Residents’ preferences for land use and sustainable mobility solutions in densifying urban residential areas: Towards a more user-centered planning approach

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Densifying existing residential areas typically involves not only adding new buildings to accommodate additional residents, but also new parking spaces to meet the ongoing demand for convenient motorized mobility. This often comes at the expense of green areas. To protect these areas and preserve their ecological and recreational value, measures could be considered to ease the growing pressure on land, like reducing the number of parking spaces and providing sustainable mobility alternatives. However, reducing parking spaces is often met with little acceptance. This study, conducted between 2023 and 2024, addresses this dilemma from the perspective of residents living in post-war housing estates in Germany, who could potentially be affected by densification in the future. Using vignettes, 236 adults evaluated three strategies for reallocating space in the neighborhood under assumed densification, which have varying impacts on the available space for parking or greenery. These were combined with three sustainable mobility alternatives (improved public and active transport (1), innovative shared mobility offers (2), or local facilities to reduce travel distances (3)). The aim is to gain insights into how residents assess competition for space and to what extent sustainable mobility options increase acceptability of parking space reductions. Binary logistic regression models and descriptive analyses of given reasons for a decision show that respondents prefer relocating parking spaces to collective garages on the outskirts of the neighborhood. Such garages preserve space for greenery and alternative uses, while guaranteeing parking spaces, albeit with longer access and egress distances. Respondents’ frequency of car use, age group, and environmental awareness significantly influence evaluation of scenarios, while the sustainable mobility alternatives in our study play a minor role. Planning implications include introducing target-group specific and supporting measures to foster the adoption of sustainable mobility alternatives, as well as allowing for participatory processes that take residents’ perspectives into account with the help of experimental empirical methods