Evaluative structure of perceived residential environment quality in high-density and mixed-use urban settings: An exploratory study on Taipei City

The objective of this study is to identify the internal evaluative structure with which Taipei City's residents assess the quality of their residential environment in high-density and mixed-use settings. 16 residents were first interviewed and content analysis performed on interview typescripts to identify 45 key concepts of perceived residential environment quality. A questionnaire consisting of 45 corresponding items was further developed and the questionnaire survey administered to 240 residents randomly selected from 80 residential buildings in residential–commercial mixed-use zones. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was then conducted on the collected data sets to extract the major scales and factors of residents’ evaluative structure. The PCA result reveals a multidimensional evaluative structure of residential environment quality perceived by Taipei City's residents, which consists of six evaluation scales (i.e. Urban Planning and Design, Security and Social Relationship, Transportation and Commercial Services, Residential Atmosphere, Environmental Health, and Facility Management) with eleven underlying factors. Comparative analysis of this study and previous empirical studies shows that the evaluative structure of Taipei City's residents is similar to those of other citizens at the ‘aspect’ level, consisting of spatial, human, functional, and contextual aspects; however, the evaluative structure is rather different in ‘scales or factors’ such as ground floor access, mutual help, transportation and commercial services, sense of insecurity and pressure, possibly attributable to Taipei City's unique high-density and mixed-use urban settings.