Residents' Perception of the Quality of Urban Living and Attitudes toward Mixed Land Use

Abstract

This study examined people's perception of residential environment quality and attitudes toward mixed land use, through a questionnaire survey administered to 9,423 residents in Tokyo and Kashiwa-city. The degree to which people thought their residential environments were protected correlated with their inclination to settle down in their current locations. It also correlated with residential satisfaction partly, pointing to the existence of different types of residential satisfaction, and with physical environmental characteristics pertaining to land-use zoning, being higher in agricultural areas and lower in industrial areas. Residents who thought their environments were protected attributed it to the regulations of building heights and land uses; those who did not think so listed the lack of control over building density, setbacks, and land uses as reasons. The results suggest the importance of taking perceptual and attitudinal, as well as physical-environmental, characteristics into consideration for effective residential planning. Possibilities of allowing mixed land use for the planning of shrinking cities are discussed in terms of residential characteristics, human values, and physical environments.