This evidence sheet is published by The Built Review.
The psychologist Laura Miola surveyed two samples in northeast Italy, 100 residents across several cities and 211 in one town. Age, income and perceived restorativeness explained 60% of the variance in sense of community. A second model, with age, income, architectural, social and functional factors and place attachment, explained 64% of the variance in residential satisfaction. Wellbeing was a different matter. Satisfaction and sense of community moved with those variables; wellbeing moved with them far less, at 23% in the first sample and 19 in the second.
The social scientist Raúl Grau Ruiz worked at the other end of the scale, with survey data from 35,005 Norwegian residents. Recreation areas within 200 metres of home and hiking areas within 500 metres both went with stronger place-belongingness and more meaning in life, recreation areas more strongly. The association was not the same size for everyone: it differed for first- and second-generation immigrants depending on which kind of outdoor space was in reach, which the authors read as different needs rather than a weaker effect.
The urban planners Kostas Mouratidis and Athena Yiannakou compared two cities that have little else in common, surveying 523 residents of Thessaloniki and 1,339 of Oslo. Five things predicted neighbourhood happiness in both: perceived safety, perceived quietness, social cohesion, place attachment and lower density. Two more differed. Local amenities contributed in Thessaloniki and not in Oslo. Parks and trees contributed in Oslo and not in Thessaloniki.
Between 2015 and 2017 the social work researcher Yingqi Guo surveyed 1,553 older adults in Hong Kong and tested the path from the measured environment through the perceived environment and sense of community to wellbeing. Those two together fully explained the relationship between residential density and subjective wellbeing. Park-based green space protected both mental health and wellbeing. Vegetation-based green space was negatively associated with wellbeing, which is the opposite of what a park does and worth keeping apart from it.
The psychologist Carmen Tabernero asked 496 people who had grown up in their own neighbourhoods in Barcelona and La Laguna about crowding, noise, danger and how well cared for the place was. Only two of the four acted on attachment directly: the care and the danger. Crowding and noise did not, which puts the visible state of a street ahead of its density in this particular chain.
Every study here is a cross-section, and three of the five report no single figure, because attachment is measured with regression weights and path models. Guo's 1,553 and Grau Ruiz's 35,005 are the large samples; Miola's headline figures come from the sample of 100 and not from the 211.
