Is neighborhood satisfaction related to density perception? Promoting liveable and sustainable land use planning

While sustainable land use planning ensures land preservation through urban compactness, liveable residential environments are commonly associated with low density levels. Analyzing the relationships between density and neighborhood satisfaction (as a measure for liveability) may therefore help urban planners to offer sustainable infill projects that also guarantee liveability for the residents. Objective or subjective measures of density can be proposed. While the literature considering objective density is plentiful, the empirical work analyzing the relationships between density perception and neighborhood satisfaction is surprisingly scarce. In this study, we use a 2015 online survey in the Loire-Atlantique <i>Département</i> in France that provided 1,134 questionnaires, which we analyzed using a discrete choice experiment. We find that neighborhood satisfaction has no relationship to the perceived density of the built environment by individuals. What matters is peacefulness as another type of neighborhood perception. Healthcare accessibility is also valued by the residents.