Understanding residents’ attitudes towards infill development at Finnish urban suburbs Speakers: Arvola, Anne1 ; Pennanen, Kyösti2 1 2
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Espoo, Finland,
[email protected] VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Espoo, Finland,
[email protected]
Abstract: Urban infill development is an important strategy for more sustainable cities. At the same time, there are a number of impediments for the use of this strategy. Resistance from residents’ is one of the most important ones. Thus, uderstanding residents’ thinking and psycho-social basis of their reactions is essential for successful infill development. The purpose of this research is to create understanding about the basis of residents’ attitudes towards the idea of infill development in their neighbourhood. The study targets 23 suburbs with potential for infill at Finnish capital area. The sample consists of survey answers from 906 residents who own their apartments. The results suggest that residents’ concerns about any negative changes in the neighbouhood, and especially those relating to unique identity of the area and nature amenities are among key beliefs contributing to their resistant attitudes, whereas anticipated better services and public transportation, contribute to positive attitudes. Infill development, resident, attitudes, beliefs Introduction Infill development and urban densification are generally considered as key means to restrain the adverse effects of urban sprawl as well as a way towards more sustainable cities [1]. However, planning and actualising infill development faces many challenges. Among them are problems of land acquisition and residential opposition [2][3]. City planners seek to achieve a range of ecological, social, financial and functional benefits and counteract the disadvantages of sprawl with infill development. It is believed to reduce travel demand, produce liveable communities and improve resource efficacy [3][4]. The financial resources saved provide cities more possibilities to make improvements influencing the living quality of local residents. Thus infill development often also aims to improvements in services (or at least retaining them), in public transportation and in availability of other amenities close to home e.g. [5]. Also, better social interaction, social cohesion and vibrant and revitalised communities are sometimes expected to result from infill. New, higher standard houses with pleasant architecture can attract wealthier inhabitants and all these together result with more valued neighbourhood with better reputation [6]. In principle, we could expect local residents to welcome such changes, and sometimes they do [7]. Correspondingly, there is also reason to expect that residents would value ecological goals and benefits of infill development, because public awareness of climate change and environmental problems is widespread. 1
Anyway, infill development may also have adverse effects if not well planned and the densification is too high [7][8][9]. Residents’ opposition to infill have often been addressed to fear of adverse effects on their living-quality. Residents tend to be concerned about e.g. crowding, traffic overload, noise, safety, and about increased social problems. Decrease in privacy, loss of parking space, loss of open space, sunlight and views and especially green space cause worries or have been experienced as problems of infill [7] [8] [10]. Also in Finland, densification-oriented policy has been a stated goal of urban planning since 1970 and is currently an important strategic aim. Despite of these efforts, urban sprawl tends to continue [11]. Much of the potential land for infill in Finland is located in suburban areas that were built relatively loosely mainly in 1960-70’s during the rapid urbanisation period. In these areas, a substantial proportion of land is owned by limited companies called apartment house companies, which is a typical legal arrangement of flat ownership in Finland. This means that the company is registered as the title owner instead of residents. Residents’ own their apartments indirectly as shares of the company [12]. As shareholders, they are the ones making the decision about providing their land for infill. This form of flat and land ownership sets an important role for individuals. They are not only residents, but also landowners and shareholders. Thus, in Finnish context understanding the thinking of residents is emphasised and vital for the succes of infill projects. This study analyses residents’ attitudes towards infill development in their neighbourhood and aims to understand reasons for opposing or favourable attitudes. According to attitude theory, the formation of attitudes is based on subjective beliefs and evaluations about the attitude object [13][14]. Aiming to understand residents’ attitudes, it is necessary to know what kind of positive and negative consequences residents believe that infill will have on their neighbourhood as well as how much they assign personal value to each of these consequences. Informed by expectancy-value model of attitudes [13][14], this study addresses both of these antecedents of attitudes, namely beliefs and evaluations. These theories postulate that attitudes are based on beliefs regarding only those consequences / product attributes, which are salient in persons mind; i.e. relevant and personally valuable for an individual. Consequently, to study attitudes towards infill, we should understand which qualities of residential environment are the most relevant for residents. Methodology Study areas and respondents This study focuses on residents, who own their apartments in apartment house companies in Finnish suburbs. The sampling started by identifying suburbs, which have been built mainly during the years 1960 – 1989 in the capital area of Finland. Potential for infill (free permitted building volume) and existing plans for future infill activities in these areas were used as inclusion criteria. The data includes also a few locations where infill is in process. The 23 areas chosen for the study represent different types of suburbs in terms of prevalent building age, location and the planned placement and size of the future infill site. Postal questionnaires 2
