On assessing governmental sustainable residential planning and its alignment with residents’ and estate investors’ objectives

There are three key actors in forming the sustainable spatial distribution of residency in an area, (local) government, the estate investor and the resident, each with its own objective. Most urban planning studies have mainly focused on the ex-post evaluation of residential development by considering the objective of each actor separately. This paper outlines a conceptual model where the three key actors and their unique objectives are integrated with the aim of providing an ex-ante evaluation of residential development for government to make policies operational on a micro level. The methodology is implemented on a Swedish city, where sustainable residential development is in high need due to the influx of immigrants. The case study demonstrates that the model can integrate the macro and micro actors well. The model can provide noteworthy insights for the government on where the objectives of sustainability, livability and profit can be met. A sensitivity check of the parameter settings shows that the implementation of the model is robust for replication in other cities.