitions and neighbourhood factors associated with walking and cycling to work

IntroductionPhysical inactivity is among the most important and prevalent risk factors of many major diseases in developed countries. Knowing why people are physically inactive is therefore of key importance in...

Why do poor people perceive poor neighbourhoods? The role of objective neighbourhood features and psychosocial factors

Compared to people with a high socioeconomic status, those with a lower socioeconomic status are more likely to perceive their neighbourhood as unattractive and unsafe, which is associated with their lower levels of physical activity. Agreement between objective and perceived environmental factors is often found to be moderate or low, so it is questionable to what extent 'creating supportive neighbourhoods' would change neighbourhood perceptions. This study among residents (N=814) of fourteen neighbourhoods in the city of Eindhoven (the Netherlands), investigated to what extent socioeconomic differences in perceived neighbourhood safety and perceived neighbourhood attractiveness can be explained by five domains of objective neighbourhood features (i.e. design, traffic safety, social safety, aesthetics, and destinations), and to what extent other factors may play a role. Unfavourable neighbourhood perceptions of low socioeconomic groups partly reflected their actual less aesthetic and less safe neighbourhoods, and partly their perceptions of low social neighbourhood cohesion and adverse psychosocial circumstances.

Mapping quality of life in the south east Queensland region with a web‐based application

This paper describes the development of a prototype Web geographical information system for mapping aspects of quality of life derived from a survey of residents in the Brisbane‐South East Queensland conducted in 2003. Using cluster analysis, “downshifters” — people who voluntarily make a long‐term change in their lifestyle following the decision to “downshift”, other than planned retirement, which reduces their income ‐ are categorised. Principal component analysis was used to examine the performance of statistical local areas against three perceived components of neighbourhood attractiveness ‐aesthetic, amenity and social interaction — that underlie the residential location decision choice of survey respondents. Spatial distributions of downshifters and neighbourhood attractiveness can be visualised with a Web browser.