Public Space Satisfaction Evaluation of New Centralized Communities in Urban Fringe Areas—A Study of Suzhou, China

The fast and pronounced changes in dwelling space in urban fringe areas, caused by rapid urbanization, has led to the appearance of new centralized communities. These communities possess characteristics of both urban and rural communities and have been facing great pressure related to the reconstruction of social network relations and the cultivation of a community identity. The outcomes of public space satisfaction evaluations are related to the social functions they fulfill, such as motivating social interaction, cultivating community identity, and integrating social relationships. This study evaluates public space satisfaction based on the study of six new centralized communities in an urban fringe area of Suzhou, using grey relational analysis. The results show that the overall satisfaction value is a standard level. Moreover, public space satisfaction is related to patterns of centralization and factors of social culture; especially the latter has great influence on public space satisfaction. Factors related to public space satisfaction can generally be divided into quadrants of "Low Satisfaction-High Significance" and "High Satisfaction-Low Significance." According to the inverse correlation between satisfaction level with public space and significance of indexes, we propose that indexes of public space satisfaction in the "Low Satisfaction-High Significance" quadrant should be improved greatly during the process of the optimization and construction of public spaces in new centralized communities.