Multifamily housing and resident life satisfaction in Europe: an exploratory analysis

Abstract

Much of the literature on sustainable communities and compact cities calls for higher density housing including multifamily dwellings. Some researchers suggest problems with such dwellings. However, rigorous comparative research on this topic has not been conducted to date. This paper draws on a high quality, comparative data-set, the European Social Survey, to analyse (a) the quality of multifamily dwellings in European urban areas, (b) the characteristics of residents, (c) their life satisfaction compared with those living in detached housing and (d) the relative importance of built form in explaining life satisfaction. One of the main findings from the multivariate analyses is that residing in multifamily housing is not a statistically significant predictor of life satisfaction when you control for standard predictors of life satisfaction and housing and neighbourhood quality. Overall, the findings provide support for both place-based and people-based responses to urban regeneration. Both physical and social regeneration are required, addressing the education/training needs of residents and economic development strategies.

Keywords:

• Quality of life
• built form
• multifamily housing
• life satisfaction
• compact cities

Notes

1. For more information on this data-set, see Jowell & the Central Co-ordinating Team (2005). The data was made available via the Norwegian Social Science Data Services (NSD) as the data archive and distributor of the ESS data.