were sent to 4 482 persons in January 2014 resulting in 1114 completed questionnaires. After removing residents who did not own their apartment the final sample size is 906. Most of the respondents (82%) lived in 1-2 person households, and the share of families with children was 14.5%. Over half of the respondents (62.6%) were women, and the oldest person in the household was above 50 years old in 74% of cases. Nearly half of respondents (47.6%) had college or university level education (about 13 years of education). Measures Attitudes towards infill was measured by asking: “Are you in favour or against infill development in your neighbourhood?” Responses were given on 7-point scale (1 = “I am against infill development” and 7 = “I am in favour of infill development”). For further analyses, groups of opponents and supporters were formed. Respondents’ with attitude ratings 1 – 2 were classified as opponents and respondents with scores 6 – 7 were defined as supporters. Prior to asking respondents’ opinions, they were provided with an introduction to infill development and its’ aims. Infill development was defined as development of new apartment houses within the existing city structure. The ecological, functional, social and economic goals of infill development were described with a few sentences. The introduction concluded with pointing out that obviously, these aims of infill development are not always realised and infill development may also have negative consequences especially from the point of view of local residents’. A list of 23 statement pairs was designed to measure respondents’ beliefs in various potential effects of infill development. The creation of belief statements was informed by previous literature with the aim to cover aspects from: 1) concerns or benefits local residents associate with infill e.g. [3], 2) dimensions of perceived residential neighbourhood quality, such as social, functional, architectural, aesthetic and atmosphere, e.g. [15], dimensions of basic human needs for residential environment, such as contact with nature, aesthetic preference, recreation and play, social interaction-privacy, and community identity [16], and 3) the aims, and expected benefits of infill as understood in urban planning policy, e.g. [5][17]. To measure residents’ beliefs (b), respondents were first asked to imagine that infill development will be carried out in their neighbourhood, regardless of the actual situation. They were then asked to rate, for each of the listed statement pair, to what extent they believe in that infill development would have these positive or negative consequences. Statements on the left hand side described negative expected consequences (such as “the public transportation services in the area will get worse”) and the statements on the right hand side described a correspondent positive change (such as “the public transportation services in the area will improve”). Answers were given on a nine-point scale, where the lower values (1-4) refer to expected negative consequences, 5 to “no change”, and the higher values (6-9) indicate belief in positive consequences. 3
To measure evaluations (e), the same subject issues were listed again in positive form (such as “good public transportation”) and the respondents were asked: “How important it is for you that each of these issues will actualise in your own neighbourhood?”. Answers were given on six-point scales ranging from 0 = not important to 4 = very important and finally to 5 = absolutely necessary. Based on the attitude theories, e.g. [13], new BE (bi * ei) variables were formed by multiplying each belief (e.g. “the public transportation services in the area will get worse – the public transportation services in the area will improve”) and correspondent evaluation (e.g. “the public transportation services in the area will improve”) variables. In this way, both the strength of the belief and personal importance of that were considered. Prior to variable formation, the original belief scales (1-9) were recoded into scales ranging from -4 to +4. Thus the values of the resulting BE -variables range from -20 to +20. Principal component analysis was performed on the entire set of 27 BE-variables in order to reduce the number of variables to analyse. Conceptual clarity as additional criteria, new aggregated variables were formed as means of several items loading on that dimension (Table 1). Table 1. Aggregated and one-item variables used in the regression analyses. Note that the BE-variables are construed as products of evaluation and belief -variables (bi *ei ). Variable name
Description
Comprised as the mean of:
BE_UNIQUE_ IDENTITY
Unique identity of the neighbourhood, pleasantness of the architecture, preservation of historical features and the extent to which residents can feel the area as their own. The neighbourhood provides possibilities for relaxation, experiencing nature, is peaceful and has orderly, coherent appearance
BE_TRAFFIC_ CAR_P
Ease of car transport, traffic load and availability of parking lots
BE_SERVICES _ PUBICTR BE_RESID_RE PUT
Quality of local services and public transportation
BE_RESCOUC E_ SAVING
Natural resources will be saved. The city saves money.
