Desirable Dense Neighbourhoods: An Environmental Psychological Approach for Understanding Community Resistance to Densification

Nematollahi, Shohreh; Tiwari, Reena; Hedgecock, David

doi:10.1080/08111146.2015.1078233

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 151 publications

(330 reference statements)

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“…single‐detached) or reduce housing value by increasing supply (Berghauser Pont et al., 2021; Manville et al., 2020; Whittemore & BenDor, 2018; Wicki & Kaufmann, 2022). There are also arguments that resistance to density infill is driven by a disinclination of residents to socialize with the diversity of people that would be expected to move in (Nematollahi et al., 2016). Like many North American cities, Toronto has a high percentage of the city zoned for the development of only single‐detached houses (>60%), with many of our target parks situated in areas zoned exclusively for these types of homes (colloquially called the ‘Yellow Belt’) (Guo, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using anonymized mobility data to reduce inequality in the availability and use of urban parks

Filazzola,

Xie,

Birchard

et al. 2024

People and Nature

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Parks are an integral component of cities. Ensuring city residents have equitable and easy access to parks is crucial for human well‐being. In temperate climates, park accessibility is particularly important in the summer months when these green spaces provide an area to recreate, exercise and escape indoor temperatures and heat emanating from paved and built surfaces. However, there are well‐known disparities in park accessibility in cities globally that may threaten the health of city residents, especially with global warming. We examined some of the largest city parks (>50 ha) in Toronto, Canada, by comparing park activity, housing demographics and daily weather patterns. We found that parks that provided more green space area per resident were situated in neighbourhoods that had higher proportions of single‐detached housing, higher automobile use and fewer multistorey apartments. We also found a strong correlation between park activity with population density and the number of amenities in the park. Surprisingly, we found no relationship between park activity and daily weather patterns, although park use was higher on weekends and holidays. These results suggest denser communities are at a disadvantage because they have proportionately less park area within walking distance in addition to having no private green spaces (e.g. backyards). We recommend revising municipal zoning around certain parks and the creation of new green spaces as methods to balance park provisioning in the city. Our findings suggest that designing and maintaining accessible, amenity‐rich parks is an important strategy for promoting health and well‐being in urban populations. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using anonymized mobility data to reduce inequality in the availability and use of urban parks

Filazzola,

Xie,

Birchard

et al. 2024

People and Nature

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“…Densification and how it affects residents' perception has been discussed by some scholars seeking to understand the social aspects of density (Lewis & Baldassare 2010;Cook et al 2012;Smith & Billig 2012;Arvola & Pennanen 2014;Nematollahi et al 2016). Perceptions and experiences of urban density are understood individually and highly influenced by the cultural, geographical, temporal and economic context (Alexander 1993;Livingstone et al 2021).…”

Section: List Of Figures 16mentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban densification considering sense of place and environmental justice – or not

Shahrad

2024

Acta Universitatis Agriculturae Sueciae

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Rapid urbanisation is a major transformative driving force of continuous and contested changes in socio-spatial urban structure. Such changes can lead to sociospatial injustice especially when they involve marginalised populations. Managing rapid urbanisation thus requires goal-oriented inclusive urban planning and policies to secure sustainable development. The theory of environmental justice, as distributive justice, recognition justice, and procedural justice, has been developed in urban planning literature. The experience of justice – or the lack thereof – also affects sense of place, which in relation to urban change includes how people experience, relate to and create meaning in urban spaces. This thesis aims to deepen the understanding of the interplay between sense of place and issues of environmental justice in relation to urban densification in Swedish stigmatised neighbourhoods. The thesis is based on a case study with multiple sampling techniques: document analysis, visual discourse analysis, photo elicitation, and interviews with residents, planners and stakeholders. The first paper focuses on the role of media in creating discourses concerning e.g. safety and security and how these discourses impact the creation of socio-spatial injustice. The second paper concentrates on the impact of an urban densification project to shed light on issues of environmental justice and public participation. In the third paper, the concept of sense of densification is introduced, and it examines how densification projects affect residents’ lives, both in outcomes and as processes. The thesis concludes that the combined knowledge about sense of place and environmental justice research from an urban planning standpoint can provide a greater understanding of how to motivate residents to act collectively to improve their community and participate in local planning processes. This is important for planners and stakeholders, in order to strengthen a sustainable planning and design process by understanding and honouring the value of local meanings of places.

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“…Other studies show that even when units in the same project are nondistinguishable, social divisions still appear (Tersteeg & Pinkster, 2016). Research in the Australian context showed that a negative response to social mixing is more related to the densification it implies than to mixing itself (Nematollahi et al, 2016). As reported by research in Chile, social mixing is also resisted by real estate developers, even in the presence of strong incentives (Greene et al, 2017; Waintrub et al, 2016).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compact development and preferences for social mixing in location choices: Results from revealed preferences in Santiago, Chile

Cox

Hurtubia

2021

Journal of Regional Science

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Even though densification and social mixing are declared objectives of many nowadays urban planning paradigms, their simultaneous implementation is usually questioned by different actors and is not frequent in practice. In a market economy, understanding potential demand for this class of development, from different types of households, is essential to define public policies oriented to achieve both compact development (CD) and social mixture. To understand the preferences of households and potential demand, we implement a location choice model based on a bid–rent framework and spatial latent classes (LC), using census data and location attributes. By using spatial LC, we do not impose exogenous definitions of which zones are perceived as CD or suburban, rendering a robust method to identify variation in preferences. We apply the model to Santiago de Chile, where social mixing in dense and well‐located areas is being intensely discussed. We find strong differences in households' valuation of attributes between spatial classes. Results show that social mixing is more difficult in dense, well‐connected areas than in suburban areas because higher‐income households are more sensitive to the socioeconomic context of the location in compact areas. Besides showing evidence on household preferences and their implications for social‐mixing policies, this paper also provides a proof of concept for the use of spatial LC (proposed in previous work by the authors), showing this is a robust methodology allowing to generate behavior‐based classifications for urban areas. The paper also contributes methodologically, by deriving the elasticity formulation for bid‐auction location choice models, which allows quantifying the importance of location attributes in location probability.

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Desirable Dense Neighbourhoods: An Environmental Psychological Approach for Understanding Community Resistance to Densification

Cited by 14 publications

References 151 publications

Using anonymized mobility data to reduce inequality in the availability and use of urban parks

Using anonymized mobility data to reduce inequality in the availability and use of urban parks

Urban densification considering sense of place and environmental justice – or not

Compact development and preferences for social mixing in location choices: Results from revealed preferences in Santiago, Chile

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