Survey of Residents' Satisfaction with Housing and Community Environments in Revitalized Urban Neighborhoods

Eun Young Kim (University of Tennessee)

The city of Chattanooga in Tennessee has been through urban revitalization aimed at re-creating its inner part like many other cities in North America. Although the city’s initial redevelopment planning was inclusive, the outcomes seem to show a discrepancy in the distribution of benefits among different neighborhoods. While the success of revitalization has been reported as the city’s growth, there is little attention to how the residents in the city perceive their housing conditions and community environments that may different from neighborhood by neighborhood as the results of urban revitalization. The goal of this study was to examine the residents’ satisfactions with their housing conditions and community environments in order to identify any discrepancies among different neighborhoods and to investigate influential factors that have potentially contributed to residents’ perceptions.

As a pilot study, the residents’ satisfaction survey was conducted in spring 2018. A total of 192 residents from six neighborhoods identified based on the property value rates and home ownership rate changes participated in the survey. The survey collected data on the degree of satisfaction of housing unit and community environments by examining perceptions on spaciousness, heating and cooling, insulation, comfort level, energy cost, housing cost, housing affordability, accessibility to grocery, public transportation, public schools, hospitals, parks, cleanliness, sense of safety, and police protection. The results suggested that residents were more satisfied with housing units than community environments (average ranges from 3.4 to 4.38 for housing; 2.91 to 4.20 for community). About half of the respondents (45%) spent more than $200 for their monthly energy bill which was much higher than national average cost of $114 while their satisfaction with HVAC system was relatively high (4.23 out of 5). The presentation will include the city-wide satisfaction survey results in addition to the pilot study outcomes.