Beyond Housing Preferences: Urban Structure and Actualisation of Residential Area Preferences

Abstract

The concept of residential housing preferences has been studied across multiple disciplines, with extensive literature supporting both stated and revealed preference methods. This study argues that both preference types, stated and revealed, should be assessed concurrently to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of residential housing choices. To provide evidence, this research used findings from a public participation GIS survey that identified the stated housing preferences associated with three categories of urban residents, which were called urban “tribes”. We implemented an analytical framework using fuzzy modelling to relate stated preferences with revealed preferences for the same individuals using empirical data describing the urban structure in Tampere, Finland. Following an analysis of the relationships between residents’ revealed preferences and urban structural variables, we examined the consistency of stated housing preferences with revealed preferences. The results show considerable mismatch between the stated and revealed preferences for the urban tribes that were examined i.e., the preferred housing environment was significantly different from the actual living environment. Further, the stated preferences showed disequilibrium within the current structure of the housing supply in Tampere. The findings can have important implications for housing policy making in Tampere. Further, the use of a novel fuzzy model approach demonstrated a flexible and tolerant method for working with imprecise and variable social data to capture subtle differences. Finally, this study elaborately discusses the remaining limitations and suggests how they should be addressed in future research.