This paper describes the Quiet Places Project in Amsterdam. The purpose of the study was to find out: (1) which public quiet places there are according to Amsterdam residents; (2) what characterizes a quiet place; (3) to what extent do residents want peace and quiet; (4) how do residents realize these needs. The factors determining the need for quietness are presented in a model showing the influence of demographic and socio-economic issues, health status, sensitiveness to noise, daily activities and the noisiness in and around home. Most important of these factors is sensitivity to noise. Elderly and less healthy people are more often sensitive to noise. People who are annoyed by sound from traffic, airplanes and the like show a higher need for quietness. People with a lively household or neighbourhood report lower needs for quietness. Visiting a quiet place and going outside to walk or bike can have a compensating effect on the need for quietness. This suggests that creating quiet places and enhancing possibilities for quiet recreation in urban environments can have a positive effect on the quality of life in the city. Objective noise levels at the quiet places were taken from environmental noise maps. This shows that there may be a preference for low transportation noise levels, but levels up to 60 dB Lday are acceptable. Apparently this depends on a relative quietness or on non-acoustic characteristics of an area: the presence of vegetation and other pleasant stimuli.

Many cities in the western world have recovered from the urban crisis after the industrialization period and have become attractive places to live and work. It seems obvious to conclude that the preference for urban living has increased. But is this really the case? The (increased) preference for urban living may also be driven by demographic, socioeconomic and socio-cultural changes in the population rather than by a structural change in residential preferences. In depth analysis of the stated residential preferences in Amsterdam in the period 2003-2017 indeed show that residential preferences are quite stable. The analysis does show a small decline in the preference for moving at all: slightly more households in Amsterdam prefer to stay put. This can mainly be explained by the growing owner-occupied sector. When households want to move, their preference for moving to the region is fairly stable. Only families with older children seem to have become more urban orientated. The education level is one of the key variables that explains the stated preference for moving to the region of Amsterdam: the higher educated more often prefer to stay. Their share in the population has increased and this does influence the residential preference at an aggregate level towards a more urban orientation.

In many postindustrial cities in the Global North, increasing families seem to choose to stay in the city rather than move to the suburbs. This might imply that residential preferences of young families shift from suburban to more urban. In this paper, the moving behaviour of young families in the four largest cities in the Netherlands is analysed. The moving behaviour is measured with register data and analysed with the Oaxaca‐Blinder decomposition technique and with logistic regression techniques. The results show that young families broken down by residential biography and income have very different moving behaviours in their choice for staying in the city or moving to the region around the city. The changes in the outmigration of young families from the city to the region are not necessarily related to changing residential preferences, but more related to changes in the composition within the group of young families. The growth of higher‐income families in cities seem to be primarily explained by the changing composition of city dwellers before family formation and not so much by a more urban orientation in their moving behaviour. Changes in moving patterns through time and the differences between the four cities seem to be related to the differences in the urban economy and housing supply. Especially in Amsterdam, the lack of larger family home drives young families to the suburbs. When cities and suburban regions want to be attractive for young families, the size of the available dwellings is the most important aspect.

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