BE10_social life (one item) BE19_safety (one item)
Sense of community and social interaction
BE2_architechture, BE3_unique, BE4_historic, BE5_feels own BE16_relaxation, BE17_nature, BE22_coherent, BE25_peaceful BE12_cartransport, BE14_trafficload, BE23_parking BE9_services, BE11_public transport BE6_welthier residents BE7_area reputation, BE8_disturbances, BE15_immigrants BE20_citycost, BE21_nat_rescourc es BE10_social life
Safety of the neighbourhood
BE19_safety
BE_NATURE_ PEACEFUL
Types of residents, social disturbances and area reputation
Cronbach Alpha
Mean
.912
-2.8
.894
-5.1
.781
-4.1
.791
2.9
.833
-1.7
.773
-1.4
-
-0.2
-
-3.7
4
Results Attitudes and beliefs concerning infill development Approximately 32% opposed infill clearly and 44% to some extent, 19% was in between and 35% were at least to some extent in favour of infill development. General attitude towards infill development was not significantly related to respondents’ gender, level of education, or attitude towards sustainable development. Small, but statistically significant correlations were found with age (r=-.10**), the level of equalised income (r=-.07*) and years of living in the neighbourhood (-.09**) suggesting that older respondents, those who have lived long in the area and those with higher education levels tend to have more negative attitudes towards infill. The mean attitudes towards infill did not significantly differ between those who had and those who did not have previous experience with infill. Beliefs about consequences of infill Regarding the anticipated consequences of infill, most beliefs were on the negative side. Improvement of public transportation (B11) and improvement of services (B9) were the only two beliefs that were positive on average. The expected influences on neighbourhood reputation (B7) and on the whether wealthier people will move into the area (B6) were at neutral level, in average. On the other hand, most negative consequences were expected on “possibilities for experiencing nature in the neighbourhood” (B17), “peace and quiet in the neighbourhood” (B25) and the on amount of traffic, and traffic jams, which were expected to increase (B14) (Figure). All the measured beliefs had significant positive correlations with attitude. In Figure 1., this can be seen as differences between the opponents and supporters, which were all statistically significant (anova). The supporters tended to believe more in any positive consequences than the opponents.
5
will improve
9 8 7 6
no change
5
Attitude towards infill in the neighborhood
will degenerate
4 3
Opponents (n=283) Supporters (n=178)
2 1
UNIQUE IDENTITY
NATURE_PEACEFUL
TRAFFIC
RESIDENTS & REPUTATION
All (n=781-893) RESOURCES
SERVICES
Figure 1. A sample of respondents’ beliefs regarding expected consequences of infill development in the neighbourhood. Means for opponents (rating1-2), supporters (rating 6-7) and for all respondents. The blue rectangles refer to aggregated BE-variables. The means of all these variables significantly differed between the opponents and supporters (anova).
Attitudes explained In order to find out whether some of the beliefs are better predictors of the attitudes than others, linear regression analyses were performed using the BE variables (listed in Table 1.) as independent variables and attitude towards infill as the dependent variable. Because of incoherent beta-coefficients (beta coefficients were negative while correlations were positive), three variables were left out from the final analysis: BE_TRAFFIC_CAR_P; BE_RESCOURCE_SAVING, BE10 social life. In the final model, 47% of the variability in attitudes towards infill development was predicted by knowing these five independent variables. Three of them significantly contributed to prediction of attitudes (Table 2.)
