Quality of living environment in residential areas in Shijiazhuang, China

Abstract

With the growth of economy in China, residential quality became one of the serious issues in the contemporary urban society. Not only bad quality residential brings trouble in life to people, but also causes the economic dispute. The quality issue is increasingly becoming outstanding, especially in the metropolis. Nowadays, people put more emphasis on the quality of life and prefer to purchase a high quality property. This is due to fact that the issue on residential living environment quality may bring long-time troubles. However, modern design of residential mainly focuses on the economic and aesthetic values and more often than not, ignore the other aspects that may impact the residential quality; such safety, privacy, density, accessibility, environment, and so on. The purpose of the study is to find a proper evaluation indicator system to assess the residential living environment quality in Shijiazhuang. And give suggestion and potential solution based on the study findings for future residential area planning and design in Shijiazhuang, China. The study identified the indicators that can be applied in the residential area planning and design, as well as the perception of residential quality among the local residents. Researcher of this study selected 9 residential areas in Shijiazhuang as the examples to get the real scenario of living environment quality condition. Quantitative method was the tool to carry out the survey, while descriptive analysis was adopted in the data analysis. The result suggested that planner and designer should pay more attention on nature environment planning which is much harder than physical environment planning. The indicator system and suggestions are helpful in planning good living environment quality for residential area and offer a better perception of residential environment for the local residents.