Public Housing Tenant Relocation: Residential Mobility, Satisfaction, and the Development of a Tenant's Spatial Decision Support System.

Abstract

This study is an examination of residential mobility and its outcomes focussing on the forced relocation of public housing tenants from The Parks area of metropolitan Adelaide. In Euro-American countries, this type of residential mobility is increasingly used as a means of facilitating urban regeneration and countering the effects of the ongoing decrease in local public housing stock. The result is growing numbers of public tenants affected by relocation. The study agues that these public tenants have the right to a basic level of residential satisfaction, and in order for this satisfaction to be provided; the conditions and character of its formation must be understood. The thesis examines residential mobility and the formation of residential satisfaction to provide a basis for understanding the outcomes and effects of relocation, who is most affected, and how to target solutions to improve the relocation process. Despite the fact that households experience similar influences, and make their residential decisions in largely predictable ways, the formulation of residential satisfaction and the effects of relocation are highly individualised. Successful relocation is shown to be dependent on the inclusion of tenants' expert knowledge about their own residential satisfaction; this means that resident involvement in the process is crucial. This thesis investigates a means of combining these findings to improve the outcome of the relocation process for each individual tenant and their household. A prototype Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) is constructed to allow relocating tenants to participate in their own relocation decision process. This SDSS allows local, spatially referenced information to be combined with each tenants own expert knowledge. This information is combined through a structured decision process, which is presented in a portable computer program with a simplified user interface. This SDSS is tested by relocating tenants and key stakeholders from The Parks to evaluate its usefulness in improving the relocation process.