Is mixed-housing development healthier for residents? The implications on the perception of neighborhood environment, sense of place, and mental health in urban Guangzhou

ABSTRACT

Although housing tenure mix policy has been widely used in improving the quality of life for low-income populations, it is inconclusive whether it can deliver any mental health benefits for residents. This study explores the implications of housing tenure mix on residents’ mental health through investigating the intermediatory roles of the perception of neighborhood environment and sense of place. With 501 samples from six representative neighborhoods in Guangzhou, we constructed path analysis to test three potential mechanisms: the socioeconomic mechanism, the environment mechanism, and the person-place transactional mechanism. The results revealed that housing tenure mix level was significantly associated with neighborhood socioeconomic attributes and the perception of neighborhood environment, which shaped the sense of place. Dual mental health effects of housing tenure mix were identified: on the one hand, housing tenure mix resulted in income differentiation at the neighborhood level, which impeded individual mental functioning; on the other hand, the housing tenure mix protected residents’ internal well-being via improving the perceived social cohesion and providing a nurturing ground for a sense of place. Different mechanisms function simultaneously on the associations of housing tenure mix with mental health, which should be carefully referred to during the decision-making of public housing development.

KEYWORDS:

• Housing tenure mix
• perceived neighborhood environment
• person-place transaction
• sense of place
• mental functioning
• internal well-being

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research project is funded by [Humanities and Social Sciences Fund of Ministry of Education in China] under Grant [number: 20YJCZH231]; [Applied basic research foundation of Guangdong Province] under Grant [number: 2019A1515110989]; [The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities] under Grant [number: FB45001040]; [Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Commission] under Grant [number: GXWD20220818164924004].

Notes on contributors

Tianyao Zhang

As a young urban researcher, Tianyao Zhang is pursuing a research agenda focused on innovative and effective evidence-based practice in urban planning and design. Her overarching goal is to promote health-promoted living environments, particularly in relation to planning and design healthy residence within Asian contexts. Located within the broader related categories of urban environmental sustainability, environmental health research, and urban planning and design, her research targets the identification of social and environmental determinants of health as they apply to vulnerable groups such as seniors, children, and low-income populations. Rigorous in nature and with the potential for far-reaching positive impact, her research constitutes a critical step toward creating and implementing evidence-based design capable of securing positive health outcomes in the contexts of urban planning, urban policy, and governance.

Yi Sun

Yi Sun joined the Hong Kong Polytechnic University as an Assistant Professor since July 2017 and he have been trained as a town planner. His field of research is the urban and regional development and planning, with a primary focus on China. His research interests extend toward two major areas. The first is about the planning and design of health-promotive urban environment for older people. He has been widely engaged in the studies of neighborhood walkability, well-being, and older people’s environmental perceptions. The other lens of his research includes urban/regional development issues from the perspective of governance and political economy of space.

Xiaohui Yuan

Xiaohui Yuan is the CEO and cofounder of QuantUrban Tech Co. Ltd. She got her PhD in Urban Planning in Architecture School, Tsinghua University and finishes her postdoctoral research in School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University. She also serves as a member in task force on urban big data in Chinese Society for Urban Studies. She is a scholar and entrepreneur in the field of urban studies and urban planning, especially in urban innovation-oriented development, data-supported urban planning, and low-carbon development. Her research directly addresses the issue that what kind of environment will be conducive for innovation and entrepreneurship in cities and what urban planning can do to promote the innovation-oriented development. And also, she applied the methods of big data analysis and visualization to urban studies and urban planning innovatively and propose the systematic method for using various types of urban data to support urban studies and urban planning.