Mapping out the social impacts of land use: Soft-GIS and Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis as integrative methods

People's experiences of place are affected by planning strategies as much as communitybasedbehaviours and emotions can affect planning and development. Residents'experiences of their environment are geographically located, since people can attach theirexperiences, memories, and feelings to specific locations. By allowing participants to locatethese experiences, researchers can not only identify their specific affordances but alsoanalyse and visualize the information for research and planning practices. This exampleaims to:- Examine how soft-GIS and choice-based conjoint methods can help accuratelymeasure the perceived importance of quality of life indicators and incorporatethem into the impact assessment process by allowing researchers to map out thequality of the living environment and forecast land-use scenarios;- Explore ways of analysing "soft knowledge" together with other geo-demographicdata to understand land use in peri-urban areas. For example, to examine howpeople's preferences and perceived affordances relating to land use is affected bymembership to different groups and segments in the population, such as olderpeople and groups of immigrants;- Discuss how these participatory methods can help build a bridge for moreeffective collaboration between researchers, stakeholders and planners and toprovide a more holistic picture of the quality of the environment.