Perceived Residential Environment Quality in Relation to Gender; An Exploratory Study in Lindängen, Malmö

This master’s thesis deals with some concepts and theories related to public space and everyday life and points to how neglecting women’s needs and preferences in public spaces can lead to the formation of gendered urban spaces which prevent women from earning their right to the city. Concepts such as quality of life, quality of place, living environment, residential perception and satisfaction, and place attachment overlap and have many interrelations. One cannot consider, for example, the quality of residential environment independent of residential satisfaction or ignore its influence on the quality of life. This study focuses specifically on the perception of residential environment quality, in the medium scale (neighborhood). Despite a wide range of studies in the field of perceived residential environment quality, the review of literature reveals that studies in this field lack sufficient attention to power relations which among others (cultural, ethnic, etc.), can be gender related. Given the mentioned issues, this study explores women’s perceptions of residential environment quality in the Lindängen neighborhood in Malmö, Sweden. Drawing upon the analysis of a questionnaire, the study presents four scales of REQ in which women’s perceptions have been different from men’s: Recreational services, Safety, Public furniture and Commercial services. In the next stage, a set of semi-structured interviews were done with five women living in the neighborhood. These interviews explore the way women’s ideas and perceptions about their neighborhood, more specifically about the four aforementioned scales, affect their daily lives. The findings of this study highlight the influence of the residential environment quality on everyday lives of women and indicates their different needs for urban facilities and infrastructures (such as recreational or commercial services, as this study indicates) as compared to men