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Table 2. The results of the final regression model R2 = . 47; Adjusted R2 =.47; (F(4, 374.9) = 190.4, p < 0.000)
BE_UNIQUE_IDENTITY BE_NATUR_PEACEFUL BE_SERVICES_PUBLICT BE_RESID_REPU BE19_safety
Standardised beta .39 .23 .12 .04 .02
Sig. .000 .000 .000 .311 .691
The results suggest that some of the respondents’ beliefs are more strongly related to their attitudes towards infill development, than others. Anticipated effects on the unique identity of the neighbourhood and for the possibilities of experiencing peace and nature seem to be the most important predictors (or antecedents) of attitude, followed with services and public transportation. This means that if the respondent, for example, beliefs infill to harm the unique identity of the neighbourhood and also values it, he / she is more likely to oppose infill development. Further, a person is more likely to have positive attitudes towards infill, if he/she values peace, nature and services and does not expect infill development to weaken these amenities. On the other hand, respondents’ expectations regarding the social life or safety in the neighbourhood had less relevance for their attitudes towards infill. The same applies for expected influences on traffic and on resource saving. Discussion This study aimed to understand suburb residents’ initial attitudes towards the idea of infill development in their neighbourhood. As could be expected based on previous studies, most respondents had resistant attitudes towards the idea of infill in their neighbourhood. In line with their prevalently negative attitudes, the respondents believed more in the negative than in the positive consequences of infill development. Negative consequences rated as most likely, in average, related to: possibilities for car parking, possibilities for experiencing nature, peace and quiet in the area, traffic congestion, distressing building density, and possibilities for relaxation to name a few. Only a few of the listed consequences of infill were believed to be on the positive side, in average. These were improvements in public transportation services, in other services and recreation activities, more diverse social structure, and improved area reputation. All the respondents’ concerns are familiar from previous studies, e.g. [3][10]. Somewhat on contary to previous studies, e.g. [3][18] social disturbances and safety were not among the greatest concerns among our respondents. These results assumingly reflect the nature of Finnish suburban areas which are relatively low in density and loose structure [19]. 7
This study, however, differs from the most previous ones in that we did not only list the concerns local residents have, but analysed which of the issues are most valued by the residents and which of them can best explain the attitudes towards infill. The results suggest that one of the key factors explaining residents’ resistance to infill relate to their beliefs and values concerning the unique character and identity of their neighbourhood. They believed that it will not remain the same after infill and they would feel less at home there than previously. Home environment has important psychological meanings to individuals [20]. Thus, one reason for the relative importance of this variable may be residents’ experience of threat against their psychological security and identity. The second most important predictor of attitude related to respondents’ beliefs and values regarding what happens to nature, peace and their possibilities for relaxation after infill. The result is not surpricing given that peace and closeness to nature have been repeatedly been found as highly valued by Finnish residents regardless of their demographic background [21], and contact with nature has be regarded as a universal need from urban landscape [16]. Compared to the policy goals of infill development, residents’ notions of the benefits of infill were quite different. Only few issues coincide. Based on this study, many of the aims of infill, such as vibrant neighbourhood, social diversity or better social relations, or saving financial resources, seem not to be able to motivate residents’ to accept infill construction. Environmental sustainability is a further example. In principle, the Finns do value environmental friendliness of their living environment [22]. Still, most respondents did not believe infill to bring about savings in natural resources, neither did this belief influence attitudes towards infill. This study suggest that, at least in Finnish suburban areas, residents’ concerns about any negative changes in the neigbouhood and especially those related to uniqueness of the area and nature amenities should be addressed in infill processes. Improved services and public transportation and to some extent also area reputation may be ways to encourage infill acceptance.
This study was financially supported by the Academy of Finland in the Future of Living and Housing (ASU-LIVE) program, project Research on resident-driven infill development possibilities – case study in urban areas of Finland.
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