Brownfield regeneration from the perspective of residents: Place circumstances versus character of respondents

Abstract

Little attention is paid to the inhabitants' views of places where brownfields are localized. If the residents attract some attention in this matter, it is most often at global level, and no influence of responders' characteristics or of place of questioning on the perception of problems of brownfields is examined in more detail. However, there is a consensus among researchers that these variables have an immediate effect on perception. That is why we set the objective to assess the impact of inhabitants' characteristics and of the place of residence on the structure of preferences for various types of brownfields regeneration. Respondents were questioned in three zones (city center, vicinity of the city and the peripheral surroundings of the city) of two cities (497 respondents in Karviná and 833 respondents in Ceské Budejovice, both Czech Republic). Socio-economic characteristics of the respondents were pursued and respondents commented on the extent of agreement with the use of existing brownfields in three defined zones of cities. The impact of origin of the resident (geographic characteristics) and of the character of the respondent (soci-economic characteristics) on a structure in preferences was studied sequentially by means of three methods of multidimensional data analysis (PCA, RDA, and Variation Partitioning). All methods led us to reveal a structure of four factors of preferences for regeneration: green/sport, housing/shopping, industry, and entertainment. Following the RDA the statistically significant variables to influence the structure of answers are both geographical variables - city, zone of a city - and three socio-economic variables - gender, age, and education. Preference for commercial-residential use of brownfields has a distinctive centre-periphery distribution within the city. The preferences of the revitalization through the reactivation of the industry are given primarily by the particular city, and the impact of both types of variables (characteristics of the respondent and the place of questioning) is significant, however the shared explainable variation is negligible (geographic variables explain 51.6% and characteristics of respondents 46.6%).