Nature in urban environments: Relating residents’ perceptions to their neighborhood satisfaction

Abstract

This dissertation brings together the results of three research studies: a bibliometric literature review of the academic literature on the relation between urban nature and human well-being, as well as two exploratory empirical studies focusing on the relation between residents’ perceptions of the nature that is present in their urban living environment and their neighborhood satisfaction. The first of these studies focuses on the mechanism of green window views from the residence as a potential contributor to neighborhood satisfaction. The second explores how individual types of neighborhood nature relate to neighborhood satisfaction, and whether the overall greenness of the neighborhood moderates these relationships. Chapter 1 presents a general introduction to the research in this dissertation. It starts by providing an overview of the ecosystem services concept, which represents the frame through which the human–nature relationship is viewed throughout this dissertation. It establishes the importance of maintaining healthy and well-functioning ecosystems to humanity’s long-term future on planet Earth, because nature provides valuable services that affect multiple components of human well-being. Next, it covers the global megatrend of increasing urbanization. As an ever-growing number of people chooses to live in cities, their opportunities to be in contact with nature and experience its beneficial well-being effects diminish. Moreover, urban populations are particularly vulnerable to the effects of the triple planetary crisis of climate change, air pollution, and biodiversity loss, facing the most severe consequences of extreme weather events and breathing polluted air while the share of green space in urban areas is in decline. However, in recent years researchers have turned to nature to look for ways to mitigate these harmful effects, leveraging nature’s regulating and cultural ecosystem services to make cities more climate-resilient and livable. The Introduction then covers how satisfaction acts as a measure of general human well-being and quality of life, and how neighborhood satisfaction is commonly used to assess the livability of built environments. Having covered the most relevant background information for a good understanding of the research in the following Chapters, it then introduces the research objectives, ending with an overview of the research questions to be answered. Chapter 2 presents the results of a bibliometric literature review of the academic literature on the relation between urban nature and human well-being. Given that this research field is quickly expanding since the second half of the 2010s, with more than 500 journal and review articles being published in 2022 alone, an assessment of the general state and evolution of the literature represents a valuable addition to other, more in-depth literature reviews. By conducting a document bibliographic coupling analysis across four separate time periods, we mapped the evolution of the topic structure of the literature on urban nature and human well-being that is inherently present in the citation relationships between publications. We explored how generative AI based on large language models can support researchers to effectively and efficiently label the identified topic clusters. Our analysis revealed five big, recurring themes within the academic literature on urban nature and human well-being: (1) the accessibility and usability of urban green spaces, and associated inequalities across population subgroups, (2) the restorative effects of contact with urban nature, (3) the relation between green space exposure and mental health, (4) research on the role of nature connectedness, and (5) nature-based solutions. Upon further investigation, neighborhood satisfaction research was found to be an underexplored topic within this research field. Chapter 3 presents the results of an analysis aimed at quantifying how having satisfactory green window views from the residence relates to urbanites’ neighborhood satisfaction. For this purpose, we used data from a large probability sample (n=32,552) of respondents from 13 cities in the Flanders region of Belgium, which was originally gathered by the Flemish government in relation to a city monitoring program called Stadsmonitor. We ran four binary logistic regression models to estimate the probability of reporting specific levels of neighborhood satisfaction, leveraging the fact that this dataset contains survey weights to produce weighted results representative of the urban population in the 13 Flemish cities (N=1,344,327). Apart from the variable of interest on satisfactory green views from the residence, we also included a range of control variables into the model, as well as a variable on the perceived overall neighborhood greenness. As such, we managed to assess whether urban residents who feel the same about the general level of greenery in their neighborhood but differently about the green views from their residence are expected to differ in terms of their overall neighborhood satisfaction. We found this to be the case, with urbanites who were more satisfied with the green views from their residence being more likely to report high neighborhood satisfaction. Chapter 4 presents the results of an analysis aimed at quantifying the relationships between residents’ perceptions about the presence of specific urban nature types in their neighborhood, and their neighborhood satisfaction. Moreover, in this study we explored whether residents’ perceptions about the overall level of greenness of the neighborhood would moderate the relations between individual nature types and neighborhood satisfaction. For this purpose, we designed a survey that was digitally distributed to residents of the same 13 Flemish cities as in our Chapter 3 study. We asked the respondents (n=959) to report on their neighborhood satisfaction, their perception of the overall level of greenness of their neighborhood, and their perceptions of the presence of 10 specific types of urban nature in their neighborhood, ranging from building envelope greenery and street trees to forest and nature area. In addition, we included a broad range of control variables in the survey. By performing a moderated linear regression analysis, we found that the perceived presence of public urban green space was positively related to neighborhood satisfaction when residents reported that the overall greenness of their neighborhood was low. For most of the other nature types included in the analysis, we did not find convincing evidence of a relationship with the neighborhood satisfaction of Flemish urbanites. In Chapter 5, the final Chapter of this dissertation, we bring together the findings of our three studies, discuss their limitations, and provide some recommendations for future research. We also briefly link the results of this dissertation to recent Flemish policy regarding the provision of greenery in Flemish cities and municipalities. Overall, we conclude that in the context of Flanders, satisfactory green window views from the residence and qualitative, safe, accessible and usable public urban green spaces are positively related to the neighborhood satisfaction of urbanites. We recommend that future research verifies and builds on our exploratory results, preferably through a combination of longitudinal and qualitative or mixed-method research designs.