Social selectivity of residential choice with regard to green spaces and their impact on quality of life

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Stefanie Kley
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 430171901

Studies on environmental justice have so far focused on the socially unequal distribution of environmental risks, such as air and drinking water pollution, while the distribution of positive environmental goods has been little researched. Urban green spaces are highly valued by the population in the face of increasing building pressure and increasingly hot summers, even in German cities. We investigate the distribution and social functions of urban green space (parks, street trees, private gardens, and riparian zones) in the residential population differentiated by social class exemplarily in two major German cities. In doing so, we build on findings from the first phase of the project. We were able to show that a lack of greenery in the immediate living environment is associated with lower life satisfaction and triggers relocation considerations in certain phases of life; and that residential satisfaction in the working class is more strongly related to a green window view than in the upper classes. We aim to corroborate these findings by alluding to and evaluating objective structural data on geo-coded addresses in addition to survey data. Furthermore, we want to investigate the social functions of green spaces in more detail and systematically describe the use of green spaces by members of different social classes. In detail, we pursue four goals with the requested continuation project: (1) Description of the use of green spaces in the residential environment (various activities in parks, fields, forests, riparian zones) by members of different social classes and differentiated by life phases.(2) Deeper analysis of the role of urban green spaces and determination of the "right amount of green" for housing and life satisfaction of different social classes and differentiated by life stages, also based on objective data with geo-coded residential addresses. (3) Analysis of social functions of urban green spaces, differentiated by social classes and life phases, esp. with regard to emotional attachment and the value of urban green spaces as symbolic capital.(4) Archiving of data for subsequent useAt the end of the project, the data will be anonymized and transferred to the GESIS data archive, including a detailed data description and detailed codebooks for the two survey waves.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants