Comparison of perceived neighbourhood sustainability and liveability among different neighborhoods in transitional China : the case of Chengdu

Abstract

To further comprehensively advance sustainable neighbourhood development, investigating the residents’ perception on sustainability and satisfaction on neighbourhood life are important. In advanced countries, there have been increasing concerns about neighborhoods' context-specific characteristics and the impact of applying integrated sustainability principles to cultivate or evaluate sustainable neighborhoods regardless of their different context. Among the contextual characteristics, the role of residents’ perception of their neighborhoods is critical when identifying various local sustainability issues and developing sustainable neighborhood planning. Meanwhile, the relationship between residents’ perceptions on neighbourhood sustainability and liveability (neighborhood satisfaction as the proxy) drew growing concerns in advancing sustainable neighbourhood development. However, little research has been done on either residents' subjective perceptions when comparing different neighborhoods’ sustainability performance or the association between perceived sustainability performance and neighbourhood satisfaction in this time of transitional China. Thus, this research employed an empirical approach to investigate residents’ perceived sustainability performance and neighbourhood satisfaction in three typical and different neighborhoods, including the traditional danwei, resettlement and commodity housing neighborhoods in Chengdu, China. Questionnaire surveys were conducted and interviews with experts and field observation were also employed to understand the respective neighborhood contexts. This research used cross-case analysis of sustainability performance to identify critical sustainability issues from each neighborhood. Logistic regression modeling was also adopted to investigate the association between sustainability and satisfaction. The results demonstrated that infrastructure and public engagement were two common and significant dimensions affecting the overall sustainability of all three neighborhoods. Respectively, contextual and local sustainability issues were identified in different neighborhood. The discussion of the results investigated how the perceived neighbourhood sustainability issues of the three neighbourhoods differed from each other even within the same city. This article also examined whether and how the sustainability issues interact with neighbourhood satisfaction in three neighbourhoods. To better advance sustainable neighbourhood development, adaptive, pluralistic and dynamic sustainable neighbourhood development strategy was advocated to be adopted rather than applying general and non-contextual sustainable planning and development guidelines.