New Beijing Courtyard Housing Living: an examination of residential satisfaction with the Ju'er Hutong courtyard design

The Ju’er Hutong has been regarded as the most successful Beijing courtyard housing renewal project since its establishment in 1991. Many scholars have honoured its courtyard design as a new residential example that inherited from the traditional Beijing courtyard housing architectural structure. However, more studies of the Beijing courtyard housing development have been researched in the last 30 years, which raises doubts about the continuing success of the Ju’er Hutong courtyard design. This paper re-evaluates the Ju’er Hutong courtyard design after 25 years of use, asks whether the residents are still satisfied with it.By using a developed theoretical framework of residential satisfaction and place attachment, this research aims to examine the residential satisfaction with living in the Ju’er Hutong through four examining categories - place identity, place dependence, physical appearance and social bonding - to evaluate whether the Ju’er Hutong courtyard design is still successful today. Using the quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, participating residents of the Ju’er Hutong are divided into different groups based on the six variables of community structure: age, nationality, home ownership, household structure, gender and experience living in an old Beijing courtyard house, to explore the factors influencing the residential satisfaction in the Ju’er Hutong and to discover any problem that exists in the Ju’er Hutong courtyard design currently.In the findings, the results show a negative level of the overall residential satisfaction, which expresses that the Ju’er Hutong courtyard design is failing to meet residents’ increasing living needs at this moment. This research demonstrates the importance and necessity of new approaches to the Beijing courtyard housing development, and provides four design suggestions to the Ju’er Hutong courtyard design. These are ‘partially closed community structure’, ‘developed undercroft architectural structure’, ‘inheriting the traditional Beijing courtyard housing physical appearance’ and ‘door-to-door courtyard design’