Sustainability versus liveability: an investigation of neighbourhood satisfaction

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed an increasing emphasis placed on planning systems in most advanced capitalist societies to develop a more sustainable urban development pattern, resulting in policies to increase residential densities. Although belief in the virtues of the compact city approach is now widespread among the policy community, questions remain relating to the 'sustainability versus liveability' implications of compact city environments. In this regard, while the public may support sustainability principles, there is a perception that high-density development poses too great a cost on individuals' quality of life. Combining both quantitative and qualitative research data, this paper evaluates the relationship between high-density living and neighbourhood satisfaction within the central city. Findings suggest that, in many instances, it is not high density per se that is the source of dissatisfaction for respondents, but rather other related factors such as environmental quality, noise, lack of community involvement, traffic and lack of services and facilities.compact city policy, sustainable development, neighbourhood, quality of life,

Residential satisfaction close to highways: The impact of accessibility, nuisances and highway adjustment projects

“…The first definition relates to the trade-off between positive and negative externalities. As described in section 2.2, studies including perceptions of both regional accessibility and nuisance in other research settings seem to conclude that both aspects are of comparable importance in residential satisfaction (Buys and Miller, 2012;Cook, 1988;Howley at al., 2009;Hur and Morrow-Jones, 2008;Lovejoy, 2010;Savasdisara, 1988). Perceptions seem to be better estimators than objective measures (e.g.…”

“…Although we are not aware of residential satisfaction studies that looked at the relation between both aspects in a highway context, there are studies that did include measures of nuisances and (regional) accessibility in other research settings, giving some indications regarding their impact. In general, studies including perceptions of nuisances and regional accessibility find both aspects to be of comparable importance, being among the most important factors alongside aspects such as general appearance, satisfaction with the density of housing, cleanliness, crime rates and neighborhood friendliness (as already touched upon in the previous section) ( Buys and Miller, 2012;Cook, 1988;Howley et al, 2009;Hur and Morrow-Jones, 2008;Lovejoy et al, 2010;Savasdisara, 1988). However, a good assessment of their relative importance compared to other factors is complicated by different combinations of included factors on the one hand and differences in how constructs are defined on the other hand, leading to variations in importance in different studies.…”

“…As discussed in section 2.2, several studies indicate that although (regional) accessibility and nuisance are among the most important factors, other neighborhood factors such as general appearance, satisfaction with density of the built environment, cleanliness, safety from crime and good neighbors seem to be at least of equal importance (e.g. Howley at al., 2009;Hur and Morrow-Jones, 2008;Lovejoy et al, 2010). However, because of our focus on residential locations near highways, we might expect accessibility and nuisance to play a more prominent role.…”

“…With regard to nuisances, some studies mainly looked into noise nuisance (e.g. Cook, 1988;Lovejoy et al, 2010), while others use a combined measure such as 'traffic' (Hur and Morrow-Jones, 2008) or 'environmental quality' (Howley at al., 2009;Savasdisara, 1988). There are also studies that specify different types of nuisances.…”

“…Some studies include accessibility factors such as job accessibility (e.g. Cook, 1988;Howley at al., 2009;Hur and Morrow-Jones, 2008) and accessibility to family and friends (Hur and Morrow-Jones, 2008) and others combine both perceived local (e.g. access to facilities) and regional accessibility in one overall accessibility-index.…”